[LAU] Making great guitar sounds on GNU/Linux

[Darren Landrum]

Hi. Apparently, if the list is in the CC field, the message doesn't get
forwarded to the list. Apologies to Arda, who will receive this message
twice.

Arda Eden wrote:
> Hi there,
> I made a project to show that without using any proprietary software 
and no hardware processing, it's possible to create powerful guitar sounds.
> Follow the link below to see an article and some examples about the 
project:
>
> http://www.ardaeden.net/gnuitar/

Hello!

I noticed you dealt with the issue of how to plug one's guitar into the
computer. I thought I would expand on that explanation a bit.

A large part of the reason why so many people have such problems getting
good guitar tones out of software is because of impedance mismatch. The
guitar has a high-impedance output, and going into a low-impedance
input, which is what typical sound card inputs are, will... Well, it
either rolls off the lows or the highs, I can never remember which (I
think it's the highs that go away). Either way, the point is, it does
bad things to the signal.

The solution is an inexpensive DI (direct inject) box, which has an
high-impedance (also labeled hi-Z) unbalanced input for the guitar, and
a low-Z output for the sound card. The vast majority of commercial DI
boxes satisfy this requirement. Oftentimes, mic preamps also have hi-Z
unbalanced input so as to double as a DI.

Just thought I'd try to contribute something to the cause. :-)

-- Darren Landrum