Audio interfaces with outboard gear

[DanR]

I have been recording for many years although I've never used a computer set up. I am currently using an old Korg D1600 which is still working fine for my needs. I know that someday it could possibly bite the dust and when that happens, I will go the computer route. I have seen pics of other home studios on this forum and others and also belong to a "Show us your home studio" group on Facebook.

My question is this:

Most of the pics I have seen were of home studios containing a whole lot of outboard gear including preamps and compressors, not to mention other signal processing devices. Do most of these recordists track through the outboard gear and if so do they also use the onboard preamps on the interfaces? Do the mid price interfaces allow one to bypass the preamps if you desire to use your own? If they are not bypassable, I have to wonder what the point is with all the outboard gear, especially if one were to track with no precessing first and then process later which would necessitate going through the onboard preamps again?

 

[miroslav]

Well....you can get computer interfaces that are just multi-channel A/D D/A converters. The all-in-one boxes are not the only game in town.
Many of the more involved studios that you see pictures of with lots of outboard gear are most likely using interfaces with just converters, and they utilize the outboard preamps and other gear as needed.

While you can save all you processing for later on....it's not always the only way to go, and also, many of the studios with huge outboard gear and consoles are also using those multi-channel converters to mix back out of the computer...which allows them to utilize all that outboard gear.

That said...you can just go with a basic all-in-one computer interface boxes if you want simplicity for basic home use....and then do everything else in the computer.
It's about personal choices and work-flows, but the important point is that you can decide on how you want to configure your rig....there are many options these days to go old-school or all in the box or some combination of the two.

 

[CoolCat]

joining the pc world leaves one not going back, imo.

Do the mid price interfaces allow one to bypass the preamps if you desire to use your own? usually if you go Line In you bypass the interface preamps.

but as many have shown the preamps in most interfaces are fine...
my experience is its usually me that's the problem, not the interface preamp.

I proved to myself a cheap interface I have can sound great, and spent time today, and matched my outboard preamp by using software "channel strip"(eq etc..). Some pro's on the forum have repeatedly said this a lot that, the preamps today are very good even on the cheaper units. So I went to testing and tweaking and I agree.

yeah I went from the old portacassette and lal inbetween ADAT, etc.. the porta-hardrives too, and got messing with the pc and never went back. I complain when the pc sucks, but really that's mostly my fault for being lazy and jumping online or not doing backups and all that work.