Buying your First Audio Interface Here’s What You Need To Know

An audio interface is a studio essential as it serves one hugely important purpose, and that is enabling you to control the audio going in and out of your computer. Every sound that goes into your computer and comes back to your studio speakers has to pass through your audio interface. Being such an important part of your setup, buying your first interface, or upgrading to a new one is an important decision. 

Modern interfaces are powerful studio tools and are packed with features. For beginners, these audio interfaces might sound a little intimidating and technical, but they really aren’t scary. Choosing an interface gets easy if you think about which features are most relevant to your workflow. 

Mentioned below are the most important audio interface features and how they impact your choice. 

Connection type 

An audio interface uses a wired connection standard to transmit signals to and from your DAW (your ‘digital audio workstation’ recording software). The connection standard on your audio interface is critical as it affects the overall latency in your system as well as the number of simultaneous channels you can record and playback. There are different types of connections that offer varying amounts of transfer speed. 

The most common connection standards are - 

• USB 2.0 
• Firewire 400/800 
• USB 3.0 
• Thunderbolt 

Leaving out the technical jargon, we basically want you to know that Thunderbolt has the highest transfer speed, USB has the lowest, and Firewire somewhere in the middle. 

Inputs and Outputs (I/O) 

One of the most important considerations when shopping for an audio interface is the number of audio channels available on your audio interface. Generally, the more I/O an interface has, the pricier it will be as more inputs allow you to record more sources simultaneously. If you want to sing and play guitar at the same time, then you need multiple inputs and outputs to suit. 

This might create an impression that you should get the most channels you can for your money. But the best option is a superior quality interface with fewer channels of I/O as it will have a higher fidelity signal path per channel. So try to balance your I/O needs accordingly. There’s no point in investing in a massive 32×32 interface if you’ll only be recording one mic at a time. 

Additional connectivity 

Most state-of-the-art interfaces are designed to be versatile audio solutions with several additional ports than just AD/DA on-board a modern audio interface. 

The most common additional ports on an audio interface include: 

• MIDI I/O – On-board MIDI ports enable an audio interface to double as a MIDI interface. This will save you the hassle of connecting and configuring additional peripherals to communicate with your MIDI devices. 

• Digital I/O – These allow you to expand your interface’s available channels and can be used as an external preamp with an onboard conversion for sessions that require extra I/O. Common types of digital connections are ADAT Lightpipe, S/PDIF, and AES/EBU.

• Instrument level DI – These help you directly connect guitars or synths without having to spend money on standalone DI boxes to get direct access to your preamps. 

• Reamp outputs – Quite similar to an instrument DI in reverse, the preamp outputs help you use instrument-level guitar effects pedals as outboard gear, or completely re-record the tone of a part without having to play it again. Though the range of interfaces is huge, these few key considerations will surely help you hone in on an interface that makes sense for your recording needs, music, and budget and will help you take the necessary steps towards improving the quality of your recordings.