So, you’ve decided you wanted to take the route of making a personal budget studio in your own home. Good on you, no worries! However, there are several key items you will need to achieve this goal, and an Audio Interface is one of the big contenders.
An audio interface is basically a tiny box that bridges a certain connection gap between your computer and your sound equipment. These are typically USB based. You can tap the link above for more useful information, but the bottom line is that you’re gonna need one of these if you want your recordings and even playback to sound good from whatever program you’re using. The biggest thing an interface will be helpful for right now is XLR input, which is the common cable type used for microphones. You obviously don’t want to use your computer’s built in microphone for music recording, so it’s necessary to purchase an interface first so that you can use a better piece of equipment.
However, these don’t come cheap if you’re looking for quality. Behringer interfaces on Amazon are sold for $50 at the lowest and only go up from there. If you’re okay with having only one input (meaning you’ll have to record everything one at a time) then you can actually save a lot of money here. I decided to go big here and purchase a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 interface which I got for about $140 from Sweetwater (awesome store!). I would say the amount you spend on the interface should be dependent on the other costs of your gear. Just keep your budget in mind! I’ll go more into detail on setting all of this equipment up when I finish talking about the rest of these components.
As always, thanks for stopping by. See ya!
Audio Engineering On A Budget 