Originally Posted By: Guitarhacker
... DO NOT buy one of those USB cord things for guitar. They are horrible and present other issues due to the codecs they use vs using ASIO drivers. You WANT to have an interface that uses ASIO.


Herb, I must disagree with you on your statement above. The 1/4" guitar plug to USB connection works really well for electric guitars or electric basses with computers using Windows 10. I have one such cable that I've used with this laptop and one my desktop. I also know of several musicians that use them at home.

I suspect that the difference between my good experiences and your statement might be because with Windows 10 the cable is plug and play. The cable uses a Windows 10 driver that is built-in to the operating system.

When I tried to use the cable in my older, XP system, the system had to go onto the internet to find a USB driver. I tried several XP drivers off the internet and they all experienced the same issue, distortion due to the input overloading.

I used the cable with this computer while it used Windows 7. Windows 7 had a built-in driver. The driver was better but it still allowed the incoming signal to overload and distort, just not as much.

My main issue with a guitar to USB cable is all the cables use 16 bit analog to digital convertors instead of 24 bit which is more commonplace today. My playing technique stinks so I prefer the luxury of having the additional headroom 24 bit offers.

Jim Fogle - 2024 BiaB (1111) RB (5) Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home