[LAU] Review of Zoom G7.1ut guitar effects unit and Linux

I thought I'd share a quick review of my newly purchased Zoom G7.1ut
guitar multi-effects foot pedal and point out that it seems to be
compatible with linux. This is a guitar effects unit with amp/cabinet
modeling and ability to direct-in to a sound system or use a
traditional guitar amp. It sounds great hooked up to a Roland KC-300
keyboard amp and monitoring speakers. It also works great when
direct-in recording to my Ubuntu system via it's USB audio interface,
which is the main reason I'm posting here.

http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=1871&brandID=4

To record the guitar, it was as easy as plugging in the USB cable,
making sure the Zoom was set to output to USB card (for recording) and
also to amp for direct monitoring, then making settings in qjackctl.
After that it was easy to record using mhwavedit, audacity, etc..

When I was finished recording the playback through the unit and into
the amp worked fine. I can't really comment on the quality of the
audio as I've never used direct-in audio from a guitar before, but it
sounded good and was definitely EASY with it's own interface.

It also has standard midi sysex functionality through normal midi
ports (not usb) for saving parameters and settings according to the
manual. I doubt I will use this, except to maybe backup any settings I
have after a few months. I can imagine this might be useful for
someone playing gigs with all sorts of different settings they don't
want to lose. Based on what I read in the manual, there should be no
problem using a program like simple-sysexxer to access this
functionality.

One important note: You definitely need to read and understand the
manual to get the sounds out of it as many of the options are not
obvious, especially if recording and using a non-standard guitar amp.
There are many knobs and options. Once you've used it a few days and
gotten used to the controls it seems intuitive.

I have to applaud Zoom for keeing their interfaces standard and not
fully locked into proprietary drivers or systems. I also have used a
Zoom H2 (handheld recorder) with linux and it also worked fine.

Some Technical Info:
lsusb:
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 08bb:2904 Texas Instruments Japan PCM2904 Audio Codec

dmesg:
[162977.541025] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4
[162977.853142] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[162977.860121] input: Burr-Brown from TI USB Audio
CODEC as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.3/input/input7
[162977.860245] generic-usb 0003:08BB:2904.0004: input,hidraw3: USB
HID v1.00 Device [Burr-Brown from TI USB Audio CODEC ]
on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2/input3
[162978.514585] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio

I hope this helps someone. Geoff
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Received on Fri Oct 23 08:15:01 2009