Your audio interface is a device that does a few different things. In addition to having some monitoring, it’s something that can take your analog signals and make them digital. You can also take your digital signals and make them analog so that you can hear them.
But it also has something typically called a mic pre. And the mic pre is the unsung hero of your recording studio. Not only does it supply phantom power so that you can use condenser microphones, it brings the low low level of those microphones up to something that you can use.
And the way it does that is impactful. You might be surprised to know that a lot of engineers would prefer to have a really nice preamp and an average microphone than the other way around. That’s because a good mic pre can make an average mic sound really good.
More importantly, a really nice mic through a poorly designed mic pre isn’t going to sound that great. So as your studio grows, you may want to delegate the duties of your interface to discrete components. That means a discrete mic pre that has a flavor that you really like and a converter that just does one thing.
But it’s comforting to know that in recent years designs have gotten better and they’ve gotten cheaper. And so the mic pre that’s built into your interface is probably a lot better than the one that I had when I was learning.
