Laptop as practice amp?

usedtobe

I play through my mac, sometimes. I've got a scarlet interface and a pair of small monitor speakers. I used the amps in GarageBand. 

olafgarten

Another good option would be a Zoom G3, I've played my G5 through the speakers on my Surface Book and while nowhere near as good sounding as my Monitors, it's not a bad sound. 

adamm82

I like amplitube the tones sound a lot better than on guitar rig or GarageBand. There is a preset exchange online for amplitube and you can download new tones for free. I’d prefer to use an amp but can’t really in my current place. 

RonanF

Thanks a lot for all the comments guys, a lot to work with there.

grungebob said:

You can route the sound out of your MacBook to any audio device you like. Are your speakers Bluetooth?

Yes, the speakers are bluetooth - will that make a difference?

Bygone_Tones

I've got one. If you want to run monitor speakers you plug them into the line outs on the back. Also it's the 'scarlett solo' you want, not the 212. The solo has the guitar input on the front.

I use all free software. The Abletone live that came with it, and I downloaded a free amp sim by Kuassa. I say free, but its really a trial version that emits some white noise every few seconds. You cant really hear it though if you are playing along to something. Good alternative to amplitube (for a freebie):

https://www.kuassa.com/products/amplifikation-one/

axisus

I did that for years. I bought Guitar rig for sounds and used a very cheap cable connector (less than £18!) to connect. I still use that setup for occasional work lunchtime practice.

aord43

Danny1969 said:

aord43 said:

So what happens if you plug directly into the mic input of the PC, ie. by converting the jack size, but without a separate audio interface/iRig/guitar port etc?  Is the level wrong or something?

No it will work but a guitar plugged in directly in will lose all it's treble as that socket is designed with an electret mic in mind which is happy into about 10K ..... a passive guitar needs an input impedence of around 1M ..... you can get round this though by using something with a buffer built in like a non true bypass pedal or a tuner

The other problem though is latency ... the drivers that come with basic onboard sound aren't optimized for low latency. This means there's a delay between you playing a note on the guitar and hearing it amped up through the computer. The generic ASIO for All driver can help though, I've done pretty much what you said, plugged straight in but my guitars active ... then used ASIO for all to get a workable latency

Another option is buy an old iPhone 4S or similar and use that. My general day to day practice amp is my phone and JAMUP ap via a homemade iRig

Thanks for the explanation.  What's inside a homemade iRig?  Is it just a buffer?

hairboy

I use irig HD2 with the shipped "full" version of Amplitube or Bias FX, into headphones.  You can also use the same line out to connect active monitors, so if your Bose are wired, it should be ok.  Caveat is the output has to also be iRig, meaning you can't output to speakers connected to computer, so if your Bose are say bluetooth, that option won't work, and you have get another set of active monitors. Even if your Bose work, they will colour your sound quite a lot, so I'd go down some active monitor route in any case.  If you don't want to load MP3 to jam to, you could get away with getting just 1 monitor, rather than a set, as guitar amp is mono anyway.  A used single KRK Rokit 5 can be often picked up for like 50-60 on fleabay.