Electric guitar through iRig in Ubuntu?

Question

I have an iRig pre-amp for my electric guitar. Can I use it in Ubuntu? What software I need?

Answer 1

AmpliTube works perfectly in Xubuntu via Wine.

“WineASIO provides an ASIO to JACK driver for WINE. ASIO is the most common Windows low-latency driver, so is commonly used in audio workstation programs.”

Install Wine and Jack:

sudo apt-get install wine jackd qjackctl

Install WineAsio .deb

Download and install this package

wget http://www.lucamazzilli.it/downloads/wineasio_0.9.0-1_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i wineasio_0.9.0-1_i386.deb

Install dependencies

• jack 1

  sudo apt-get install libjack-dev
  

• jack 2

  sudo apt-get install libjack-jackd2-dev
  

Download and extract

wget http://leaseweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/wineasio/wineasio-0.9.0.tar.gz

tar -zxvf wineasio-*

cd wineasio

Get the source asio.h (file:asio.h http://sourceforge.net/projects/wineasio/files/wineasio-0.9.0.tar.gz/) than copy to your source folder and:

make

sudo make install

if you get an error like this:

exmple@pc:~/wineasio$ sudo make install
if [ -d /usr/lib32/wine ]; then cp wineasio.dll.so /usr/lib32/wine; else cp wineasio.dll.so /usr/lib/wine; fi

just copy wineasio.dll.so on the correct folder in old fashioned way:

• 64bit

  sudo cp wineasio.dll.so /usr/lib32/wine
  

• 32bit

  sudo cp wineasio.dll.so /usr/lib/wine
  

You must register wine library

regsvr32 wineasio.dll

Configure Wine to use alsa and jack

winecfg

select audio tab, than pick Jack Driver and Alsa Driv.

Answer 2

At the most basic level you just want the sound from a mic input to come out of the speakers, which you an do in a number of ways. Here's one: How to hear my voice in speakers with a mic?

There is also a program called Rakarrack which apparently does guitar effects.

Answer 3

As you say your preamp is USB, here is how I use my USB preamp in Ubuntu.

First you need jack to control the interface

sudo apt-get install qjackctl jackd

and Rakarrack as the amp simulator

sudo apt-get install  rakarrack

For setup run qjackctl from dash and set it up with your usb device in the interface section and your speakers as the output, then tweak the other settings to your liking, here are my settings

You may also need to click connect in qjackctl and connect the input to the output, this can be done in just a click or two.

Now restart qjackctl and run Rakarrack (qjackctl MUST run first), if you set your interfaces correctly that should be all you need, you will here your guitar from the speakers and can use Rakarrack to set up some nice tones ;)

Answer 4

To properly use any audio interface with Linux, you first of all need a working ALSA driver. You may already be out of luck with the iRig there. If you have

sudo apt-get install alsa-firmware-loaders

And you connect the interface but it doesn't show up in Pulseaudio (or aplay -l), then I'm afraid it's likely going to be very hard to get it to work on Ubuntu at all. You may consider getting some other interface with reliable ALSA drivers.

If the interface does show up, then you should next get jack to do the patching.

sudo apt-get install qjackctl

Finally, you'll want some way to process the signal. For sure, this can be done with the big commercial programs like Guitar Rig, Amplitude, or (better) BiasFX, iZotope Trash... but I'd think twice before Wine-infiltrating a Linux install with such closed-source behemoths.
Before you do so, I'd recommend you check out Pure Data. It's completely different from those programs – not at all specialised at simulating existing guitar amps/pedals; instead it gives you really nice ways to design completely new sound effects, completely from scratch. (But, this is definitely nothing for quickly getting some impressive standard sould; perhaps Rakarrack will serve you if that's what you want.)