Home Recording Studio Sound Interfaces

Franklin Taggart: Hi, I am Franklin Taggart. I am here to talk about Home Computer Recording and how to set up your own Home Recording Studio that is computer based. One of the important components that you are going to need to look into is getting a sound interface for your computer. Many computers come with the sound Card built in, but those sound cards very often are not of the quality that you need for professionals quality recording. So, very often, what it is important to, to look into is getting an Interface that either is a FireWire or USB format that can connect your instruments and microphones and MIDI instruments to your computer, so that they can communicate with each other. The sound interface is going to be the heart of your computer recording set up. It is really important to do some research to find out if your sound interface and your computer are going to behave well together and they are going to be able to work without any glitches. There are some Interfaces that do not work well with some video cards, so it is really important for you to look at the information provided from both your Interface manufacturer and your computer manufacturer to make sure that there are not any conflicts between the Interface and your computer. I use this particular Interface for the heart beat of my Home Recording System. It has two inputs for microphone and instrument. It has a phantom power, you need to power the microphones. It is important to get that if you have condenser microphones that require an outside power source to run. If you do not have it in your Interface, you are going to have to provide that through an External Phantom Power Unit. This also has a jack for headphones. On the back side it has two more inputs for line inputs from either instruments, it can be from a fax boxes, it can be also from stereo systems. We also have the main outs that go to the monitor speakers and then we have three sets of outputs or two sets of outputs in stereo that can be used to use outboard effects. We have the FireWire inputs and outputs and we also have a connector now for MIDI instrument and this also has a SPDIF instrument connector that you can use to connect cameras, televisions, other SPDIF type input and output configurations. So, this small box has a lot of power and like I said it is the core of the Home Studio. Do your research; find an interface that will work for you. I have another Interface that has eight inputs that I use for Location Recording with the laptop computer and that particular Interface I use for things like recording drum sets, full bands, anything where I need to have more inputs, I use the eight input Interface. So, do your research; find an interface that works for you and you will be ready to start making some great quality recordings in your own home. Thanks.