How necessary are audio interfaces?

[Depone]

alright depone
point well taken.
certainly quality adacs must make a difference or mes wouldn't be spending 10k on a dedicated adac

Oh man no i didnt mean 10k as in currency, i ment in frequency! I wouldnt brag about that kinda money. Im well down to earth. Maybe a bit earthy in general

[eldoogle]

http://www.zzounds.com/item--NUMSTEREOIO

Is this better than a stock macbook pro soundcard? I'm about to buy it and next monitors.

No probably worse. i hate numark's sound in general.

And also,,, who says that macbook soundcards are wack? do you know who makes the cards??? No neither do I, but at least i dont talk jive without knowing what its bloody made from!

This is why I asked, I don't want to downgrade.

[cloak and dagger]

They aren't necessary at all, but who knows, they might help you somehow. Latency is probably the big one.

I made tunes on nothing but an old laptop and 80's hi-fi speakers that not only got released, but got compliments from the mastering engineer saying how easy it was. Maybe I just got lucky, I dunno.

I do know that Macbooks have a reputation for being noisy though - not the soundcard itself, but when the HD or processor does certain things. This isn't limited to Macbooks, but I've heard this complaint about them more than any other computer.

[eldoogle]

Right now I'm reading more about it, no more questions for now.

[tavravlavish]

I'm getting a little confused it is embarrassing so I'm not even gonna ask.

BUT I will ask something else. I just purchased a tascam us-122 (coming in the mail) so I can record my mics and guitar on my tracks straight into my daw (I went cheap but I have a feeling this thing will do a pretty good job?) Is the sound card on that thing worth using when I'm producing or whatever

I also heard a rumor the soundcard on the us-122 wont work with certain macs depending on what version your running on, anyone know anything about this?

Thanks guys

[nowaysj]

Never used that soundcard, but used a 144. It's sound was okay, better than the fastrack. But it would occasionally just LOCK up, for no reason. But then, that was on the pc, so again, another distinction between your case and mine. But I returned it, my take away is the drivers sucked a phatty.

Driver quality is a threshold issue, and it is surprising that so many hardware manu's don't get it right. They've been doing it for years, and the drives still often suck. I've owned lexicon, maudio, tascam, and found all of them unusable for one reason or another. The emu 1616m that I got was just like having an angle descend from a golden hued bilious cloud, striking me in the forehead with a magic wand and having 1.21 gigawatts of pure silverwhite light blast into my thoughts obliterating every shadow that ever existed, meaning it just worked with absolutely no driver problems, low latency and is just crisp, clean and accurate. I tell everyone that is thinking of purchasing a soundcard because I experienced years of grief with others, and could just focus on making music with the emu.

[tavravlavish]

until I get a job it's go cheap or go home for me. As long as I am able to record shit and have it sound good on my computer I will be happy. Hopefully it will turn out okay, it is old so it wasn't very expensive.

here b da specz,

* USB audio/MIDI computer interfacing
* Mac and Windows compatible
* Two XLR-fed phantom-powered mic inputs with inserts
* Two line level inputs (switchable to guitar level)
* Records at up to 48kHz, 24-bit resolution
* 16 channels of MIDI I/O
* Adjustable zero-latency direct monitoring
* Two line outputs with level control

* Headphone output with level control
* Self-powered via USB: perfect for both studio and location recording
* Includes ASIO, WDM, GSIF and Apple Core Audio (OS X) drivers
* Compact and rugged steel construction
* Dimensions: 5.9"W x 2.4"H x 7.7"D
* Weight: 2lb

[nowaysj]

One nice thing about that is usb powered. That is cool.

[pete_bubonic]

I've used a number of different sound cards over my time and there's a definite difference in sound quality. But it depends on your application, if you're playing out in a club then I would say, nah it ain't important. Once your signal has passed through the inevitable compressors, limiters, amplifiers and the the speakers themselves, it's going to sound mad different.

Monitoring at home is a different question though. I use my 4th gen macbook as my production base. When I'm out and about it's headphones in the headphone jack,there's a distinct loss of high mids and some kind of dampening to the sound I can't quite put my finger on. When I'm at my production desk, the soundcard gets plugged in, latency goes away, I have more ports for my desk and the sound quality is better.

I'm using some cheap M-Audio usb soundcard currently, and that's a noticable improvement over the in built soundcard.

[safeandsound]

The obvious one is sound quality, huge difference in audio quality between say a laptop/PC standard
audio card and even a EMU0202USB, Then there is recording capability, you would benefit from nice quality AD conversion
and a couple of mic preamps for vocals.

And another advantage is a decent headphone output for working at night.

cheers

[legend4ry]

jive

Creased.

[LordBid]

well I too produced for a year without an interface and I just got one. I think that you do not necissarily need an interface but it does help and I got mine for DJing (got one of NI's new audioDJ things) and I like having an accessible volume control as well as the ability to crank it when I play out from my laptop, as it can work as a mixer when used with traktor. Audio quality may be a little bit higher but I don't really know or care that much when I use it for mixing music as it is a little better than my current soundboard on the PC. The drivers are great though and cleared up all of the previous problems I had been having with ASIO4ALL and the proprietary software that my computer's soundcard came with from REALTEK so I really like that part.