I have been making music for a couple of years on my mac book using soft synths, van guard, sylenth NI Vsts etc and they sound ok, but never really 100% professional.
I am looking to get my tracks sounding better quality and looking around it looks like I need an external Audio interface. Can you explain how this will improve the sound?
I understand if you are recording audio in to you Mac you would need an Audio interface but I only using soft synths.
I guess when you bounce down tracks to Audio, the Audio interface would created better quality Audio, but if you are playing a soft synth as a midi track would that sound be improved by an Audio interface?
or is it just in the final stage when you export the track to a wav file, would the Audio interface make the sound better at that stage?
Sorry lots of questions. Just trying to decide if an Audio interface is the key thing I am missing in my set up.
Cheers
[quote]chocsaway (14/07/2011)[hr]I have been making music for a couple of years on my mac book using soft synths, van guard, sylenth NI Vsts etc and they sound ok, but never really 100% professional.
I am looking to get my tracks sounding better quality and looking around it looks like I need an external Audio interface. Can you explain how this will improve the sound?
I understand if you are recording audio in to you Mac you would need an Audio interface but I only using soft synths.
I guess when you bounce down tracks to Audio, the Audio interface would created better quality Audio, but if you are playing a soft synth as a midi track would that sound be improved by an Audio interface?
or is it just in the final stage when you export the track to a wav file, would the Audio interface make the sound better at that stage?
Sorry lots of questions. Just trying to decide if an Audio interface is the key thing I am missing in my set up.
Cheers[/quote]
Read this:
[url=http://www.tweakheadz.com/audio_interfaces_1.htm]zZounds.com | Musical Instruments Music Store. Shop for Guitars, Drums, Amplifiers and Equipment.
[url=http://www.homestudiocorner.com/2009/04/14/12-home-studio-necessities-3-audio-interface/]http://www.homestudiocorner.com/2009/04/14/12-home-studio-necessities-3-audio-interface/[/url]
You need good studio monitors beside audio interface.The more expensive the audio interface the higher the quality of ad/da converters in the interface that contribute to sound quality conversion.Ex: look at RMEs Fireface 800,Apogee Ensemble, Apogee Rosetta,Prism Sound Orpheus - those are high end.Bouncing tracks quality depends on how they are finished with eq,compression and mixdown.The tracks would sound bad if your studio monitors are crappy.So then cheap speakers give muddy or inaccurate picture of the sound.Most pro studios don’t use audio interface , they use ad/da converters as separate unit.When you purchase an interface you purchase the converter and preamps that are in the interface.The price of the audio interface reflect the quality of converters and the sound of the interface.
good audio interface>good ad/da converters>good studio monitors>good room treatment = great sound.
Audio interface is a part of the chain that contributes to sound.
+1 to your response man…
Actually, unless you have good monitors, the difference in sound quality between an external audio interface and the built-in soundcard in your computer isn’t going to be very big. In fact, if you don’t record any external sources (hardware synths, vocals etc), you don’t really need it.
However, if you are using a pc, latency will be a problem, so recording midi with a keyboard is pretty much impossible without an audio interface (although you could use Asio4All). On a mac, latency isn’t a problem.
Yeah its defobas much to do with cpu power and good drivers as it is about sound.
The built in macs ones sound pretty decent and have ok latencey.
Having less jitter in the DAC definatly improves stereo imaging and detail but as you say this wont effect bounce down as its done buy the cpu unless your running a realtime bounce with external souces.
I’ve got two Yamaha HS50m’s (200 each) and a saffire pro 24 dsp audio interface and everything sounds AMAZING, also both are very famous for having incredibly accurate sounds so if you have 800 bucks lying around I wouldn’t hesitate to buy either. If you do though keep in mind high+2 mid-2=hifi and high-2 mid+2=reference (settings on the back of the monitors)