Someone answered this question for me a few weeks ago, although I use home studio 6xl. GTR solo can be run as a standalone application. If you want to use it in home studio, put it in the fx chain of a track. Make sure you got the proper input set for that track, the input from your guitar. I have to arm my track for recording, and press the 'input echo' button to hear the effect, but works just fine, and its easy to setup. I don't know if 7xl will be the same though.