M-Audio JamLab Personal Guitar System

I bought this with the sole purpose of connecting it to my Mac, and having a better interface into Garage Band than the 1/8" audio in. The unit works great. Before installing it, I went to the M-Audio website and pulled the latest drivers, installed those, rebooted, plugged in the JamLab, connected my guitar, told Garage band through the settings what the input was, and I was off and running.It works perfectly!I haven't explored any of the software it came with, so I can't speak to that. However if you're looking for something to easily connect your guitar to your Mac via USB, you can't go wrong with JamLab. It's small, easy to use, and works great.

recieved item ok and works fine not what i really wanted but it dose work thanks

Wasn't expecting a peice of pro audio studio gear but thought it would at least work to some degree. Tried installing on three different computers. Nothing, the device will pass through the computer audio but won't input any of my instruments. The manuel is useles, cryptic and offers no trouble shooting tips, the software isn't any better. Haven't tried tech support yet but from what I read elsewhere they are very rude and unhelpfull. For $30 bucks I could have picked up a USB connector at Target.

Pros: Instrument-level input to a PCCons: Bundled software is worthless. Input is extremely quiet - almost to the point of uselessness.Other: I suggest inputting this to FL Studio or some other ASIO-enabled studio software. To get anythign useful from it, I had to patch it in to FL Studio and plug a compressor AND a maximizer into the signal - but at that point there is really no dynamic range, and the only difference between a light pick and a good strong one is that the strong one clips (sounds like really cheap overdrive).More Other: Not sure if this is ASIO or just FL Studio that was acting up, but it was only possible to output to a file or to speakers through the jamlab, rendering my nice expensive soundcard idle.

It's a great practice tool, but you can't really record a song with it. It does allow you to record what you are playing, but you can't record with a background (drum loop, bass, etc.) unless you purchase the GT Player 2.5 software that'll set you back another 115 bones. You buy this and you'll get a stripped down version that's merely fun to practice with and record an idea or play along with a song. Eh, it's neat and the recordings are fantastic quality, but I wish someone would've told me this before I went out and bought it. It would've made the difference I guess. The other draw back is that it doesn't use your existing audio hardware and when you install this device it becomes your new "sound card" unless you do some fiddling around and if you have speakers then you'll have to run them through this device. I haven't returned it because I'm having enough fun with it as it stands. Also you MUST have Windows XP (MUST HAVE). I found that out the hard way, but luckily I have XP on my laptop (but I tried installing it on my desktop's Win2K and it was difficult to get it off). Those are the pro's and some of the con's, but...eh, it's alright, just a scam to lure you into spending more money on the full blown version.

Para grabar en casa esta excelenteee!!! es pequeño.. portatil.. me gusta!! y el vendedor es excelente!!! Saludos desde venezuela!! OK

I felt compelled to add my review after reading the others. No, this is not professional studio quality equipment. Though I have used it with some fairly high-end recording software with a little tweaking and patching, that's not what this is designed for. OTOH - pop this in your laptop bag, grab your axe and your earbuds, and you've got a great little "rockman" for just a few bucks. The included software is fun, and the sounds are pretty good with the presets and even better with some tweaking of the "stomp boxes." As a toy, it provides hours of fun, is inexpensive, and takes up little space.BTW: The reason why you have to plug into the jamlab and not your PC speakers is an issue called latency. When you play a note, the note is digitized by the sound card, and sent to the computer for processing, then the processed digital note is sent back to the sound card, and then to you via the speakers or headphone jack. On most laptops, the sound card is fairly poor at this type of processing, and the time it takes to get from your fingers to your ear can be half a second - which makes it impossible to play anything well. This simple little unit is a sound card in itself, so that issue is non-existent (until you try to mess around with it).Will it provide that perfect tone for your studio work? NoWill it provide for hours and hours of fun for very little investment in money or space, and maybe even let you use it in a pinch for reasonable quality recordings? Oh Yeah! For that, I give it 5 stars!

I purchased this on sale from Musician's Friend for 25 bucks a few months ago, and it's proven to be a great practice tool. I just picked up the guitar again after not playing for years. It's so convenient to be able to just plug into the computer without wrestling with setting up an amp. The virtual effects stack is very nice. The presets are decent, and all of the indiviual effects can be strung together and tweaked for your own patches as you see fit. The track-playback facility is great, allowing me to play along with MP3 or WAV files, and slow them down as much as I like (without affecting pitch) to make mimicing them easier. Some users may play through headphones plugged into the interface, but I use an extension with male headphone plugs at both ends, and plug it into my Creative soundcard's line-in jack. The sound through my 2+1 computer speakers is quite good. The interface driver and G-Sound application are installed separately, and both work fine for me on Windows XP Pro. Check for online updates. You might be able to argue whether it's worth the full price, but if you can get it on sale, I think it's great.