Is it safe to plug guitar AMP straight in to a PC motherboard's soundcard ??

[LesPaul]

I have ardour with a basic piano track and a hydrogen wav. Sounds fine for me as I'm just a home hobbyist. Now I want to plug my amp in from its 1/4 headphone jack out to the 1/8 inch line in on the PC. Is this advised or are they different signal strengths. I just want the sound to come out in ardour or any other plugin.

[BobUnderwood]

A headphone output is too hot for a line-level input - a microphone input is even worse. If the headphone out has its own gain (volume) control you could try it IF you turn the gain down ALL THE WAY, set the other levels, then turn up the headphone gain SLOWLY in small increments.

[LesPaul]

Thanks that is sort of what I figured. I didn't want to buy another gadget like a USB box but I did see a straight cable called Guitar to USB. Do you think I would benefit from that ? Its $10 on craigslist and made by behringer. There is not much info on it but claims digital output of 44-48k

[BobUnderwood]

It's not clear to me exactly what you want to achieve. You could plug the guitar straight into the PC microphone input. A guitar-to-USB cable will give you a sampled signal.

[Death]

I would just plug my guitar straight into an audio interface which has a pre-amp then process the guitar in software. The other option would be to send the amplifier's line out/headphone output into the audio interface so you have the amp's processing.

Whatever you do, as was already advised - start with levels at minimum and slowly turn them up until you've got the right level. You can definitely burn things out from over amping them - I've done it

[LesPaul]

My goals is to record the guitar, hear or see it in ardour and try pre and post processing. I realize there is a USB gadget but I was trying to avoid that.

[BobUnderwood]

Then plug guitar directly into the PC.

[Death]

My goals is to record the guitar, hear or see it in ardour and try pre and post processing. I realize there is a USB gadget but I was trying to avoid that.

You can try without, sure, but just be careful with levels. The latency will likely be horrible though. Latency will be way lower with an audio interface (essentially an external soundcard).

I know from personal experience that the Focusrite 2i2, 2i4 & Audient iD4 all work really well on Linux with no messing about to set them up - just plug & play

I have a couple of bookmarks here which can help you find a compatible device if you're interested. I'm not sure if these are still the places to check for this stuff so maybe someone else will know better:
https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/hardware
https://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main

[LesPaul]

thanks for everyone's advice, I'm looking for a long enough cable. I have a living room setup and the AMP didn't fit well by the computer desk so I need a longer cable. I thought I would try anyway by moving the laptop over to the AMP but I realized the laptop has no Line in so I'm on hold until I find a cable long enough

[LesPaul]

While looking for a long cable I thought I would try something else like an MP3 player to see if line in actually works. I enable HD audio in the bios and a new PCH 0 intel device comes up. so i start jack and select the new Intel as my input and my AMD 79xx as the output. I open CATIA and 25,000 xruns with about 100 more coming in each second.

[BobUnderwood]

Please give us more information about your hardware and software.

[LesPaul]

I'm using a basic PC. Everything works fine and I get 0 xruns until I select the Intel as the Input in JACK. Once I select input device and hit start it xruns like crazy. I never enabled the onboard Intel before because the AMD 7950 has sound. It uses HDMI to the monitor and the monitor has a passthru going to powered speakers. No problems doing anythin until I enabled Intel audio and selected it as input, no choice as its the only input. My previous inputs have been USB and no problems recording them, it was a USB korg piano and a USB logitech mic.

I'm using Librazik but it happens when starting JACK

[BobUnderwood]

What happens if you connect to the Intel output as well?

Perhaps you should deactivate the audio in the BIOS and mic the guitar amp with the Logitech USB mic (or get an audio interface).

[saralody]

Have you considered a cheap USB interface like the Focusrite 2i2? It'll give you cleaner input and work smoothly with Linux.

If budget's tight, a guitar-to-USB cable could be a quick fix. Just want to get you recording without hassle. Might be worth investing in a proper audio interface when you can.

[LesPaul]

I connected the Intel output, The x runs do stop. I'm guessing I can't use PC line in and HMDI sound out at the same time. That kind of sucks but still fits in my plan. I don't want aother USB gadget unless I have a need to do this a lot. if I really need to record a bit of guitar I still have other means.