A Beginner's Guide to Audio Interfaces and Amp Sims - Part 2

Okay, so last time we went over the basics of audio interfaces and I gave you some options covering a range of prices. So let's assume you have one, you're all plugged in and ready to start making some music. You'll often have two options, you can use a lot of amp sims as standalone pieces of software, or as plugins to be used inside a DAW, so before we carry on let's just break that down so we're all on the same page.

DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. This is basically the software you use to record music, such as Cubase, ProTools, Logic or Reaper. Through this, you can select your Audio Input, e.g, Input 1 from your interface, which your guitar is plugged into, and the software will then route that signal through the chain you apply. So you can add your amp sim plugin as an Insert and you'll hear your magnificent guitar tone come through. This is what you'll need to do if your aim is to record your music. If you're just looking for sick tones while playing, then standalone versions will work a treat without a DAW. You just select your Audio Input through the settings menu and away you go.

Personally, I use Cubase as my DAW and always run through that, so that's going to be my default perspective on this, but other DAWs offer similar options, they'll just look a bit different.

Top Tip - Overcoming Latency

Now, every time someone starts playing with this the first time, the same thing happens. They play a note, and a second later they hear it. This is called latency. It's basically the computer taking a moment to process the audio before sending it back to you, and it makes it completely impossible to play in time. Our brains can't handle that. The most important thing to do is adjust your Buffer Size. I won't go into the technical details behind this, but a rule of thumb is;

"Small Buffer Size for recording. Large Buffer Size for processing."

A smaller Buffer Size will greatly reduce your latency, but in some cases, too low a setting will cause clicks and pops in your audio, so you'll need to adjust accordingly. If you've already recorded all your music and you're editing, mixing, or processing your audio, you're better off changing to a larger buffer size so that your computer isn't taxed so much by the processing going on. Your Buffer Size options will look something like this;

Once you've set that to the appropriate level, you should get an nice fast response that allows you to play properly and enjoy yourself. When I got back into recording after 7 years out I'd forgotten this vital step, as did two of my friends, so it's definitely worth mentioning before we continue!

From here you need to create an Audio Track and assign your input as we've mentioned before.

The next step is to activate your Monitor button, this will allow you to hear the incoming signal rather than what's already recorded on the channel. In Cubase it will look something like this:

The Speaker button beside the red Record Enable button is your Monitor button. Without that enabled, you won't hear what you're playing.

Okay, so that's about as basic and simple as we can get on the setup process. Let's FINALLY dive into our Amp Sim options...In Part 3.

See you soon.

- Dan