Moving to a PC based setup

AllthegearNoidea

I bought an apogee Jam 96k to play through my iPad as I'm stuck in hotels many nights per week for work. This got me thinking about using my mac at home with speakers and an interface instead of my princeton at home. I connected the apogee jam and came out of the headphone socket to a small denon  all in one amp and cd system with a pair of bookshelf speakers. I used GarageBand for recording. The sound was really poor. What would I need to do this properly so that I didn't need an amp. I am interested in recording myself but the main focus would just be good tone listening live through a pc as if it was my amp.  Have I missed the point. Any help advice on what I would need  and what it would cost appreciated. 

Cheers

mrleon83

What was poor about the sound? Did you use an amp sim (in GarageBand)? 

AllthegearNoidea

Yes. I tried a few sims but they sounded thin and bland even with pedals. In no way did it sound like a real amp

sweepy

You really need to try Bias or S-Gear, you might think differently afterwards

funkyfraz

My mate has amplitube. A a few years old now, but that sounds fantasic to my ears. Not so nice with bass IMO, but some of the amps are lovely! I dont think thats too expensive either.

AllthegearNoidea

As my sound source is an old hifi amp and speakers will I have a problem. Do I need studio monitors

Bridgehouse

AllthegearNoidea said:

As my sound source is an old hifi amp and speakers will I have a problem. Do I need studio monitors

You're just looking at quality of output. The amp+speakers will work, but a set of monitors will give a more 'accurate' sound.

Bit like studio monitoring headphones versus commercial in ear type jobs..

guitarfishbay

funkyfraz said:

My mate has amplitube. A a few years old now, but that sounds fantasic to my ears. Not so nice with bass IMO, but some of the amps are lovely! I dont think thats too expensive either.

The Amplitube Ampeg SVX Bass pack is pretty decent I thought.  There was an update in the past year to a new version of Amplitube, but I've not tried that.  The demos sounded pretty good though!

guitarfishbay

AllthegearNoidea said:

As my sound source is an old hifi amp and speakers will I have a problem. Do I need studio monitors

If you think they sound good then possibly not.  For enjoyment it's usually nicer to have at least 6" woofers though, as smaller can be a bit thinner on the bass if you're otherwise used to playing through a guitar amp.

It sounds like the first thing to try would be some demos of different amp modelling software, S Gear or the latest Amplitube could be a good start.

ChrisRG

I use S-Gear at home and I'm really happy with it.  All of my Solo of the Month entries are done using it.  Ignore the dodgy playing but it might give you an idea sounds.  All the main effects (reverb and delay) come out of S-Gear too.  I don't tweak things that much and stick with the presets mostly.

My setup is guitar straight into an interface (PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL) into my Windows 10 PC running Studio One 3 with S-Gear.  Output is via some Eris 4.5 Monitors.

It's a very modest setup but it does the job for me at home.  Throw in a set of good headphones and you've got silent playing/recording too.  S-Gear can also be used as a standalone application so if you just want to jam along to some YouTube tracks, you just fire it up, chose a preset and you're ready to go.  No need to launch a DAW.