Audio Interfaces
An interface is the door between the analogue world and the computer. It holds the preamps that bring microphones up to line level, the converters that turn voltage into numbers and back again, the clock that decides when those numbers get taken, the headphone and monitor outputs you check your work on, and the driver that ties all of it to your software. Everything else in the room goes through it.
Which is why it wants choosing on a longer horizon than most gear. A microphone that stops suiting you moves on to somebody else. An interface with one headphone output when you need two, or no way to add channels, becomes the reason a session stops.
The good news is that the part people worry about most is largely solved. Converter quality at the affordable end of this market is better than what professional studios were working on twenty five years ago, and the gap between a competent modern interface and an expensive one is small, consistent, and much less important than what you put in front of it. The decisions that still matter are counts, latency, connections and drivers.
An audio interface built to order: a 2U chassis with eight slots for converter cards and two for the card that connects it to a computer or a network. The builds here run from 8 in and 8 out to 32 of each, over USB, Dante or Avid DigiLink, and three of them add eight mic preamps. The chassis alone already has AES and ADAT, 8 channels each, plus S/PDIF, word clock and a low latency cue mixer. Any other mix of cards is possible, priced as the chassis plus each card: ask us.
Dante carries 64 channels each way, and USB and DigiLink 32. In the builds with mic preamps, the eight preamps are two 4 channel cards alongside the line inputs.
Which one
Channel count is the real decision, so start there. Count what you need to record at the same time rather than in total. A songwriter tracking a vocal and a guitar needs two microphone inputs. A band tracking live needs sixteen and will find eight infuriating by the second session. Then check how the box grows: an ADAT optical input adds eight more channels over one cable and is the cheapest insurance in this category, and an interface without one has a hard ceiling.
Latency is what you live with daily. Round trip latency is the time from a sound entering the interface to you hearing it back out of the computer, and past roughly ten milliseconds a performer starts to feel it rather than hear it. Two things fix it. Direct monitoring routes the input straight to the headphones in hardware, and a small buffer with a well written driver keeps the computer path short. The driver is doing more of that work than the hardware is, and it is the part no specification sheet shows you.
Which one
Channel count is the real decision, so start there. Count what you need to record at the same time rather than in total. A songwriter tracking a vocal and a guitar needs two microphone inputs. A band tracking live needs sixteen and will find eight infuriating by the second session. Then check how the box grows: an ADAT optical input adds eight more channels over one cable and is the cheapest insurance in this category, and an interface without one has a hard ceiling.
Latency is what you live with daily. Round trip latency is the time from a sound entering the interface to you hearing it back out of the computer, and past roughly ten milliseconds a performer starts to feel it rather than hear it. Two things fix it. Direct monitoring routes the input straight to the headphones in hardware, and a small buffer with a well written driver keeps the computer path short. The driver is doing more of that work than the hardware is, and it is the part no specification sheet shows you.
Connections, outputs and price
Connections are a compatibility question rather than a quality one. USB is everywhere and it works. Thunderbolt gets round trip latency lower and costs more. What matters more than either is whether the maker still writes drivers for the operating system you are on, and whether they were still doing it five years after the box shipped.
Then the outputs, which get skipped. Two independent headphone sends with their own level controls is the difference between overdubbing comfortably and passing one pair of headphones back and forth. Balanced line outputs for the monitors, and something to control volume with that is not a plug-in.
What the tiers buy. Entry gets you clean converters, two good preamps and software that works. The middle buys channels, headroom, a headphone amp with real current behind it, and steadier drivers. Above that you are buying count, build and support.
Connections, outputs and price
Connections are a compatibility question rather than a quality one. USB is everywhere and it works. Thunderbolt gets round trip latency lower and costs more. What matters more than either is whether the maker still writes drivers for the operating system you are on, and whether they were still doing it five years after the box shipped.
Then the outputs, which get skipped. Two independent headphone sends with their own level controls is the difference between overdubbing comfortably and passing one pair of headphones back and forth. Balanced line outputs for the monitors, and something to control volume with that is not a plug-in.
What the tiers buy. Entry gets you clean converters, two good preamps and software that works. The middle buys channels, headroom, a headphone amp with real current behind it, and steadier drivers. Above that you are buying count, build and support.
Worth knowing
The headphone output is where a price gets hit, and it is what you listen through all session long. A weak headphone amp runs out of current on higher impedance headphones and goes thin and soft exactly where a mix decision gets made. If you already own the headphones, check what they want before you choose the box.
Clocking is the most oversold specification here. A single interface makes its own clock and there is nothing to improve. External clocks are the answer to several digital devices having to agree with each other, which is a specific problem with a specific solution, not a general upgrade.
Higher sample rates cost more than they return. Running at 96 kilohertz doubles file size and processing load, halves the plug-in count a machine will carry, and the audible difference on most material is not what the number implies. It does shorten latency, which is a real reason to use it while tracking. Working at 44.1 or 48 is defensible and always was.
Check the power. A bus powered interface runs its preamps and its headphone amp on what a laptop will hand it, and that is where some of them get quiet and polite.
Worth knowing
The headphone output is where a price gets hit, and it is what you listen through all session long. A weak headphone amp runs out of current on higher impedance headphones and goes thin and soft exactly where a mix decision gets made. If you already own the headphones, check what they want before you choose the box.
Clocking is the most oversold specification here. A single interface makes its own clock and there is nothing to improve. External clocks are the answer to several digital devices having to agree with each other, which is a specific problem with a specific solution, not a general upgrade.
Higher sample rates cost more than they return. Running at 96 kilohertz doubles file size and processing load, halves the plug-in count a machine will carry, and the audible difference on most material is not what the number implies. It does shorten latency, which is a real reason to use it while tracking. Working at 44.1 or 48 is defensible and always was.
Check the power. A bus powered interface runs its preamps and its headphone amp on what a laptop will hand it, and that is where some of them get quiet and polite.
Worth reading
All guides
The interface decision is a channel count and a driver, not a converter. Boxes named and priced by what you record at once, the ADAT ceiling, and what to check on a used one.
Latency is a budget spent across six places, and the interface is only one of them. Where the milliseconds accumulate, why round trip is the only figure worth deciding with, what ten milliseconds f...
Most of what gets heard as a preamp upgrade is the first time somebody's levels were right. Where the noise in a recording actually comes from, in order, which of those a purchase can change, and t...
We take interfaces on consignment and in trade. Tell us what you have.
What you get either way
The listening room
Third floor at 215 East Lewis Street in Livingston, by appointment. An hour in the room settles this faster than anything either of us could write.
How we grade
Used and consigned gear is graded at the worst axis and never averaged. Every defect is named on the listing and the standard is published, so as described is something you can hold us to.
