In my last post I talked about ways of bypassing the need for a guitar amp and using software guitar racks and effects. I also covered the way of getting around latency by using ASIO drivers to output sound from your computer to your interface and then from the interface through stereo outs to an amp (not a guitar amp).
However – as good as software racks and effects are it’s very hard to replicate the tone you can get from a good amp, it just isn’t the same.
So you want to record your amp sound but you can’t crank it up loud enough to get a decent recording with a mic in front. Unlike a professional studio you don’t have the luxury of a separate room for micing up a guitar amp and on the whole it’s just not viable. So what do you do?
Enter the DI output or headphone jack
Now not all amps will have this but mine has a DI output which sends the amp signal to a mixing desk (or in our case USB audio interface). In some cases if there’s a headhpne socket you can simply plug a guitar lead from there into your interface and you get the same result:
Your amp sound going into your computer interface without having to use microphones. And if it’s the middle of the night you can do it all with headphones 
