I play guitar with a friend (he plays bass and sings). We work away from home, so can't carry about a lot of gear and generally live out of hotels.
When I practice I use a jack to usb cable direct into my computer through amplitube, but is there an option to plug all three (guitar/bass/mike) into the computer and use amplitube/bias for amps & effects? Whats the standard setup for this?
Most articles I have read/watched are about recording single instruments.
thanks in advance
Yes, there are ways to turn a computer into a complete mix, virtual instrument, and signal processing system. Both Apple Mainstage and Ableton Live are used like this by professionals (e.g. NIN and Imogene Heap).
Mainstage itself is not very expensive, but everything else about this concept can run you a pretty penny. If you want all the capabilities of Live, that doesn't come cheap. You also have to have an interface that has enough I/O and low enough latency to make it practical, and most of all you need fast hard drives and processors (and a decent bit of RAM) to make it workable.
Many acts that have computers doing important tasks on stage will use a rack or three of redundant Mac Pros, so thousands of dollars of computing. But if you've got the money and the time, it's absolutely doable.
Sure, what you would want is an "audio interface". It's like your current solution where it connects to your computer via USB/Thunderbolt/Firewire but typically includes more inputs, outputs, and features in general.
Decide how many channels you need simultaneously (sounds like 3) and get one that has at least that many. Interfaces typically include at least 1 or 2 "instrument" inputs for directly connecting a guitar or bass so pay attention to that number as well.
Then you need to make sure that you have enough headphone outputs (assuming that's what you're using). Some audio interfaces may already have more than one headphone output. If not you may need a "headphone amp" that will give you more headphone connections.
