How would I use my laptop as an amp for my guitar in Linux?

I have an old iaxe 393 (I'm learning), and would really like to play the thing, but I don't have an amp, so the sound produced by just the strings is kind of dull. I deal with audio as a hobby, and it would really help if you guys had any ideas on how to go about this. I'm curious if I could use my laptop as an amp. I was thinking I could do something with my mic and Audacity, but I'm not sure if that would work (without input lag). Thanks for any help or suggestions.

I'm a long time guitar player, and I've seriously tried almost all different hardware offerings.

In order to learn to play, you really need an amp. My recommendation would be to get a small cheap practice amp, a solid state one, but NOT a digital modeling amp. My favorites are the Orange and Hughes and Kettner solid state practice amps. The Hughes and Kettner Blue 15R is very cheap, and has a surprisingly good and versatile sound, proven reliable German technology (the amps themselves are made in Vietnam under German supervision, they are not made in China), and a real spring tank reverb. The Orange solid state practice amps also sound surprisingly good, are a bit more expensive though.

Why?

Because learning on digital modeling solutions is just not good, because of the latency caused by the digital processing, and because of the phoney dynamics caused by the digital emulation. I'm not against digital solutions, they have their place, and experienced players can use the better (and thus more expensive) digital solutions quite efficiently, and some digital solutions are just very practical for silent practice for people that are already experienced players, but for learning, you really need to feel the direct feedback of an amp with the guitar. An amp is half of the instrument, it literally is a substitute for the body of an acoustic guitar. A solid body guitar is only half of the instrument known as "electric guitar".

A small solid state practice amp doesn't require maintenance like valve amps do, is lightweight, not fragile at all, and can play at a very low volume level for bedroom practice, unlike valve amps, that need to be turned up to sound decent (there are exceptions, I also have a Marshall JVM for instance, and it happens to play very well at low volume levels, but there is no use in buying such an amp if you're only going to use it at low volume, that would be a complete waste imo, but some small valve amps, sold as practice or home amps, are completely unusable as such, for instance the Orange Tiny Terror, which is a very loud amp, that sound horrible at low volume, completely unusable for practice, and even pretty loud for the German 90 dB limit at gigs, even though it sounds great when cranked, and it's a great affordable low maintenance easy to mod cost blues/rock club gig amp that I use all the time).

You'll do yourself a big favor by learning on a real analogue amp, you'll learn much more efficiently, and your playing will become much more tactile and expressive, and that's what it's all about in guitar playing, because in the end, you'll want to convey something with the instrument of expression a guitar is. So you'll want the feedback from the amp to dictate the string vibration and to provide sustain, so that you interact directly with the sound, instead of having digital compression provide unreal sustain, compression, dynamics, etc... . Once you know what the guitar does through a real analogue amp without digital latency, then you'll be able to play with feel and expression on digital solutions, because you'll have learned the instrument, but it doesn't work the other way around.

Now if you want to record your stuff, most digital solutions on the market that provide a USB interface are class compliant, and work perfectly fine with linux. In my experience, the Digitech RP series are simple the best investment, because they're cheap, and have some pretty decent modelling, and there are even open source sound library management tools for them. Digitech has actually leaked a large amount of code for the RP series products, and there is a community development effort for these.

Another option is the Korg Pandora Mini. Also cheap, proven (the Korg Pandora series goes back more than 20 years, the first Pandora was actually entirely analogue!), and although it doesn't contain a USB audio interface, so you'll have to plug it into another audio interface or your sound card input, it is extremely versatile and capable of great emulation and effects, and of course, it's super small and practical, and completely platform-independent.

There are guitar amp emulation plugins in linux, and all the Windows and Mac plugins can also be used in Linux. Plugins are used in the DAW of your choice, there are several available for linux, all work pretty well. Are they as practical as a Digitech RP or a Korg Pandora Mini? No! Are they free as in gratis? Yes! And that's their big benefit over a hardware-based solution.

Thanks. I'll look into getting an analogue amp.

     ..."How would I use my laptop as an amp for my guitar in Linux?"


It's fairly simple, here's a link from some random to give you ideas - Link

I use a distro called "kxstudio" to record my band and whatnot. It has all the basics covered.

As far as amps go, this is a personal thing and something you'll need to discover for yourself based on your playing style - everyone has different tastes.

I started with a cheap Peavey practice amp when I was a kid, and then moved on to a Marshall Valvestate 8200 once I started gigging. I then fell in love with the sound of GreenAmps which are modelled on old-school Peter Green's tube sound, of which only Soldano Amps comes close. I then found MIAudio amps and have never looked back, as they make the best custom solutions for my needs.

If you don't have a lot of money then JetCity Amps are great for the price and sound a lot like Soldano amps.

Also, I use a lot of racks an pedals playing live and jamming, but when I hook up to my audio pc I alway just plug in my BossGT10 and it works, without any issues. A great little investment IMO.

Thank you. That distro looks interesting.

cockos reaper + vst amps? they have free ones. i believe you can get reaper up and running in linux just don't ask how. (did it once just don't remember when why or how)