I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I’ve experimented with using Guitar Rig to produce guitar tones through my MacBook. Setting up such a rig is pretty straightforward but I ran into an interesting problem when it came to routing sound from the input jack on my laptop to the Guitar Rig application. With some research and tinkering, I found a solution that works perfectly. If you can’t figure out how to get your guitar input into Guitar Rig, this tutorial is for you.
Evidently this problem doesn’t happen to everyone. In most cases the software installs and just works—not for me. I had to Google up a storm and do some thinking. My search led me to a relatively unknown feature in OS X’s handling of MIDI devices: aggregate devices. In order to pipe sound into Guitar Rig, you have to create an aggregate device.
First, I’m going to explain how it works and what it really means, then I’ll show you how to do it. You can skip this part you don’t care.
How it Works
The input comes into your aggregated device and immediately passes through and out that device’s “output”. Guitar Rig sees this “simulated” device as a real device and allows you to access it inside the program. Guitar Rig actually thinks this device is one of the Guitar Rig Kontrol hardware devices that you have plugged into your computer.
How You Do It
Although it’s not very prominent, there is an application that came with OS X for managing MIDI devices. That’s what we’ll be using here. It’s called Audio MIDI Setup and you can find it in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder—or better yet use Spotlight to find it (Cmd+Space, then type “Audio MIDI Setup” and press enter).
Once you’ve opened the program you’ll need to select “Open Aggregate Device Editor” from the Audio menu at the top of your screen. Click the plus sign (+) to create a new device and then click the check boxes next to “Built-In Input” and “Built-In Output”. Do not click the checkbox next to “Built-In Microphone”!
Click “Done” and close the program.
Now all that’s left to do is go into Guitar Rig and set your Output Device to your new device (whatever you named it). Once you’ve done that, you’ll see your device show up as an option for the “Input”.
In Conclusion
I hope this helped somebody out there out. Have fun messing with all Guitar Rig offers you—which is quite a lot! Keep on rocking. I’d love to hear any of your recordings, just comment me a link.
New blog post: Setting up aggregate devices in OS X 10.4+ http://bit.ly/CvmGV
This comment was originally posted on Twitter