Hi all,
just for fun, and because it was incredibly cheap, I bought the DNAfx GiT Core by Harley Benton, after watching a few videos that seemed to really say good things about it, especially from a price/value point of view. It's basically a guitar modeller, with a ton of amps and effects, 200 presets, and the ability to create your own presets and add your own IR. The demos I saw seemed really cool, so for 89€ I thought I'd buy myself an early Christmas present.
Now, I found no info at all on Linux compatibility, so I went in a little blind. The spec on the product page seemed to suggest DAW support (so being able to access the audio from desktop), which seemed enough for me, especially if that part was done in a standard way. Long story short, it "works" but I noticed a few issues, and I wanted to check if anyone else had played with the same device (or one of the more expensive versions) on Linux to get better results. Notice that this all came from a super quick test (I plan to play more with it this weekend), but I think that was enough for a first feel.
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The first thing I noticed is that you cannot use the USB connection to get the device seen as an audio capture device. The manual makes it clear that the USB connection can be used exclusively for controlling the device from a Windows/Mac desktop application, e.g., to tweak presets, add your own IR, etc. Unfortunately, while the Windows app installs without issues on Wine, when you launch it the device is not recognized. I'm not knowledgeable enough about USB support in Wine, but IIRC there are ways to get some pass-through support so that Windows applications can see them. Anyone have familiarity with that? I'd really not spawn a Windows VM just for that (as I did in the past already for my Line6 X3 Live, and it was a pain).
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The device has a separate USB-C port for something it calls OTG, which as per the manual is officially to connect it to smartphones and tablets so that you can record there. That said, connecting that to the USB on my laptop I did indeed get the device recognized as an audio input card, specifically with 4 ports (2 for the stereo output, 2 for monitoring). That does indeed work with my Pipewire/JACK setup, but with a non-negligible latency: I mean, it's not huge, but you do notice it. I'm wondering if the manual explicitly doesn't mention laptops as targets for that connection because the higher latency is a known problem, or if it's because the device is advertised as using 44100 as sampling rate, while my Pipewire/JACK setup does 48000. Not sure if there's resampling happening, and if it can indeed cause this issue, but as it is it would make it harder to use it for recording something live, e.g., in an Ardour session. The only alternative may be leveraging the 3.5mm stereo JACK output, and use an external soundcard to access that, but unfortunately I only have a FocusRite Scarlett and I'd lose the stereo part with that (it's one mono 3.5mm and one mono XLR input).
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Just FYI, I've rushed through the 200 presets and they seemed a bit underwhelming, but that's definitely not conclusive: I'll need time to go through them with patience and with different guitars, and most importantly I'll probably need to use headphones to appreciate the subtle differences there will be (I was going through my laptop speakers using the OTG connection, which was really not the best way to check). I'm looking forward to see if, and how, custom IRs may help me shape the sound: that's something I have very little knowledge of, but I have a friend who does, so hopefully I may end up with a few presets I can really use.
So, as I said I'm curious to see if anyone else played with this or a similar device on Linux, and if you have any tips for me. I'm still keeping the device (it's really cheap and it makes little sense to return it, I'd still find ways to play with it from time to time anyway), but I'd love to be able to use it for more than just a nice studio ornament 
