outboard or card?

[.Tyson Studios.]

I know more about outboard interfaces now but kinda curious about cards. can you use more than one at a time? how do they work? they just look straight up complicating with eight differant cords hanging out of them. Thanks in advance!

 

[TimOBrien]

Interior cards usually have a breakout box to plug everything into.

The biggest problem with interior cards (and why everyone moved away from them) is that
the interior of a computer is a very very very noisy place electrically and there can be problems.
Getting the interface outside of the computer using USB2 or Firewire reduces the electronic noise
and makes it easier to plug everything in (plus you can easily move it from computer-to-computer.)

 

[Shadow_7]

The inside of a computer is an electronically noisy environment. Which is NOT good for analog audio. You want / need a card with a breakout box if you care about not having a lot of noise in your tracks. Plus with cables being $1+ per foot, being a couple feet closer x8 is a good thing. It's not so much that it injects noise inside the box, but that it's relatively random noise that can't be easily filtered and otherwise draws attention to itself.

Yes and No to using multiple cards simultaneously. Some have means to sync between cards and adjust to match. Most do not. So you might as well be mixing camcorders and reel to reel machines. You'll have to do severe edits in post to make start and stop times match and speed up some of the tracks to run at the same pace. Just a really painful thing to deal with for devices that don't have a means to sync their clocks and auto adjust. And even those that do can be a real unruly beast to wrestle into submission.