What is an audio interface, how does it compare to a mixer and do you need an audio interface when creating a podcast?

What is an audio interface and do you need one for podcasting?

Hey, I am Ryan from PodcastFast.com and recently I was creating an article on the 10 Best Audio Interfaces For Podcasting. Now, audio interfaces – before I went in to creating this article, was not something I knew a lot about. I did not even know they existed so I have a lot of questions that came up that I thought would be helpful to answer on audio interfaces.

And so the first one is, what exactly is an audio interface and do I need one as a podcaster? So an audio interface is a device that goes between your analog microphone and your computer which is digital. For example, I am using the Blue Yeti microphone which is a USB microphone which plugs directly into my computer. This microphone does not need – and I could not even use, an audio interface with this microphone.

The goal of an audio interface is to act as an awesome sound card for your computer and basically to convert your analog microphone sound into digital sound that you can deliver to your computer. And the goal of the audio interface is to give you great quality sound. What most computers have as their microphone input is one of those 3.5 mm headphone jacks. So if you have a high-quality microphone, plug it into a 3.5 mm headphone jack is not going to do the sound justice and as well, the sound cards on your computer are not going to be that high-quality.

So the goal of an audio interface is that  you plug your microphone into the audio interface, it then processes the sound really well and then delivers that sound digitally to your computer, to your recording software whether that be Audacity or Screenflow or GarageBand or whatever it may be. So if you have a good high-quality microphone you are going to want an audio interface in order to make the best of that microphone and to get the best sound possible.

Now audio interfaces start from around $100 so you can get the Focusrite Scarlett Solo which is a great product for around $100. And then they go up from there and depending on your needs and how many inputs you need, etc. they get quite expensive. One of the highest recommended audio interfaces, really good product, is the Apogee Duet 2 which is around about $600 or something like that. And if you have a whole group of podcasters and you need a lot of different mic inputs so you are not just using one or 2 microphones but maybe using maybe 4 or 5 or more, then they get really expensive. We are talking $1,000, $2,000, $2,500 for these audio interfaces.

So that is what an audio interface is. It is basically an awesome sound card that converts the analog sound coming from your microphone into digital sound that is delivered into your computer. And it delivers in such a way that you are going to get great quality sound for your podcast.

Audio interfaces often provide 48 volt phantom power which is needed to charge some condenser microphone so some other microphones as well. So depending on the microphone that you have you may need to get an audio interface that has that 48 volt phantom power because otherwise you will not be able to power your microphone. So most of them have that and if you go to PodcastFast.com/25 then all of the audio interfaces that I recommend have that 48 volt phantom power to charge those condenser microphones.

One of the microphones that Pat Flynn recommends is the Heil PR40 or something like that which is an analog microphone and requires that 48 volt phantom power. So if you are going for something like those high-end microphones you are going to need either a mixer or an audio interface in order to get the sound from that microphone to your computer and have it sounding great. And so a lot of people think, “Okay, I need a mixer in order to do that” but really you do ...