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Apogee One & Jam with Positive Grid's JamUp

What I want to talk about is a couple products from Apogee Company that we love. We talked about all the time. We use this Apogee quartet as our default audio interface for everything here in creative life. And the reason why we love them is because the kind of fundamental thing about recording is garbage in garbage out. If you don't get it right at the source, there's nothing you can do to it in the box that's gonna fix it. It might be able to polish that turd a little bit, but it's still gonna be a turd. You got to get good input. So getting good sound into your computer is the single most important part of the process, which is what Sam was just talking about. A great way to do that at home for relatively low cost is with with this guy. So this is the apogee one they recently redesigned to this, and basically this is a two into out interface. It's got ah, built in microphone here. It also comes with this breakout box here so you can plug in XLR microphone into it and also here for a...

n instrument input as one might preempt in here. So if you want record vocals, this is a perfect solution for it. Just, you know, get your vocal mike plugging into here, plugging into computer, good to go. There's tons of records, top 40 records and stuff they make with this thing. So you know, if you re energize whoever is on tour and they need to get a vocal track from her, and it's hard to get her in the studio, you know, the flight or hotel room set up a little boat, makeshift vocal booth, their record with the apogee. And they're good to go. So definitely, like true, like, you know, top level, like album quality stuff, tons of records that you like. We're probably made with apogee gear, and I'm going to show you a great demo of one of their other products, which is the apogee Jane. So the one I think this thing is like 350 bucks. I think the one is awesome. If you need to get audio into your computer with a microphone, some requires a pre EMP, then you need this. And also, if you want a a converter going out, you'll need this But if all you need to do is get guitar or based signal into your computer or as you'll see here IOS device, this thing is pretty great. Um, it's real simple. You just plug your guitar bass in here. There's, ah, you know, break out cable. You can spot this out with a lightning cable here that'll either collect. Connect your your IOS device or you can. There's another cable that comes with it. Connect your computer so I usually record guitar dies with this thing because I don't know what smaller. It's easier like it's pretty amazing. It's about 100 bucks on. Also, it's handy comes with this gain control on the side here, which is very helpful if you have super high output pickups like Ideo. So we're going to demo this little gadget with a nap from our friends at positive grid called Jam Up, which we got here on the IPad. So basically think of jam up as, like, um, pod farm in an APP. So it's got all the same kind of stuff. Pedals, heads, cabinets, effects, all that stuff. You can tweak all the same kind of stuff, and it sounds pretty great for It's like 6 $15 on. Then there's like expansions. It sounds pretty amazing. So the real key to it, And I'm gonna demo a couple of presets in a minute. But the key to it is the jam. Here it comes. You can get the thing that it comes with is a little thing that plugs into the headphone port that's, like 15 or $20 or something like that. And, uh, I'm glad that they have, like, an affordable solution, but it does not sound great. So if you if you buy that you plug into this thing and you're not necessarily loving the results, it's not the app, it's that interface. Get a jam and it will sound awesome. Eso that is what we're going to show you now is how good this thing sounds with a jam. So, uh, I've got the I've got this, Ah, British preset loaded up here, which I'm guessing, is some sort of a marshal if you want to play some rock and roll there so you can see here as I adjust, the game here might be coming now. So what I'm doing here is just turning the turned down here. Oh, green, how hard he plays. All right, so turn it down. So, anyway, so it works Very similar body farm. So, you know, you go in here and you can You can adjust all the settings on the amps, just like you would a pot farm turn stuff in real time. So why don't you play a little bit? So swap this out. There's a whole bunch of different presets here, but you can also swap it out with Friday giving 51 50 and that I made. But let's say this this guy here, this fender sports is expect, you know, delay on there a whole bunch of a whole bunch of ants that it comes with, You know, we see here. This looks like it's a box marshals, you know? I believe so. So it comes with quite a few. There's a bunch more expansions I've bought there, like, three or $4 each time like that. I've bought a few of them, so I don't remember exactly which ones was comes with and which ones I bought. But I'll show you. I play mostly like death metal. So those are the ones that I bought. Cool thing about about Jam Up is that they've partnered with a lot of artists that you guys probably familiar with, like Jeff Loomis and Keith Marrone, all England to make signature virtual amps, which I think is really cool, you know? So this is Jeff Loomis is, uh, uh, Jeff Lewis's supposed to be like a jazz courses. I think you see a dramatic difference there. So here's a especially cool thing I like is they have partners. Are folks here pro tone to make versions of some of their stuff that, you know, maybe isn't 100% exactly like the, uh, physical equivalent, but it's still pretty awesome. I especially love Keith Marrow's overdrive because if you want that like really tight, like saturated modern metal sound good way to get it sounds pretty darn good for a $15 app. Here's Ola England's I like this one a lot, too. I'll show you a couple my couple of a whole bunch presets here. I'll show you a couple my favorites that I made my super scooped crunchy 51 50 that you'll probably hate, but I love There you go. So I think this sounds pretty damn great for in terms of like, you know, they're finding a good 51. 