audio interfaces

[guthrie]

Ok, I'm just setting up my first PC home studio. I need to connect guitars, Mics (preferably through XLR inputs) and a controller keyboard (USB), although not all at the same time. I would also need real time monitoring. Ideally there would be a break out box or cables to avoid fiddling about at the back of the PC.

What interface would anyone recommend? Is there any difference in quality between USB, PCI or Firewire.

My budget for this is around the £150 mark

[lurgan liar]

My friend was actually in a really similar situation to you not so long agao and i helped him try and find an audio interface that he could use with his lap top ...

ok first off i'm no expert at this myself.... but here a few things that looked good to me

M-Audio Mobile Pre USB

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...eUSB-main.html

B-CONTROL AUDIO BCA2000

http://www.behringer.com/BCA2000/index.cfm?lang=ENG

Lexicon Omega Desktop recording studio

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/...base_id/109839

Like i said these are just a few examples of the kind of thing out there ...these are all USB supported ...

however if u look around u will maybe find somethin more suitable to you ...and i'm sure there are probably better things out there...

hope i was of some help

[guthrie]

Hey thanks for those links, I like the look of the behringer, seems to have everything. Do you know anyone that's used one? What did your friend buy in the end?

[lurgan liar]

My friend went for the lexicon in the end..... hes a drummer ya see ..and he wants to be able to record 4 mics simultaneously ...plus he has a lot of money and could afford it ...

it all really depends what you will be using the audio interface for ....

are you gonna be playing guitar and singing at th same time .... if so you may only need somethin that has 2 mic inputs and a guitar input .... like the M-audio PRE ....and it doesn't cost that much ....also you may wanna check out ebay ....u may get a bargain ....

no i don't know anyone who has used the behringer ....i like the look of it myself ...its like a mixer / audio interface in one .... something a bit different from the usual ones....

good luck

[traidma]

I've heard only crap about the Behringer. I was about to buy it but then decided to get Edirol UA-5 instead.

I have used the Mobile Pre for one project. It's an excellent machine for great price!

[guthrie]

It does seem like a lot of stuff for the price, must be something dodgy about it...

How you finding the edirol?

I've been checking out the UA-25, that looks quite tasty. Thing is I do all my band stuff in the studio or with our keyboard player who has a shed load of stuff. I'm only really interested in recording one thing at a time, mostly guitars and other acoustic instruments.

[traidma]

Edirol is great. Easy to use and great quality. Plenty of output options and phantom power for mic ins.
The 25 should be pretty much the same as 5 and I highly recommend it. O yea.. 25 has MIDI.. so thats good.

[Fieva]

The Behringer is only good for vocals. I use that when I do vocals. It takes way too much tweaking to use it on other instruments....even with their presets.

[guthrie]

since i cant sing to save my life i think i can discount the behringer then...

Has anyone used the M-audio firewire interface,

http://www.turnkey.co.uk/tkweb/stock...LO&context=WEB

Looks nice and isn't firewire better than USB?

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Welcome to the BBS Guthrie. I'm working in bristol at the moment (filton), I live up the road in Bath.

If you have a PC then a PCI card would be the better option in my opinion, I'd use firewire if I had to go mobile with a laptop or whatever. USB is the least stable of the bunch. A lot of people do seem to use firewire interfaces with their PCs though and they seem quite happy with it.

A big consideration is how many sources you'd want to record simultaneously?

The M Audio Delta 44 has 4 balanced analog ins and outs in a breakout box and will cost you around £90 from somewhere like digital village:

http://www.dv247.com/invt/4604

You'd only generally get xlr ins on an interface that has mic preamps built in to it. Otherwise they'd be on 1/4" jacks or RCA's. I personally steer clear of cards with built in mic pres because the quality isn't usually great.

Of course if the preamps are part of your £150 budget then that changes things. In this instance my recommendation would be the M Audio Audiophile 2496.

http://www.dv247.com/invt/2062

This would give you 2 inputs and 2 outputs plus MIDI in/out, there's no breakout box but bear with me.

The Audiophile card is only about £55 so the remainder you could spend on an M Audio DMP-3 two channel mic preamp. The outputs of this would go to the ins on the card and the DMP-3 could sit on your desktop so once it's hooked up there'd be no faffing about behind the comp, you'd just be hooking up cables to the preamp. The cheapest I've seen the DMP-3 is about £104 from a german site called thommann:

http://www.thomann.de/thoiw2_midiman...1cd8e0cd74dac3

I've bought a lot of stuff from them and they're very reliable.

So this would mean upping your budget by about £10 but you would have 2 very nice, clean recording channels which you could use with microphones or instruments (the DMP-3 has DI inputs on each channel) and you'd have MIDI in/out for your controller keyboard.

If you need more simultaneous inputs and mic preamps then realistically you need to up your budget a bit if you want reasonable quality.

Hope this helps.

[lurgan liar]

It sure helps me ...thanks Kevin

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Originally Posted by lurgan liar

It sure helps me ...thanks Kevin

Good!

I just gave you that DMP-3 link in that thread in the Mic forum actually. Oh well now you've got it twice.

[guthrie]

That is an option I'd not really thought about... I shall look into it in more detail, thanks for the advice. To be honest my needs are quite simple, and I'm not after top quality, I'm mainly going to be using the system as a song writing aid not for producing high quality recordings, i'll leave that to the pros!