How to hear guitar Plugins in real time

[kazer210]

Im new to audition so im still learning alot. I come from protools but as a graphic designer i have the suite so i figured i could start using audition since im already paying for it.  I used to record only vocals so i have never had this problem or the need to figure it out. Now im recording instruments (guitars). I have audition cc , and imac, and a scarlett solo interface. I recently purchased a plug in for the guitars. My problem is that i cannot hear the plug in effects until after i record. I can hear my guitar dry as im recording but i cant hear the effects till after? This is probably and easy fix since im a newbie. If anyone could help id really appreciate it. An easy to understand explanation would be even better. TIA

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Audition only records dry, so if you are monitoring the input from the scarlett on headphones, that's what you will hear - dry. If you alter the scarlett monitoring from 'direct' (push the button to disable) then you have the option to get the sound back from your computer and monitor that instead. If this doesn't work immediately, you may have to enable smart monitoring in Edit>Preferences>Multitrack. You should then hear the effected sound from whatever effect you've put in the track you're recording on. But, there are a couple of important points to note; you will still be recording the track dry - if you remove the effect from the track afterwards, you'll just hear the raw signal again. This is entirely deliberate - it gives you the option to make changes after the event, when you discover that your processing guess wasn't quite right in the context of the track as a whole.

The second point may be more significant; to put the effect on your guitar, the signal has to go into the computer, get processed, and then get out again. This takes a finite amount of time, and can be seriously disturbing to your playing. It's called 'latency' and there's nothing you can do about it, I'm afraid. This is in general why most guitarists choose to use external 'real' effects, which obviously don't suffer from this problem at all.