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Posted by: Vaidya Aug 29 2010, 12:18 PM

Hi guys,
This was the first time I ever connected my guitar to the laptop.When i play a note or strum a chord there is so much buzzing.Will the buzzing be eliminated after the recording is complete? Is the buzz bcos of the in-built speakers or speaker system?
How can I get rid of this buzzing?

Posted by: ZakkWylde Aug 29 2010, 12:23 PM

How did you connect your guitar to the laptop?

Posted by: tonymiro Aug 29 2010, 12:30 PM

If you're connecting your guitar to a laptop or any computer the guitar needs to use a HiZ insert. If you plug it in to a normal 1/4 inch jack then you will have an impedance mis-match and that can result in lots of buzzing, an elevated noise floor and a very thin and weak sounding signal.

Buzz however can be due to many reasons. It can be an earthing issue, it could be amplified noise across the PC bus, it could be poor cables, it could be a mismatch between unbalanced signals, it could be something else.

Is it possible to remove buzz? Depends on the type, if it's at a constant, fixed frequency then you can notch filter it out with an EQ. If it is more complicated or if it occupied a broad frequency range or one that you can not notch out then you would have to use some form of noise removal software. Those however are not perfect and also tend to be expensive. So ideally what you should do is find out what is causing the buzz and eliminate it before you record.

Posted by: Vaidya Aug 29 2010, 12:49 PM

I connected my guitar to the amp,then used a cable to connect the recording/phones output to the laptop's mic input.

Posted by: Vaidya Aug 31 2010, 04:58 PM

Now,there is no buzzing when i've connected my amp to the laptop.
But when i play a recorded mp3,the sounds are completely different.

Posted by: maharzan Sep 2 2010, 02:26 PM

Connecting directly does create a buzz.. This is probably an earthing issue. I had the same when I didn't have an audio interface.

The best way to connect is put the output of your amp (recording out if it has, not the other out otherwise you will burn it) in to an audio interface which usually connects to computer via USB or FireWire in my case. Footpedals like Line6 can connect directly to the computer via USB.

If you are connecting it directly, it might not give you results you are looking for.

I use an Mbox 2 Pro into my Macbook Pro, if you are curios.

Posted by: MickeM Sep 2 2010, 03:03 PM

I do hope you're using the right output from your amp. Ext.out or speaker-out (4, 8, 16 Ohm) is wrong, just so you're aware of that.

Posted by: Vaidya Sep 2 2010, 06:06 PM

How do I find out the resistance?

Posted by: MickeM Sep 2 2010, 09:03 PM

It usually says on the connection. But the point was to not make a wrong connection. Speaker out from the amp to a line level in on a sound card can fail fataly.