Quality costs. And if you’ve decided to spend over USD$1000 on an audio interface, you’ve decided that when it comes to music you’re serious about quality. By making this decision, you have left a lot of compromises behind: just about any audio interface over $1000 will be at least 24bit/96KHz, have a generous number of inputs, and have good quality audio to digital converters. And there are very few USB interfaces over $1000 – almost all have low-latency Firewire or PCI interfaces.

But budget will still be a consideration. $1000 is just the starting point, and the prices go up quite a long way from there. What are you hoping to gain in return for all of that money? Lots of inputs? High quality and better reliability? Additional features? Some combination of these?

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Most home studios today are centered around a personal computer. (And yes – despite what the ad says, a Mac is a personal computer too.) An audio interface is the audio gateway from the outside world into your computer.

Most computers come with a sound card with line and mic inputs, and many people use these when starting out with audio recording. But if you are serious about the quality of your work, you should avoid them. They have inferior audio to digital converters, and often produce a good deal of noise. You need to choose a professional audio interface that allows you to plug in your mics and instruments, and connects to your computer through a USB, Firewire, PCI or PCMCIA interface.

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