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Contents:
• Introduction
• Plugging In and Setting Up Soundcard
• Installing VST Effects and Loading Them Into Kristal
• Setting up ASIO Drivers
• Setting Up Live Input/Effects Monitoring


Introduction

This lesson will cover the basics of setting up the free recording program Kristal Audio. As well as how to use Kristal as a guitar effects processor in realtime. In other words, you can plug your guitar into your computer and hear the effects in Kristal 'live' as you are playing just like you would if you plugged into a guitar pedal or effects unit. But the best part is, this is completely FREE!

A list of free effect plugins that I have used are listed HERE.


Plugging In and Setting Up Soundcard

If you are plugging your guitar straight into your soundcard (without a mixer or anything inbetween your guitar and soundcard) then you will still want to plug your guitar into the "line in" on your soundcard instead of the mic input (for those using stock soundcards), since your guitar puts out more signal than a microphone it should work fine. The mic preamps those cards aren't very good and are meant for those $3 PC mics, so try to avoid them when using for anything that is music/recording related.

For those using a standard PC soundcard: Open your soundcard mixer window (double click on the speaker icon at the bottom-right of your screen) and first off, mute the "Line In" channel. This is only for playback (not recording) so you will not actually be muting the input and the signal will be heard through Kristal. Because you can hear your guitar through your soundcard without Kristal even being open, if you don't mute the playback for the Line In, you will hear a combination of the dry and wet signals when you monitor your effects through Kristal. Therefore, you want to mute the dry signal.

Now go to Options --> Properties --> Adjust Volume For "Recording" (make sure the "Line In" box is checked in the list below and press OK)... Once your mixer opens, select the line input and make sure the volume is up a little bit (not a lot because the guitar effects add a lot of volume and you will get some nasty clipping distortion if the input is up to loud). Plus I have found that the Boogex works best if you have a very low input volume, so I probably wouldn't go above 1/4 of the way up. It's hard for me to give an exact level since for my experiments I'm using my mixer and not going straight in, so after you get everything setup try adjusting the sliders while you are playing to get the best tones.

See an updated tutorial on using the standard sound card mixer window HERE.


For those using a multiple input recording soundcard: Open the mixer for your soundcard and press the mute button for the channel that you are going to be using. This is only for playback (not recording) so you will not actually be muting the input and the signal will be heard through Kristal. Because you can hear your guitar through your soundcard without Kristal even being open, if you don't mute the playback for that channel, you will hear a combination of the dry and wet signals when you monitor your effects through Kristal. Therefore, you want to mute the dry signal.

There should be a way to adjust the input volume on your soundcard and I have found that the Boogex works best if you have a very low input volume, so I probably wouldn't go up very far. So after you get everything setup try adjusting the sliders while you are playing to get the best tones

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Installing VST Effects and Loading Them Into Kristal

The first step for setting up Kristal is to get the VST effects loaded into Kristal, so after you haved downloaded and unzipped/installed/etc. the plugins onto your hard drive, open the folder that you installed the effects in and look for any files that have the extension ".dll" (some of the stuff I posted in the freebie list will have several of them)... Then copy the dll files into the folder called "Plugins" inside of the folder where Kristal Audio is installed. The Plugins folder is automatically created when Kristal is installed.

* TIP * - Here is an organization thing that I use when installing a lot of plugins, since I have quite a few of them to say the least. As an example, plugins like the MDA effects come with a lot of plugins, so create a folder called MDA inside of Kristal's Plugin folder and place all of the dll files from MDA inside of the MDA folder. Do this for any plugin that you have 3 or more from the same company and instead of having one massive list with everything organized alphabetically, you'll have them in smaller lists grouped by company which makes things a lot easier to find in your recording program. Here's a screenshot I took of Kristal to show how it should look when you're done. See attatched Image.

So now when you start Kristal, all of your effects should load automatically. Once you are in Kristal, press the F3 button (this opens and closes your mixer) and click on one of the empty effects slots that says "No FX" and a list of all of your installed plugins should appear...... If this doesn't work for anyone, then post in the Discussions on Members' Lessons Forum and I'll try to help figure it out.

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Setting up ASIO Drivers

Ok, after all of the effects are loaded, now we move onto getting the live effects monitoring to work.

First go to the Engine menu --> Preferences and click on Devices. Here it will give a list of the drives you have available for your soundcard.... You will need to have ASIO drivers to be able to play with the effects live. If you don't see anything listed under ASIO then you'll need to download ASIO4ALL so your soundcard can use the effects monitoring. I don't really have the ability to help with any installation problems since both my soundcards have ASIO drivers already, so you may need to post on their forum or ask someone here that uses it for help.

If you do see a list of ASIO drivers under Devices, select all of the ASIO devices and then unselect all of the MME devices for both playback and recording. And for those that have more than one soundcard (one stock soundcard and another for recording) then deselect the soundcards you don't want to use. Save the settings, close Kristal completely, and re-open it. You have to do this to get it to see the new soundcard drivers otherwise it will keep using the default that was set when you opened the program. Now go back to Engine --> Preferences and you should now see a new menu called *name of your soundcard* ASIO (under Audio Setup). Click on the *your soundcard* ASIO menu and select all of the inputs and outputs shown (this is mainly for those with multiple input soundcards used for recording, so that you can plug into any input or output and it will work). Press OK to save the settings and go back to them main track screen.

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Setting Up Live Input/Effects Monitoring
(Hearing Your Effects In Realtime While You Play)

Press F3 again to open your mixer and along the left-hand side where it says "Audio Input 1" click on the box that says Waver and change it to "Kristal Line In". This is how you activate the live input/effects monitoring. There should be a little mini mixer that pops up when you select Line In, on the first input select the intput from your soundcard that you are using. You will probably want to choose the left channel from your soundcard if you're using a stock soundcard (or if you're using a multiple input card, select the input you are plugged into). NOTE: This little mixer can also be used to adjust the "input" signal that being sent to the Boogex plugin (just like setting the input volume in your soundcard's mixer window).

So now you should be able to strum your guitar and see the input meters going in Kristal Audio and you should also be able to hear it through your speakers. If so, then you are now set to start loading effects and using them while you play.

Some things you will notice, is that there are only two effects inserts on each track, so you can only load two effects at a time on each track. However, you can also add 3 effects on the master channel in addition to the 2 on the tracks. So that gives you a total of 5 effects that you can have going at the same time while you are playing. Unfortunately, Kristal cannot use the same input on mulitple tracks for parallel processing (using two or more instances of Boogex on different tracks and panning them to get a wider stereo guitar sound) like you can in Samplitude. I haven't tried this with some of the other freebies, so if anyone uses one that can do this let me know and I'll include it in this lesson.

Another thing (and this is a big one), Kristal cannot record while monitoring effects plugins. Kristal can only record dry, so you won't be able to hear any effects while recording. This is a draw back for Kristal, but hey.... It's a free program.

I highly recommend checking out Reaper. It can record while monitoring effects, do the parallel processing (mentioned above), plus a whole lot more. It's only $40 (for a non commercial license) and it is well worth the price.
See my lesson on setting up Reaper HERE.


Ok, that should be everything.... But if anyone is still having problems then I'll try to help get it up and running.