Guitar Amp USB Out Shows up in CW as MIDI

[Michael McBroom]

I have a Marshall CODE 50 amp and I'm trying to use its USB out to record audio in CW (I just installed the latest version of CW btw). The CODE comes with no drivers and there are none available from Marshall. Marshall claims that its CODE amps are fully USB compliant, so they need no drivers. I have gotten this amp to work in Band in a Box just fine. It found the CODE and recognized it as an audio device. But in CW it shows up only under the MIDI inputs and outputs, which obviously doesn't do a bit of good. I guess I'm wondering, is there a workaround for this, or must I use my audio interface and forget about the amp's USB out?

 

Edited February 1, 2020 by Michael McBroom

[Michael McBroom]

1 minute ago, Michael McBroom said:

 

Oops, double post.

Edited February 1, 2020 by Michael McBroom

[scook]

Change the driver mode

[Michael McBroom]

I almost always use ASIO. Which other one would you recommend? I guess I can just start with WASAPI Exclusive and go down the list. I don't know what WDM/KS is used for.

 

Edited February 2, 2020 by Michael McBroom

[scook]

For a device to use ASIO driver mode, it must have an ASIO driver or a wrapper like ASIO4All which presents WDM drivers to the host as ASIO.

The manufacturer has chosen not to supply an ASIO driver so ASIO mode is not an option. You really don't want to add ASIO4All if you have another device with an ASIO driver as this can cause problems.

15 minutes ago, Michael McBroom said:

I guess I can just start with WASAPI Exclusive and go down the list.

Sounds like a plan. Pick the one that works best for the device/project.

[Michael McBroom]

Thanks, I'm gonna give WASAPI a try first. I don't like ASIO4All, I've had problems with it taking over my system and not wanting to let go.

[scook]

Just now, Michael McBroom said:

I don't like ASIO4All, I've had problems with it taking over my system and not wanting to let go.

This is why I said it was not an option in this case. Even though it is not a true ASIO driver, it looks like one to programs that work with ASIO like DAWs and this is a problem if there are devices with true ASIO drivers. There should only be one ASIO driver installed for any device.

[John Vere]

The point worth mentioning is that you cannot use 2 ASIO audio interfaces at the same time. If you have an  interface that uses ASIO then that's the device your going to be using with Cakewalk. The Marshall is using what are called  audio codex generic drivers. They will work fine buy themselves if your not using your audio interface.  This is a common fault with Amps that have USB ports. They are next to pointless in a system that already has a interface. Best to use the audio output run to your interface or better yet, a mike. 

 

[Michael McBroom]

Thanks for the additional info, guys. Well, for starters, I did try WASAPI but it was giving me problems. The piece of music I'm working on right now is fairly large and, even though all tracks are MIDI, there are 22 of them, although only 10 and 12 instruments are playing at any one time, respectively. Nonetheless, at least about half the time, roughly halfway through the piece, it would fall into a state of total distortion. If I paused and restarted it, the distortion would clear up and usually go away for the remainder of the piece, but this was unacceptable to me, so I went back with ASIO. And yes, my interface has ASIO-specific drivers that have always worked very well.

I've been running the amp's audio out into the interface. I prefer this method over a microphone because of the ambient noise level I have to deal with here. Some CPU fan noise and also a cockateel in the background who likes to chirp at unpredictable times. And occasionally the dog decides to bark. The downside to running straight from the amp to the interface is I'm picking up some line hum now. Nothing very serious, but it's there, raising the audio floor. I can probably nail the hum with a parametric EQ -- haven't tried yet.

Next time I'm working on a smaller piece, I'm gonna give WASAPI a try and see if CW will recognize the amp as audio. I never did try and see if that would work, since I was running into problems with that driver mode.

[57Gregy]

Sonitus EQ has a hum removal preset, 50Hz or 60Hz.

[John Vere]

Yes my line out from my Blackstar is unusable for the same reason. That's why I use a mike.

A solution to using a mike when you don't want leakage or disturb the household is to make a little isolation room for the amp. This can be a closet or even a insulated box. 

As a addition to this problem when I tried the USB output of the amp using WDM mode it had the same hum.  

Guitar amps are noisy buggers at best. You just need to play loud and drown it out! 

[Michael McBroom]

19 hours ago, John Vere said:

Guitar amps are noisy buggers at best. You just need to play loud and drown it out! 

Heard that! That's usually been my approach.

 

[Michael McBroom]

I thought I should resurrect this stale thread because I have new information with regards to the issue I was facing, namely that my Marshall CODE amp was showing up in CW as a MIDI device and not an audio one. I did as Scook recommended and changed the driver mode, in this case from ASIO to WASAPI. 

This song I'm working on has five audio tracks -- well, six now -- and no MIDI tracks. My audio interface supposedly supports only ASIO, so I was concerned I might lose audio on the other tracks, but fortunately I didn't. WASAPI did the trick, the CODE showed up in the audio interface's input panel only, and I had to deselect the interface's inputs in order to select the CODE.

After that, everything was pretty straightforward. I had to do some balancing of the input signal in order to get the volume up where I needed it to be, and I found that, using USB, suddenly the input signal -- in this case a Gibson Les Paul with humbucing pickups -- became very clean. But curiously enough, it was as if i were playing a guitar with single coil pickups. Lots of hum and the position of the guitar became very sensitive to the level of hum that was being produced. When I hold it just so, the hum disappears pretty much completely. But I don't think that CW has anything to do with this. It's a feature shared by  that Les Paul and the CODE amp, albeit an atypical one.

The difference in noise levels between bringing in the audio signal through one of the audio interface's channels and bringing it in via the USB port is dramatic. I was having to port the signal into the interface from the amp's headphone jack -- it doesn't have a Line Out, unfortunately -- and it was noisy. I hadn't ruled out the possibility that some of the cabling might be at fault, but instead of trying to trace it down, I decided to give the USB port one more shot. Glad I did, because the difference in noise levels was dramatic. 

So anyway, problem solved, glad to have a successful USB approach for getting my guitar's audio signal into the computer quietly.

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Michael McBroom