Can you plug guitar pedals into an audio interface?

This is the pick because it solves the actual problem — missing cabinet simulation — without asking you to replace your pedals. BOSS publishes eight guitar amp types (Natural, JC-120, Twin Combo, Diamond, Tweed Combo, X-Hi Gain, British Stack and BGR UB Metal) plus three bass types, 154 preset IR cabinets, 128 user IR slots, and the ability to run up to two IRs at once in mono or stereo.

The processing figures are higher than most things in this price class: 96 kHz sampling, 32-bit AD and DA conversion, 32-bit floating-point processing, and IR support for files up to 500 ms at 44.1, 48 or 96 kHz in 16- or 24-bit linear or 32-bit float. There are 128 memories, two EQs per memory plus two global EQs, and an effects loop with mono send and mono or stereo return — which means time-based pedals can sit after the amp simulation rather than in front of it.

Published levels confirm it expects a pedalboard rather than a microphone: INPUT and RETURN at -10 dBu nominal, +7 dBu maximum, 1 M ohm input impedance, and Output A/MONO and B at -10 dBu, 1 k ohm out, 10 k ohms or greater recommended. An AC adaptor is included.

The cons matter for planning. No XLR output — the outputs are 1/4-inch, so this feeds an interface or a desk input, not a mic snake. Current draw is 335 mA, well beyond what a typical single pedalboard supply output provides, so budget a dedicated output or its own socket. The footswitches and expression pedal that make live memory switching work (FS-5U, FS-6, FS-7, EV-30) are sold separately, and there is no wireless of any kind.

If the goal is the fewest boxes, this is the answer: Line 6 publishes a 24-bit / 96 kHz multi-channel USB audio interface inside the unit, so it is simultaneously the amp simulation, the effects and the interface. Over 300 amp, cab and effect models with IR loading and up to six simultaneous blocks cover most of what a board does.

It also has a real effects loop, so pedals you want to keep — a particular fuzz, a specific drive — can live inside the signal chain in the right place rather than being stranded in front of everything.

The downside is the power requirement, and it is the mistake people make. Line 6 publishes 9 V DC at 3 A, supplied by the included DC-3 brick, and no standard isolated pedalboard supply output provides 3 A — adding one to an existing board means finding it a wall socket. Six blocks is also a real ceiling once an amp, a cab and an IR are using some of them.

The argument for this one is the 480 x 272 color touch screen: you edit on the unit rather than on a laptop, which for a lot of people is the difference between a rig they adjust and a rig they leave alone. BOSS publishes 170 effect types with 15 simultaneous, plus a divider/mixer, a send/return loop and a phrase looper, and a built-in EXP1 expression pedal.

The connector list is generous for this job: input, stereo output, send/return, phones, CTL3/4 plus EXP2, AMP CTL1/2, MIDI in and out, USB-B and a Bluetooth adaptor connector.

Two published figures argue against it on a pedalboard. It draws 1.2 A — roughly twice an HX Stomp and more than twenty times a typical analog pedal — with no battery operation at all, so it is a mains device wherever it goes. And at 460 x 193 x 73 mm and 3.5 kg it is not something you add to a board; it is the board.

This is the different answer to the same question. Instead of simulating an amp, you play your actual amp into a reactive load box that absorbs the power safely, and take a speaker-simulated stereo XLR DI output to the interface. Your pedals stay exactly where they are, in front of the amp they were chosen for.

Two Notes publishes a fixed 8 ohm nominal load (a 16 ohm version is a separate product), 100 W RMS maximum power handling, selectable 0 dB, -20 dB and -38 dB attenuation on the speaker output, and outputs covering speaker out, stereo XLR DI, headphones, plus USB and Bluetooth for editing. It is the only pick here with a balanced XLR output.

The cons are a different shape from the others. The attenuation is stepped — three positions, not a knob — and 100 W is the ceiling, so a 100 W head run flat out is at the limit rather than inside it. It is also the most expensive route by some distance once you account for already owning the amp, and we hold no live price for it, so the buy button reads Check price rather than showing a figure.

The Metal Zone is here to demonstrate the failure, because high-gain distortion is where the missing-cabinet problem is at its most brutal. BOSS publishes a genuinely useful control set — Level, High, Low, Middle, a parametric Middle Freq and Dist, the most EQ on any BOSS compact dirt pedal — and none of it is cabinet simulation, because that is not what the pedal is for.

Plug it into an interface input and what reaches the recording is everything a guitar speaker would have removed: a dense, rasping band of energy above 5 kHz with no roll-off anywhere. The parametric mid can reshape the midrange, but there is no control on the pedal that applies a speaker's high-frequency roll-off, because no compact distortion pedal has one.

This is not a reason to avoid the pedal. It is a reason to put something after it. With an IR loader or an amp simulator between the pedal and the interface, the same MT-2 records fine — and the parametric mid becomes genuinely valuable, because you can find and fix the one frequency the simulation leaves harsh. Why does my Metal Zone sound bad in a band? covers the related tone-stack problem in a live rig.