Im planning to buy an elec. guitar in the next month or two Wanted to know if it's possible to skip the processor and amp. Instead plug the guitar to my comp which has a pretty good audio card(upgrading to xfi soon) and speakers (logitech x530) If so, itll leave more budget to get a guitar when I do...
well, it isnt very practical to skip an amp. the computer speakers are no match for an amp, which has. apart from an amplification circuit, tonal characteristics that a PC speaker wont be able to produce. you can skip the processor for now, though, if you get an amp with a decent overdrive. it'll be ok for some good practice.
Or alternatively, skip the amp and buy a processor and plug the output of that into a headphone/speaker/computer. A good amp with a good overdrive will cost like 10k, and in 10-15k you can get a good processor with many different kinds of amp simulators and good effects (reverb, wah, compression sustainer, harmonizer, whammy, chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, etc etc etc) as well.
Sound blaster is not essentially good for instrument inputs... You need an audio interface to get even passable tones with softwares like guitar-rig or amplitube.... Your option(using computer speaker) can work for sometime, infact thats what i did but its no long term solution
and most of the "tones" of your processor will sound crappy when heard thru PC speakers. and who said you cannot get a decent amp with OD under 10k? the marshall mg15cd and the roland cubes are pretty decent models under 10k, and i can bet both would sound way better than PC speakers.
It's called opinion. You can skip the amp if you really want to. You need a good sound card with low latency. You also need a good amp modeller - physical (Sansamp) or software based (Guitar Rig 2). Although I don't know how much cheaper than an 8k amp a good sound card would be.
you can get audio interfaces like this one https://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-JamLab-Personal-Guitar-System?sku=241104 and you can download guitar rig 3 for free from torrent.
