Hi! So I have been trying to connect my guitar to FL Studio and have got it all working, but I found out it's problematic without a preamp or some kind of device to convert it to mic level. Or something like that. The problem is my tone dial doesn't do anything when directly connected and I'm stuck with a muffled tone level that isn't very pleasing! I've researched and it seems to do something with ohms and..ohms.
So I bought a direct box thinking it would convert the signal to something my mic-in would like more, and it turned out it just outputted as the exact same thing that came in (Guitar > DI box's Input *then* PARPOUT > laptop's mic-in). But I noticed there is another output called XLR balanced, and I was wondering is that the output I should be putting into the mic port? Will it enable the tone dial on my guitar? I have found a XLR to 1/8 adapter, so I'd just like to know if it works this way before I possibly waste money on it! Thank you!
P.S. I just wanted to mention in the past I had a BOSS DS-1 guitar pedal that my tone dial worked with and was happy with the sound. If direct box doesn't work with tone, should I be getting a pedal instead?