GMC:er Posts: 25.297
Joined: 23-December 09
From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Home Studio Part 1 - Your First Audio Interface
Selecting your first audio interface (external sound card) can be a daunting task , especially if you have zero experience in this kind of thing. The good news is that there are many to choose from and many of the options are very reasonable in terms of price. Let’s talk about what these are and what they are for.
Audio Interface 101 An audio Interface is sometimes called an external sound card. Either term is fine, but audio interface is a bit more professional in general. It is just a box that takes guitar and micrphone cables and converts the sound to digital information that your computer can accept. Typical interfaces, especially at the entry level, use USB as their connection method. Some higher end units use thunderbolt (apple technology) as their method of connecting. For your first interface, usb is just fine. USB 2 or 3 is your best bet as they are faster. But that requires you have usb 2 or 3 ports on your computer. If you have an old computer with usb 1 ports, plugging in a USB 3 device won’t help. It will still run at usb 1 speed.. So always check your computers specs before buying a new interface.
Deciding on Which One There are wads of them and many are priced just about the same. So which one is “BEST”? Well, that depends on you. What features do you really need? How many inputs do you want? Is 2 inputs good enough or do you want to record an entire band and need 10 or 12 inputs? The price usually goes up the more inputs you want. Let’s start with a basic 2 input unit. Usually these have multi jacks on the front that will take either a microphone cable or a guitar cable. You can record both inputs at the same time as long as your computer is fast enough to handle it. This is yet another important consideration. Is your computer fast enough to record with hitting glitches or giving you “lag”. What is lag? That is when you play a note and it takes a bit of time for it to come out of your speaker. This makes recording very hard. So you want as little lag as possible. As a result, the faster the computer, the less lag you will have. So having a computer that can handle two streams of live audio without lagging or crashing is important. Generally, a computer built within the last two or three year will do. If your machine is 10 years old, it’s time to upgrade. How Do I Hear It? Once you have installed your interface software/drivers (if needed) your interface should show up as a sound card in your preferences and you can select it for input and output. Then you need to connect either headphones or powered monitor speakers to it in order to hear what is going on. Once you do that, your setup is complete and you are ready to record your masterpiece!
GMC Founder Posts: 18.753
Joined: 15-August 05
From: Stockholm, Sweden
Yay! Nowadays audio interfaces are fun - because they get cheaper and better all the time.
I have had my Duest USB 2 for a long time. It has pretty crappy / unstable drivers but it is super transparent which is what I am looking for - it sounds great!
GMC:er Posts: 25.297
Joined: 23-December 09
From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
There are sooo many choices these days and so many are very reasonably priced. It's a great time to be a recording musician!
Todd
QUOTE (Kristofer Dahl @ Mar 1 2020, 03:23 PM)
Yay! Nowadays audio interfaces are fun - because they get cheaper and better all the time. I have had my Duest USB 2 for a long time. It has pretty crappy / unstable drivers but it is super transparent which is what I am looking for - it sounds great!
