Audio Interfaces 101: Get Those Electronics to Communicate

If you really need to be informed on interface, chances are you haven’t had much experience with computers, let alone recording equipment. But here at Soundetta.com, we love to explain everything, which helps us spread the beneficial use of modern electronics, so listen up.

Interface, simply put, refers to the many cords, ports, and docking stations located on all computers and other intellectual electronic equipment that allow different devices to communicate efficiently. This, of course, also refers to recording equipment like effects processors and mixers.

At the very least, you should be familiar with the common USB (Universal Serial Bus) cord and port. This is the most common type of interface in U.S. homes and offices and is mass marketed. The USB cord and port, for example, are used to connect a computer to a printer so that the printer can effectively pull images from the computer to print.

More specifically, inside the cord of any type of interface, are specifically designed and programmed wires that, when fired up, send signals to the devices they are connected to and assigns each one an address. In Layman’s terms, those signals or interruptions also ask the device what kind of information it wishes to process and then follows a specific set of patterns or commands that it was already programmed to understand according to each device.

USB Audio Interface

USB interfaces, which have flat and rectangular heads, are the most common. Most USB Audio cords are made by a company called M-Audio. They are good for beginners and budget systems but lack good analog to digital convertors. This means that they tend to add unwanted noise and coloration to the sound. Plus they are really only good for 1-2 channels of audio, though the new Tascam and Line6 8 channel USB interfaces are supposed to operate fully with 8 channels at 24 bit at 96k, though this is only an estimate of how much potential the product has.

Firewire Your Wires

Next up are firewire interfaces. Firewire is the direction the industry seems to be moving in these days. Firewire offers more efficient and better handling of data, and more importantly, it does it faster. Almost every company uses Firewire now, like M-Audio, Avid (ProTools), Focusrite, Mackie, Yamaha, E-MU, etc. Firewire can also handle 8+ channels of audio without any real problem, and you can daisy chain multiple interfaces without the need of a repeater or hub.

The only con to Firewire, which goes for any Firewire device, is that there can be compatibility issues depending on the maker of the firewire chip in the computer. Firewire is mainly intended for Mac users in the recording world. It’s not really an issue that can’t be resolved, however, by getting an add-on firewire card with the compatibly chipset. This can be annoying if you don’t research before buying the interface, of course.

PCI Audio Interfaces

Lastly there are PCI based audio interfaces. These have really fallen in popularity as they aren’t portable and also tend to raise bigger problems, like noise caused from being operated off the same power supply as the computers.

Many companies still use PCI for their low end and top tier systems, like E-MU and Avid (ProTools). Coming down the pipeline, however, there are rumors of PCI interfaces being released soon that can handle more channels and has greatly improved features. Again–research it.

The Interface Dilemmas

As a recording artist of over 10 years, the biggest issue I have with most of audio interfaces out there is that almost all the units that have built in Mic Preamps don’t offer insert points or they only offer them for 2 of the channels.

Inserts are a connection on a preamp that allows the signal to leave the equipment through a jack for processing after the amplification and before any other part of the signal path, like the digital conversion. The importance of this is really simple; Almost 100% of all interfaces out there do not offer compressors that aren’t software driven (meaning after the digital conversion), so you end up having to use a standalone mic preamp and compressor to bypass the built in ones, which then makes you question why you bought a unit with mic preamps in the first place.

In the end, knowing just a little bit more about audio interfaces and all the different ports you never paid attention to on your computer, will now help you understand compatibility in your equipment and may even save you some money and heartache. For excellent home recording information on all those pesky ‘how does it work’ questions you’re afraid to ask a cocky professional, keep check-in at our site and also visit www.howstuffworks.com.

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