Re: RME Firewire 800 and Guitar Amp Sim

["Doug Cox" <uncledig@gmail.com>]

OK.  Wow.

Downloaded the trial version of Amplitube Jimi Hendrix, and it sounds GREAT.  Better by a longshot than any other guitar amp VST I've tried so far.  But as I feared, it's pretty heavy on the CPU.  In my core Bidule setup, it gives me a 23-25% increase in CPU usage on my (admittedly slow) 
1.5GHZ 2MB single-cpu laptop.  That puts me into crackleland :(  

I'll be very interested in seeing if I can squeeze it in when my new lappy arrives (dual core 2.0ghz w/ 4MB).  This alone is reason enough to try out Bidule's multi CPU support, too.

Also downloaded Voxengo Boogex.  Also wow.  Sounds very good, especially the clean sounds. I don't like it's amp overdrive as much, but again - I have stompers to fix that.  It only adds 6-7% to my CPU, which is amazing.  And it's free.  From reading a thread at Voxengo, the author says I can turn down the "tone, drive and phase" knobs and basically eliminate Boogex's preamp - so I *could* use this thing as a power/speaker modeler to round things off.  I haven't tried that yet cause I've been too enamored with these two toys! :)

You gents have me considering going straight into the laptop with my dry guitar signal (again).  When this new laptop arrives (this week!!) I'm going to see if I can pull it off, and still use my growing Bidule setup, without any crackles.

Thanks for the suggestions!