So you’re looking to solidify your studio with the best audio interface? To us, this is one of the most important parts of making music and we consider it to be the star on top of the Christmas tree. Without an audio interface, you simply can’t record optimally. Your gear is essentially missing half of its power and capabilities without one of these in your studio. The best audio interfaces help us with sound quality, phantom power and amplification, more overall control of our gear, organization of all of our inputs outputs into one device, and lastly make the pesky concept of latency disappear. Today we highlight our top 10 audio interface picks available in the market and give you some info to help ease your shopping adventures. What is an audio interface?

An audio interface is a device which connects your various to your computer (,,, etc). Some have even called them “external sound cards” since the components built into computers can’t make the cut (for good reason — they’re typically too expensive or aren’t big enough). In terms of capabilities (and it really depends on which model you go with), they can provide phantom power to amplify your microphones, hook up any instrument or controller you’ve got via MIDI in out, and use XLR ports for microphones. Audio interfaces convert the analog information into digital signals for your or to recognize and lay down into your songs.

I recommend a 2-6 channel USB desktop interface, which normally costs between $100-$300 on the low-end, and $500-1500 on the high-end. Currently, the top brands for these “types” of interfaces are Presonus, Focusrite, Avid, Universal Audio. Use captions in word for mac.

Ultimately, it helps get you that studio-quality sound that helps separate you from the newbies. Relying on consumer-grade sound cards in your PC or Mac isn’t ideal as it often gives us interference and delays in sounds — and to their credit, merely can’t fit powerful interfaces inside their computers. Audio interfaces are the standard sound card for any type of studio. Once I hooked up my audio interface to my setup, the headache immediately went away because I was not only more organized (rid a lot of cable clutter) but was able to record in a quicker, versatile and realistic manner. When, my workload decreased, my songs sounded better and my overall creativity shot through the roof since my process was more efficient.