Interface inquary

[nosignal]

okay i am not very familiar at all with interfaces, i was wondering if anyone could explain or link me to somewhere that does explain exactly what they do. and i have a behringer pmx2000(which i just got working, thanks to this forum) that i use to record by sending the signal from the mixer into the line in on my computer, so now comes my question, do i need an interface, and as mentioned before what do they do? thanks for helping

[NYMorningstar]

If you think of an interface as a handshake you are halfway there. It is just a piece of hardware that will assist units in understanding each other. Your soundcard is an interface and within that you have a converter that changes the analog signal going in to a digital signal. Once in the digital realm the software knows how to deal with the information. It also changes the digital signal back to an analog signal that goes to your speakers. The ad/da converters are found in preamps, DAW's (Digital Audio Workshops) and soundcards used with computers, all of which are interfaces. If you stay in the analog realm then your tape recorder becomes an interface.


With an external mixer like the behringer pmx2000 you can mix down to 2 tracks and send that signal to your soundcards line in for recording or to a tape recorder. Power mixers are created to be used as a PA system and in general are not ideal for recording, though you can do it. Your are limited to a 2 channel recording so you won't be able to mix after you track, only during. Your option is to track one instrument at a time.

To be able to multi track you need a mixer that has an insert point on each channel, so you can send each channel out separately to it's own channel on your soundcard or recorder. To do that you also need a multichannel soundcard, DAW or a multichannel tapedeck. You could also use several stand alone preamps to hook into(interface) with your recorder. There is a large variety of gear that you can setup(interface) in various configurations to achieve the desired sound and recordings you are looking for. If you are not careful you will get the desease and want it all.