 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here with MGRMusic.com and in this video we're going to be taking a look at the HT20 Mark II and looking at a couple of different ways you guys can use this for home recording. The HT20 Mark II is a 20 watt all-tube combo. Now 20 watts of tube power can be quite a lot if you're just recording at home but luckily this amp has got a bunch of great features which will allow us to record great sounding guitar tracks at a much lower volume. So to show you guys how these features work and how they benefit you I've already prepared a bass and a drum track. I'm going to go through each of the features of this amp and record the same riff for each different feature so you can see how each one sounds and maybe you guys can pick which one will benefit you the most. So the first thing is actually using one of the Blackstar Patents. I'm using the DPR which is the Dynamic Power Reduction. If you don't know what that is please go check out the video on the Blackstar YouTube channel where I go into a bit more depth about how the DPR works. On this particular amp the DPR works by giving you just 10% of the total power of the amp. So that now means this is now a 2 watt combo not a 20 watt combo so I've got the DPR enabled which scales the power down to just 10% of the total output. So for the first riff what you're going to hear is the amplifier mic'd up with an Aston Origin condenser mic. The HT20 Mark II also has a DI output on the back. This gives you an emulated cabinet simulation. You connect this to your sound card or to a PA if you're playing live with an Exit, our cable. The great thing with this is it has two switchable cabinet options, a 1x12 and a 4x12. So the first thing I'm going to do now is the 1x12 mode. Now we're going to flip that to the 4x12 mode. This is going to simulate a 4x12 cabinet. And then the fourth and final mode which I think is really really cool is the USB mode. You can connect your HT20 Mark II to your computer or laptop with a USB cable. There is a USB port on the back of the unit and this then registers with your computer as an audio device. So once you've connected your amplifier to the computer via the USB cable the computer should automatically install some drivers. What you'll now need to do is download a program called ASIO for all. This is a universal ASIO driver which will allow your DAW to see the amplifier as an input device. So the DAW I'm using is Reaper so let's take a look at how to set this up. So in Reaper I'm going to come over to my preferences. This will be the same whatever DAW you guys are using. You just have to go into the preferences and find the audio device menu. So I'm going to come into here now into my device menu. My audio system is set to ASIO which is correct but I want to change my driver from my focus right USB which is the interface that I'm using to the ASIO for all which is the universal driver. You'll see my inputs now become HT series 1. If yours doesn't show up with HT series 1 you have to click the ASIO configuration button and ensure that the HT series is enabled. Once you've selected this you can come back. I'm going to enable a new track and you'll notice here my input is HT series 1. That means this track is now armed ready to record via the USB. So there you go there are four easy ways you guys can use your HT 20 mark 2 at home to record with. So just to recap you can use the DPR to scale the amp down to 10% of its total power to give you two watts. This is great for low volume miced up recording. You can also use the emulated DI output on the 1x12 mode or the 4x12 mode for two very different distinctive tones there or you can do the final thing on the list which is connect your amp to the computer via a USB cable. Set it up as an audio input device and record straight over USB straight into your DAW. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video please let us know down below in the comments if you are using any of these features on the HT 20 mark 2 for your own home recordings. Don't forget to check out Blackstar Amps on YouTube for more free videos like this and if there are any other Blackstar features you guys want us to chat about please let us know in the comments down below. If you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area please check out MGRmusic.com we've got a network of great teachers all over the country just waiting to help you guys unlock the awful potential. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you soon.