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March 10, 2022 6:03 PM   Subscribe

I want to plug an electric guitar into a Mac and be able to hear it. I also want to be able to hear whatever audio I am playing on YouTube or iTunes or whatever on my Mac. That is ALL I want to do.

I have the physical part down. I can plug a guitar into a little USB device and plug that into my mac. I have that.

What I want is a simple app that does as little as possible. I do not want effects, amp modeling, recording, anything. I just want to hear whatever sound is coming out of the guitar with as little processing as possible.

I know I can fire up GarageBand, pick a guitar track, press play and I'll hear the guitar. I can probably do that with any number of audio recording apps. I don't want any hacks or tricks or any workarounds to do this. I want a single click. Ok I will live with two clicks if I have to.

I just want to fire up a small app and have it work. I want to hear the guitar. That's all.

Ideally it would be a free or cheap app that I can buy from the app store. Perhaps there's even something built in to OSX. If there is I haven't found it.

Surely this exists, right?
posted by bondcliff to Computers & Internet (18 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Rogue Amoeba's app Loopback lets you route input devices directly to output devices. It also lets you do a ton of other stuff, but that's not what you're asking about.
posted by aubilenon at 6:09 PM on March 10, 2022 [8 favorites]


You should be able to use GarageBand but turn off the ampsim.
posted by music for skeletons at 6:17 PM on March 10, 2022


(Info here about how to jam along with iTunes)
posted by music for skeletons at 6:23 PM on March 10, 2022


My cheapo Behringer UM2 usb audio interface has a “direct monitor” switch that allows me to plug in my guitar, turn up the volume knobs, and hear my guitar through the interface’s headphone jack. Literally zero clicks.
posted by gnutron at 6:41 PM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Set up a song in GarageBand with the guitar track enabled, save it to your desktop, double-click on it when you want to do what you want to do. Unless your audio interface has a direct monitor function like Gnutron suggests, it doesn't get any easier.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:00 PM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Audacity. You will have to tell it, via a dropdown menu on the toolbar, what your input is (your USB Box), where you want the output to go (external speaker or native mac). Then hit record. There may be a button that you can click to toggle monitoring the sound as you play, so as to avoid feedback. But it will play the sound of your guitar, as-is. It does have a lot of techy ways to process the sound, but the starting point includes absolutely no effects.

Here's the manual.
Pitter patter let's get at it now.
posted by not_on_display at 8:22 PM on March 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


Also, I haven't tried this but I'm poking around... but between the Sounds panel in System Preferences, and the Voice Memos.app in your Applications folder, you might be able to make something work.
posted by not_on_display at 8:27 PM on March 10, 2022


I'm guessing the idea here is that you'd like to play along with songs in your iTunes library or off YouTube or wherever, and hear the guitar from the Mac rather than have to drag over a physical guitar amp and set levels and all that.

Surely this exists, right?

I'm actually unable to find one, myself, so you're not out of your skull. Not a sexy enough app, I guess.

If you've got an iPad or iPhone there seem to be more basic amp/pedal simulators for that platform that might do the trick.

Which USB device do you have? As per gnutron, there may be a more hardware-oriented solution to your dilemma.

Did your device come bundled with any sort of free software? I got a freebie (limited) version of IK Multimedia's Amplitube5 amp sim as part of a bundle when I bought another IK device, and if I fire it up as a standalone app and plug my guitar in to my interface I can hear the guitar plus whatever YouTube video I want to play. So maybe there's something you would already have access to.

Otherwise I think johnathanhughes' idea of saving a dedicated pre-set "play guitar" GarageBand song someplace easy to get to is the way to go.
posted by soundguy99 at 9:06 AM on March 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


You could try to use the built in app Audio Midi Setup (in you Applications/Utilities folder) to create an Aggregate Audio Device that would combine your USB input and the Mac's Built-in output, then choose that device in the Sound Preference Panel as your Output.
posted by FungusCassetteBicker at 11:39 AM on March 11, 2022


Response by poster: I'm guessing the idea here is that you'd like to play along with songs in your iTunes library or off YouTube or wherever, and hear the guitar from the Mac rather than have to drag over a physical guitar amp and set levels and all that.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm trying to do. I want to be able to play my guitar through my mac, and hear the guitar and whatever else I'm playing over my headphones. I don't need the app to do the audio mixing, I can just play YouTube or iTunes in the background while The App I'm looking for handles the guitar.
posted by bondcliff at 12:01 PM on March 11, 2022


I think the issue isn't really what app you're using but the audio drivers. In order to achieve this with Windows for example, I have to use ASIO4ALL. However, Macs use Core Audio which means you shouldn't have to fiddle with something like ASIO4ALL. According to this Reddit thread you should be able to look for Core Audio in the settings of Ableton (for example) and combine audio devices (e.g. your computer and also your guitar input). So regardless of the software you choose, you might want to check how to configure the drivers in said software.
posted by thebots at 12:29 PM on March 11, 2022


...fire in the sky!
posted by 20 year lurk at 1:20 PM on March 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


Does your Mac have a voice memo recorder?
posted by grog at 1:25 PM on March 11, 2022


As there doesn't seem to be an obvious straightforward software solution so far, here's a hardware-based but functionally equivalent alternative that you may not have considered: an inexpensive small guitar headphone amp with an auxiliary input (just one example of many). You'd plug it into your guitar, plug in the headphones, then run a stereo mini male-male audio cable from your computer's audio-out port to the amp's aux-in port, and voila! you hear both in your headphones.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:54 PM on March 11, 2022


Audio Hijack may work for you.
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 6:37 AM on March 12, 2022


Nice post title.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:32 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: i don't understand why garageband isn't the answer for you. just want to make sure you know that you can do what jonathanhughes suggested -- arm a track for recording in GB, with no FX on it, then save the project as whatever, and just double-click on the project file in Finder/on your desktop whenever you want to play -- and be able to hear it along with whatever you want to play on YT/etc. You can hear audio from both GB and YT/other apps at the same time. if levels aren't perfect, turn the GB slider down, or up, and when you save the project, it'll open next time with all those settings preserved.

if that's not what you're after, it's not clear why.
posted by troywestfield at 8:30 AM on March 17, 2022


Response by poster: I think I was hoping for a lower footprint than GarageBand, but that should work. I'm actually surprised this app doesn't exist. As soundguy99 said, it's probably not sexy enough.

Thanks all.
posted by bondcliff at 8:41 AM on March 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


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