Episode 126 - Can you get away with a very cheap interface and dynamic microphone?

Everyone knows that cheap interfaces hiss - but do they? If you have no money the advice is generally that X brand will be awful if you have a dynamic mic. It's a sort of folk lore - I grabbed a cheap chinese interface that looks like, but isn't, a Focusrite - a well loved Presonus firewire interface and the 'nice' preamps in my Midas M32 mixer. Connected an SM57 and recorded speech and some at a distance guitar. If you imagined the Midas preamps would handle weaker inputs better, you'd be wrong. Quite interesting and frankly not what I expected. What do you think? Could you live with the cheap one? If you didn't need the gain up that high, I think I could - the same as turning down the Midas gain.

[@martoafro]

nice, love this (coming from the forum) and I'm glad I didnt put too much money into my interface

[@pauljohnson4590]

You can always buy a more expensive one when (or if) you outgrow them. For me - 2 went to 8 to 16 channels as my needs changed. It's a very personal thing. I was surprised though that the best preamps I have are more noisy than I thought!

[@tricogustrico]

The interface is less important that what people have to say. Nobody want to listen to a bore.