Digital conversion takes that voltage value and approximates it to the closest point out of a set of possible values. (Aliasing happens when a frequency higher than half the sampling frequency enters the A/D process and is wrongly understood by your system and converted to a lower frequency thus creating information that is not actually there in your signal) Bit DepthĪudio signal in the electrical realm is a function of voltage over time and each “snapshot” your device takes is actually a value of voltage amplitude. That being said all A/D devices have a sampling frequency a bit bigger than the minimum needed in order to make up for a phenomenon called aliasing. As the audible spectrum goes up to 20 kHz, the sampling frequency must be at least 40 kHz in order to capture the frequency content accurately. In order for an electrical signal to be reproduced accurately the sampling frequency has to be at least two times the highest frequency we want to capture. The sampling frequency is the number of “snapshots” the device takes of the electrical signal. There are two parameters that define how accurately the digital signal will reproduce the electrical one: Sampling frequency and bit depth.

Per short, an audio interface does this by taking a lot of little “snapshots” of the electrical signal and then assigning numeric values to each “snapshot”. In order to get it to Pro Tools it must be converted from an electrical signal to a digital signal. So our signal now has a healthy, working level and it is ready to be recorded. Keep reading further to get a breakdown of audio interfaces and more in-depth reviews of the above audio interfaces. That being said let us take a look at some awesome interfaces out there that will do wonders to your Pro Tools setup:

Make sure to check out our article on the best microphone preamps to get on a budget. To conclude: the preamp changes the way a mic signal sounds – some more than others – and it is important to decide whether you want your mic preamp to add color to your recording or whether you want it to be as neutral as possible. This enhances the signal a lot and the way the preamp shapes the voltage curve has major sonic implications. We achieve this by increasing the voltage amplitude of the incoming electrical signal. The mic preamp allows us to amplify the low level mic signal to get it to a working level. Signal flows from the microphone into a mic input and preamp of the audio interface. We have a microphone set up, the artist is ready to record and after a deep breath we record arm a track and start recording.

Let’s imagine a scenario in which we are recording vocal overdubs for a song: Microphone Preamps To properly appreciate what an audio interface can do we must understand what happens to an audio signal that enters the device. Similar to consoles, audio interfaces usually come with some mic inputs, some ¼” line inputs and several outputs some even have MIDI inputs and outputs. Contrary to classic studio setups where the centerpiece of the studio was the console, most project studios nowadays use an audio interface for mic preamps and the analog to digital conversion process, and then all the routing happens inside of a DAW like Pro Tools.

Most modern day project studio setups are centered around a computer, an audio interface and a plethora of MIDI devices and musical instruments.

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