If your recording project is just a microphone and a pair of headphones, then that is all you need. If you are working with multiple people, you should factor in inputs for all their needs and a headphone socket for each user. The amount of inputs depends on the projects, how many people are involved, and how many devices will need connectivity. Many devices come with zero latency or latency-free monitoring, which is a great help for making sure your audio is recording without delay.Ī USB interface is not required for all audio recorders, but if you find yourself recording a lot of audio for personal or professional tasks, an interface will make things so much better and easier. Interfaces are also important to reduce delay- ideally down to zero latency. If you are managing multiple audio inputs and outputs on your device, getting a USB interface to make sense of it all would be a great investment. They capture the analog sound from the microphone and convert it to a readable digital format before sending it through to your computer.Īn audio interface or a soundboard is an excellent addition to a home studio or professional digital audio workstation. Microphones create analog sound and this needs to be converted into a digital format to be read by a computer. It communicates with your computer to record quality audio from your input devices, such as microphones, guitars, and MIDI keyboards, to the recording software.įor example, let's look at microphones. This is a hub for all your input and output devices at your digital audio workstation. These devices have a variety of unique features that you can't get with any other type of recording setup.

An audio interface is an external device that turns your audio input into a format your computer can recognize. While some of these automatically convert audio into a readable format on their own, some require an external device to help. You can connect microphones, headphones, guitars, and more. When you connect any audio device to your computer, it needs to be able to process the sound produced. Also referred to as a soundboard, audio interfaces allow you to achieve things in your recordings that would just not be possible with your computer and microphone alone.

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