50. Sim is very hard. I'm not sure why. If there's something about the circuit design that's difficult, I don't know. But there's on the software side. X 50 is the only 51 57 that I like. This is my second favorite one. I think it sounds fantastic. And you know this e que, which I guess is my left of the boss pedal works Exactly what I like about is it works exactly the way that I thought it would like. It sounds the same ways I expected it to. You know, you can You can make a graphical front end that looks the same. Doesn't mean is going to sound the same. And I think this one does sound very similar, So that's pretty cool. Um, my son has a rectifier preset. I made that kind of began very scoop because that's what I like. Yes, OK, pretty great. $15 app. You know, things like this really makes a difference here. Like I love this is exactly what I wanted to work like. Listen, how much of a difference in the top in that like this band makes and it never gets growth. Even when you turn it up all the way, it still it still sounds good. And then Keith Marrow's worsen is also I think, this model after any VH, I'm not sure. I think that's really cool about this is it works with another app called bias, which I will show you real quick here. That these guys also make and bias is an amp design app on Chris. Maybe you can talk us here. I don't know about this stuff. So maybe you can, uh, maybe you can talk us through some of this, so Yeah, but bias basically is, you know, for people that want a little bit more control over over what is going on there because obviously, you know, you can pick and choose. You know what pedal? You know what virtual pedals you're gonna put in there if you're gonna put a virtual eq you in the virtual effects loop, whatever. But you can actually really get in there and kind of make a custom design. And you know something that you wouldn't find the real life like if you know you wanted to take a fender and model, but you wanted to put some Katie a power section in there, something like that. You can really get kind of crazy with it. I mean, you know, you were scrolling through before analytic. There were, like, even like, transformer options in there. And don't said I haven't used this app too much because I don't understand this stuff, and I like the presets and jam up, but people that do know about the stuff speak very highly. So maybe you can go through this and talk about some of the It's like with the options you see here. So OK, so what we got? So it looks like on the cramp section you've got control over the tubes in there. You know, it's, uh, looks like can you squirrel through the type of tube types? We've got 12 x sevens. Yeah. Uh, and then Okay. So 12 8 12 87 12 au sevens. And it looks like you need to control, you know, like each tube in the chain there, which is pretty intense. Um, And then, you know, you can adjust your virtual bias on. Duh. So you can get seriously in depth. Looks like you can put any Q after the prion before the power AMP sections like like you're putting in your effects loop and and get pretty crazy in there. And then, um, I don't even know what that s So this is there's There's a few different top tone stacks here. It's basically So there's this one. I'm guessing it's Marshall. It's called British Crunch A C D. C. I made, you know. So basically, looks to me like we've got, like, you know, the usual suspects here, like, uh, fender And maybe like, box or something like that. Um, And then, you know, German fireball, which I'm guessing is probably like angle or something on. Then you know, you're tread plate 51 50 stuff like that. So you can you can you can choose. I don't know exactly what goes into those individual tone stacks. I don't know what that means exactly. Yeah, I can't really read it from the screen, so I have to I have to get into her mess around with it, but yeah. Yeah, So you can see. So one thing is that this doesn't have like, an overdrive in front of it or anything like that. You need toe. You make the amp here, and then you load it into jam up. Eso it, you know, is missing that part of it. But on, you know, towards the end of the chain, you can even choose, like your mic placement and your cabinet and everything in there. So, I mean, it's basically, you know, if you if you just want Teoh again, go through like, you know, different types of transformers. I don't I don't know what these do, but it I'm sure it affects the responsible that, you know, you know, British style Transformer is probably gonna be a little bit of a sharper attack in there. And everything like that is probably, you know, just like even how bounces when your palm muting or doing lead or anything like that. This is one feature that I have used. I think it's pretty cool, Doctor feeling play a little bit. This is where you can adjust the mic placement and it it actually works. So you're choosing the proximity to the speaker right there. You're gonna get a bigger low in there. Looks like you got a dynamic, sm 57 model and K G C 4 model in there for condenser sounds. You hear what difference that makes going to the orange Cabinet? Can you go back? I'm curious to hear two cabs that have seen speakers in there with the orange with the visa with the finish thirties. And then, you know, the, uh, the other one loathe pretty decent selection of cab. Yeah, got pretty impressive. So, you know, you don't have to, like, you know, devices finding that you don't have to mess around with, But if you're the type that you know, it isn't happy, they just go through a lot of preemption. Just tweak the knob on national tweak the guts of the things. So then what you do is go here on you, open up in jam up, and now we should have the amp that I just have the EMP. But I just made, but with the pedals Exactly. Exactly. So now we hear different. How much is? But by you said jam up is 15 bucks, right? Yeah, I think Biases. $15. Also, don't quote me on that, but I mean $15 for you know. I mean, that's like, How many hours could you spend twiddling with that stuff? You know, I think it's I think it's pretty awesome, you know, And again, where there's an IPhone version also, which a Sfar, as I Noah's featuring feature identical and sounds the same. So But again, you need this guy to make it sound this good, because if you use the thing that it comes with, it just doesn't sound fantastic. It works OK, you know, if you just want to play in a hotel room or someone for fun, you could get by with it. But if you wanted to sound great, which if you're watching this, probably do invest in one of these guys, it will make all the difference. So that's Ah, that's positive. Grids jam up and bias for Iowa's