I’m not the most technologically minded o people, and it’s hard to get a clear answer in a single place – how does someone connect guitars/bass to a computer to record? And then where do things like DSPs and plugins come in?
In: Technology
The simple version is to use a USB to guitar cable to connect to your PC and then use a piece of software to do the capturing of audio. It’s the same process as if you were recording your voice with a microphone. The software can also add effects much like a pedal would. I don’t have a specific recommendation.
I’m sure professionals have a more complicated multi-layered setup, but it essentially boils down to the same thing.
So sound is a wave, right? This wave gets converted to electrocity, so that the electric level (voltage) is higher when loud and lower when quiet (so still a wave, but not in the air, but in the electric current). This gets connected to the computer, and the computer measures the voltage level coming in very often (48,000 Hz for example, so 40,000 times per second) and notes down that value – now it’s recorded.
This would only give back loud /quite when played back, so a lot of frequencies (high pitch to low pitch) are recorded at the same time each measurement. Now you have what’s essentially a multidimensional wave, and that will allow you to reproduce the sound perfectly enough.
you need an audio interface, i like the focusrite scarlet 2i2, but there’s thousands to choose from.
you can plug in your instruments, and to the computer they behave like a microphone, you can record the raw sound with any sound app, like audacity.
for DSP you’ll run a DAW, just go with ableton live if you can. but there’s others: bitwig is free, vcv rack is free if you like modular synths.
inside your DAW you’ll get some basic signal processing built in, reverb, distortion, etc. you can still use your normal pedals tho.
the real fun comes when you start finding VSTs that you like, they’re standard software modules that you plug into your DAW.
First you need an interface. That converts the sound into a digital format. This signal is processed by a DAW. Imagine a large, expensive app which recreates a mixing desk, that’s a DAW. Usually in a studio you’ll see racks of effects units. Reverb, compressors, delays etc. The plugins are the digital emulations of these effects. With these three things you can turn your laptop into a portable studio.
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