Professional Quality Audio on the cheap

[Andy]

My friend who has a home recording studio let me try out a compact audio interface for PC's. Now I bought my own from a second-hand store which connects via a USB cable. The cable also powers the unit. It is very compact and provides professional quality analog and digital audio in and out from your computer rather than using an internal sound card which is likely to have digital noise on the signals. For example you can connect a mic and electric guitar to it, midi instrument or other audio devices such as a CD player.

My model is a EDIROL UA-25 from Roland (silver one), the green one uses a FireWire interface and is branded as Cakewalk model N225.



There are all the inputs and outputs most people will need IMO. Maybe you can buy one at low cost on eBay or whatever?

I was mostly interested in eliminating digital noise and being able to connect a professional grade mic to the computer, but I see this unit as a future integral part of a home entertainment system acting as the analog to digital interface.

The mic I purchased was low cost but a heavy metal bodied one featuring an XLR connector. The actual model is Audio Technica AT-X11 which sounds quite good for the price. But I had to change the cable since the phono input has much less gain than XLR so I made up and XLR-XLR connector. The next step is to obtain a mic stand.

So with this equipment it is possible to get close to studio quality recording at a minimum cost. For the audio editing software, you can use Audacity which is free.