Using a computer as an Amp. A quick "How To" video.

what's up youtube it's christopher so i recently got a question uh how do i use my computer as an amp and while the dust flies around me because i just cleaned up a little bit um here's my little setup so based on the left guitar on the right that's just there i got my little table on the left here for when i set up amps and whatnot or little pedals or whatever so let's go over the setup first of all i get my little stack of guitars over here and over here we got where i get the the magic done so just a standard computer setup really keyboard mouse with a booby mouse pad fender strat so the important elements here to use your computer as an amp is you have to have one of these bad boys which is an audio interface right so your guitar cable has to plug into this and this has a usb in the back right here that goes out to your computer and that acts as your interface between your guitar or any instrument microphone uh to your computer i have two sets of speakers set up so back here i have four cables plugged in so these go to what are uh these guys the klipsch audio computer speakers which has a subwoofer underneath and then the other two go out to my jbl 308s that's the sound then obviously you got your monitor computer in the back it's just a hp omen it's a i5 processor nothing huge doesn't have to be audio is not that um not that intensive when it comes to uh what it has to do inside the computer as far as processing and all that and my god the dust is just flying around down here so other than that i got a little midi controller for when i got to do some keyboard parts or whatever i got my little guitar tuner and picks over there an extra set of picks over here so how do i get this guy to be an amp so what i use for my amp software i'm going to shut off that light oh look at that and the dust miraculously goes away so dust is attracted to light everybody i'm kidding all right so on my desktop here you can see my mouse come over here i have many little archetype things here i got the nollie uh the abbasi i got the pelini here a plenty i don't know how you say it how he says it i should probably pay attention i got the fortin nts suite down here and these all work as standalone amps so if i turn on the plenty it'll open up and it'll give me this little interface and in here um there's a little settings over here and this is key you have to go in and make sure these are correct so the first thing i do is i make sure that this is set to azio and then it's set to my focusrite usb because there's a couple of different options in there right so you want to make sure it's set to the focusrite usb and this is on a pc by the way not a not a mac output one output two is selected i've got input 1 and input 2 because that's all i have on my interface i have it set to a sample rate of 48 000 hertz the audio buffer is set to 96 which is a very low latency if that goes higher your latency starts to go up i would say you know once you get past like 240 it'll start to you'll start to feel it in your playing so once you get that stuff set up you can then plug your guitar in to the usb interface here now another key thing is that this knob right here that's that's how much signal comes in from your guitar so if i turn my guitar up and i hit the strings you'll see that it is probably set too low see how it's turning green of course i'm just smashing my strings because i don't have it on me but you want to set that so that it's only green so when it goes into the orange you're starting to get some staticky type of sounds that will affect the way the amp works uh and then from there you know you've got your output right so if i turn my guitar back up i can't really hear much because i have this turned down but that's the volume for the main speakers now i have two sets of speakers so i have to control the other volume here on my clips and make a balance of them and that's literally it for making your amp or or you're using your computer as an amplifier so you got to have the software you got to have the hardware interface and it's super simple to set up it's just a usb cable to the computer then you get your settings inside your software and then you hook up whatever speakers you have you don't even need to have speakers if you have headphones you can just plug the headphones in over here is that there where is it i can't see it's here but there's a there's a headphone jack on there and you can play through headphones you don't even need to have it come out through the speakers but that's my little setup this is where i record all my music everything's done right here as far as recording goes if you want to see that shut off that i use reaper so reaper opens up and go in here and we'll start a new one all you got to do to get your amp in here in reaper anyway is to uh right click insert new track go to the effects and in here you go to the vsts i've got a few in here but if i go to neural dsp these are all the vsts i have i like to use vst3 because it eats up less computer resource and you just turn on the plenty add it'll open up in here now the other thing that you have to make sure you do is enable the track for recording and then make sure that this has record monitoring on if you want to hear your guitar coming back out your speakers and then you're good you can just record so you see i'm getting a signal now so now all i have to do to record is set my settings first of all what's my bpm you know you can get a click going when you hit play and then when you're ready to record you just hit the record button and any audio you can actually get rid of this you hit record i have it set to give me an eight count in first now it's recording [Music] and i get my signal right there it's kind of a weak signal and then you i rename this and then save it and uh you get a track going then i use um virtual instruments i do where is my tune track and then i use superior drummer three and i'll say no to that just to speed this up and that'll open up and then you have a drum software and you can program drums you can drag and drop midi files and create tracks just like that it's pretty simple actually i love doing it it's fun for me and hopefully that helped you guys out a little bit and gave you a little glimpse into my little dusty world here um yeah so that's this video hope you enjoyed it i'll see you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Chris Tompkins

Views: 7,182

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: plugins, pc amplifier, digital amp, setup, reaper, plini, archetype plini, neural dsp, jbl, klipsch, akai mpk mini, chris tompkins

Id: ceEQnP_Vq5M

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 22 2020