AW: Laptop live looping

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

>       I've already bought a macbook and want to work directly from my
guitar to it using an audio interface. The thing is, > there are hundreds 
of
them and i dont know wich one to choose. Also, money it's a difficulty. 
Here
the prices are (not > 
>only in direct relation with our incomes, also with the taxes) REALLY
higher than in the US or Europe. For example, a >
>MOTU Ultralite it cost in musiciansfriend.com usd 549.99 and in reaches my
country costing usd 950. You se what i'm >
>talking about. 

First of all, welcome back, Ariel. Now to your question from above:

>From my experience, the small Presonus thingies give you a good bang for 
>the
buck, although some people do prefer M-Audio in this department. For your
application (live guitar playing):

Most of the interfaces (even the small ones) give you two microphone
channels which also double as Hi-Z instrument inputs. Depending on how you
interface to the P.A., you might look for symmetrical outputs.
I personally have been using the Presonus Firebox for some time with 
success
and have to admit for typical live applications, the sound quality is
sufficient (check out http://blue.jamendo.com/de/album/16603/, an album
which was recorded using that interface exclusively).

That being said, I have a somewhat different approach for connecting a
guitar to a computer. A lot of computers (and especially laptop ones) have
strong EMC issues, so you wouldn't want to have a guitar cable run anywhere
near it. To work around it, I connect a small active DI (Behringer DI20)
directly to the guitar and then enter a (phantom powered) microphone input
on my interface.

Best,

        Rainer