I want to get back to audio recording and have an old M-Audio Firewire Solo but no Firewire card. I had thought that it is so old that today's interfaces could give a much better sound quality for music recording, but now I am not so sure.
I want to do home music recording of all sorts, including some quiet acoustic guitar and singing (with lots of quiet or silent sections), so limiting noise in the recordings is important. I also hope to try some effects on the computer for guitar so low latency would probably also be good.
But will buying a newer interface really matter that much? If so, I need to see some quantification about it.
Also, I could get a Behringer UM2 for about $40 or a MOTU M2 for about $170. Sure, the MOTU has a nice digital display and a power-off button, but really they do the same thing. Will I be able to hear the noise floor differences, or will the latency differences matter, between these two boxes?
Basically, I need to understand how much noise floor, latency, distortion, and other audio effects are acceptable for my purposes. But I don't know how to go about ascertaining that. I have watched quite a few Julian Krause videos, and he gives numbers (such as in his video for a "preamp shootout," showing noise floors from -120 dB to -130 dB), but I don't know what is a reasonable cutoff for quality, a point beyond which it is just a waste of money to upgrade.
I want to do home music recording of all sorts, including some quiet acoustic guitar and singing (with lots of quiet or silent sections), so limiting noise in the recordings is important. I also hope to try some effects on the computer for guitar so low latency would probably also be good.
But will buying a newer interface really matter that much? If so, I need to see some quantification about it.
Also, I could get a Behringer UM2 for about $40 or a MOTU M2 for about $170. Sure, the MOTU has a nice digital display and a power-off button, but really they do the same thing. Will I be able to hear the noise floor differences, or will the latency differences matter, between these two boxes?
Basically, I need to understand how much noise floor, latency, distortion, and other audio effects are acceptable for my purposes. But I don't know how to go about ascertaining that. I have watched quite a few Julian Krause videos, and he gives numbers (such as in his video for a "preamp shootout," showing noise floors from -120 dB to -130 dB), but I don't know what is a reasonable cutoff for quality, a point beyond which it is just a waste of money to upgrade.