GuitarFXsoftware Inc. GuitarFX v2.08

It took me a couple hours to get it to work because Dell laptops don't ship with the ability to monitor the MIC input through headphones (I learned). So I couldn't hear the guitar at all, unless I opened Audacity, recorded it, and played it back. Not that this is the fault of GuitarFX, but their help page is useless except for the most basic of suggestions. Imho, it should cover ISSUES THEY KNOW EXIST that prevent would-be customers from being able to get their product to work. Instead the help page shows you how a SoundBlaster menu should look (most laptops do NOT have SB cards unfortunately), and how the standard Windows Mixer sliders should be set. If you already knew all that, and it's not happening, you're on your own. So "Ease of Use" depends on if you can get it working in the first place. If it works out of the box, it's easy to use. If it doesn't, you might never get it working. I'm giving it a 1 because software that has been around this long should have had links to existing solutions.

After all that time to get it working, the sound quality was terrible. Rather than mixing the mono signal from the guitar into a stereo headphone signal it only comes through the left earphone. That would be forgiveable if it sounded good, but it was so noisy with any effects at all turned on, that it wasn't even fun to play around with it. I thought I might ruin my headphones, it was so bad. Coughs, sputters and crackles... raging white noise unless you set the noise gate to block everything out... I thought maybe it was my electronics, so I plugged the guitar into a Zoom PS04 with the same cable, and it sounded fine.

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Imo the GUI is intuitive and easy to use. The actual design of the software is it's best feature for a casual hobbyist looking to fool around for the afternoon. But when it gets down to it, there's not much there to use, EVEN if it had worked right (i.e. even if it sounded clean). I've been playing 40 years, my own stuff, rock background. I never tried software for FX before, and I will try one or two more, but if this is what I'm in for, I'll stick to external devices.

Impossible to get a decent tone without several hours of tweeking and shrieking!
It's a lousy tone and a manual should not be necessary. Do we need manuals for the average stomp box? NO!
Noisy and useless.
By Pass is so quiet that you may as well turn the thing off.
Load of crap!!
Typical of a lot of software effects. Designed for the dweeb who loves to spend hours rooting around getting the damn thang to work. They love the journey, whereas I (a musician) want to just turn it on and plug it in and POW!!!That's where the journey begins.

Didn't get that far

UNreliable crap

Didn't get that far!

Blues/Rock been playing for 40 years and find it insulting

This is the shittiest piece of software I have tried.
There are no good sounds and it is VERY DIFFICULT TO FIGURE OUT WHAT IS GOING ON!

What youre supposed to do is plug your guitar in your line in or Mic jack of your computer and it will be just like a harware effects box but in software...TOTAL BULLSHIT!!!

DO NOT GET THIS PROGRAM!
You will bethe biggest fool if you try to use this at home or in a live situation.

By the way, to all those reading. The very first post IS BY THE SOFTWARE CREATOR! SO dont believe a shitty word that that fool has said about his software. He should commit suicide.

I play metal. This program is useless no matter what you may play.

Realy easy, good help and excelent beginers guide at http://guitarFXsoftware.com

Distortion is perfect and hard, sounded like real tube amp, with very good amount of low frequencies but without supression of middle freq. band. Some noise is.

I realy depend on it now, I can't live without this great thing.

Excelent! Author resonds during 12 hours via e-mail! Telephone call is also available but it is in russia +7 (812) 427-4952 (but english speaker!!)

For hard rock and long very clear super natural sustain in style of Santana/Gary Mooore - but some noise is present. Current version works realy great on AWE32/64 sound cards. SBLive! version will come (author said) very soon. Can't work on Turtle Beach Pinnacle and other professional multiple inputs sound cards. But it is a nice toy in any case! You don't need in a power pc. I use it on my very old Intel Pentium-1 200 MHz and it takes only 25% of CPU calculation power.