HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT AUDIO INTERFACE (a guide for dummies) PART 2/3

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Once we have seen the different types of connection of the various audio interfaces on the market, it's time to take a look at the main features that an audio interface should have, starting with the ADC-DAC conversion: what is it? It's the conversion from an analog signal to a digital one (usually in binary system), and the reverse operation.

This process is very important if we want to make music, since it's going to impact on the whole production, therefore a good conversion leads to a good digital representation of the wave, and the better the electronic components of our device are, the better the conversion will be.

Working in the digital domain, we need to have a final wave at a resolution of 16 bit and 44'100hz (the double of the highest frequency audible by a human ear), in order to be burned on an audio cd, but if we want to produce music that sounds really well on this device we need to operate at higher resolutions, and then Dither the signal down to that amount.

- RESOLUTION AND BIT DEPTH: This higher resolution basically consists into operating at a bit depth of 24bit (which is a fidelty to the original wave twice as high as the 16 bit one), and at a sample rate higher than 44'100hz (to have even more headroom available, thus less distortion) in order to have the freedom to create a wave that sounds better then it could be reproduced by a regular cd player, so that when it comes the time to dither it down to 16bit 44'100hz it will sound better than if it was recorded directly within those limits.

So when choosing an audio interface keep in mind that it should let you work at a bit depth of 24 bit at a sample rate of at least 48khz (some devices arrives even at 192khz, but I personally don't think that much is necessary: many plugins don't work properly at that rate, plus the wave files becomes bigger and bigger on our hard drive).

- INS AND OUTS: another important feature that we must analyze when choosing an audio interface is the amount of Ins and Outs. What do we need to do with this interface? Do we need to record our whole band or just guitars and vocals in our bedroom? We need to have a clear idea of how many inputs we need.

The Input - Output jacks are Mic inputs (balanced), Line Inputs (unbalanced), and Instrument Inputs: the Xrl jacks, or microphone jacks, are balanced jacks (signal level is higher, because it passes through a mic preamplifier), while the 1/4 jacks (also known as TRS) may be balanced or unbalanced (the unbalanced ones have a significantly lower signal level and are called Line Inputs).
Line Inputs: These TRS jack labeled "Line Input" are the ones optimized to receive sound from an external preamp, or an external mixing board, since this input bypasses the preamp section of the interface.
"Line Outputs" are instead used to send the signal to external outboards, like for example hardware effects processors, or other amplifiers, if we want to do a Reamping.
Instrument Inputs instead have a higher impedance (therefore a lower signal) than a balanced input, but the signal is higher than a line input; ideally these inputs stands halfway between a balanced jack and an unbalanced one in terms of signal, and are suited specifically for guitars, basses, and other instruments.
Most of modern audio interfaces anyway features one or more combo jacks balanced-unbalanced that automatically switch between the two formats recognizing the type of instrument, plus they often offer some other unbalanced input.

If we need to record a whole band there are interfaces with several Xrl or Combo balanced inputs, or even some mixer that can directly connect with the pc via Usb or Firewire, just make sure that if the mixer connects with the pc, you can track independently all the single channels on your Daw (an option possible, for example, with the Phonic Helix serie), because most of them will just sends all of them to a stereo output, making further mixing impossible!

Sony / Philips digital interface (S/PDIF), this input-output consists in two plugs: In (usually red) and out (usually white). This connection has many uses: to connect an external mixer to the interface, connect the interface to another interfaces or to studio monitors, to connect reproduction devices such as an audio cd player to the interface without significant signal degradation.
Midi input - Output: this is a kind of connection not featured in every audio interface, and it lets your keyboard, or hardware drum sampler, or any other midi-driven device to be connected with the computer and to record midi tracks;
lately this connection on the instruments is often replaced directly with an usb connection, so it is possible to plug the keyboard directly to the pc without the need of a Midi port.
ADAT Optical Input - Output: it's a pretty uncommon connection, featured usually on the upper-range interfaces, capable of carrying large amount of data without any additional digital to analog conversion. It may carry the data stream of up to eight digital audio channels simultaneously, so if we connect it to a device with more inputs, we can use this port in our interface to expand the number of channels streamed to our Daw.
Headphone Output: a headphone output or more is very important, and it features an internal headphone amplifier with volume control to make it loud enough even for a singer, so that he can hear the base while he's singing. If more outputs or more volume are needed, it is possible to add to those outputs additional headphone amplifiers.

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HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT AUDIO INTERFACE (a guide for dummies) PART 1/3

Hello and welcome to this week's article! today we're going to talk about audio inerfaces, and how to choose the one that suits your needs!

Back in the day, like 20 years ago, professional audio hardware was very expensive, at the point that it was impossible for an amateur to buy a decent equipment in order to do a good home recording, but lately, more or less in the last five/ten years, the manufacturers have started producing an increasignly wide range of interfaces of good quality, at a reasonable price, that allows anyone to try to record their own music at home, and this is the reason why the internet is full of "bedroom producers", me included :)

Why do we need an audio interface? Because we need to send somehow the signal to the Digital Audio Workstation, and the internal mic preamp of our motherboard it's just not accurate enough to reproduce it with fidelity.

Now let's analyze the main characteristics of an audio interface, in order to choose properly, starting by the kind of connection with the pc:

- PCI: nowadays only few interfaces are Pci (the internals interfaces), and they are used mainly for their AD-DA conversion, usually associated with a mixer or an external preamp. Those are often the cheapest solution and usually are also the best in terms of latency. The amount of data transmitted is very large too, the only downside is that once you have installed it on a pc, with screws and everything, it stays there, so it's unconfortable to carry it around and install it on other computers. Plus it's not compatible with laptops, and the sound quality depends on the quality of the external preamplifier you will use. (example of Pci soundcard: the M-Audio ones) 

- USB: it's the most common connection and it is already featured on every computer, so nothing else is needed, just make sure that your audio interface is at least USB 2.0 (3.0 is even better, although currently I am not aware of interfaces ready to support it), otherwise it can't transport enough data to handle a medium-sized project, and for larger projects even the 2.0 version may not be enough (it carries 400mbit/s, but it's slower and less stable than a Firewire port), so it may give some latency problem. 

For most of projects, though, usb 2.0 it's ok, plus Usb interfaces are fairly cheap and produced by a large amount of manufacturers, so the price spetrum it's very wide too, ranging from the cheapest ones (like Behringer), to the most high-end and expensive ones, like the E-Mu or the RME. 

Beware of the sample rate, though, since the higher it is, the less tracks the interface can handle, since their dimension increases greatly at higher rates.

The price difference is because of the specs (that we will analyze in this same article) and the components quality, especially the the converters and the Mic Preamplifier quality. When the Preamplifier section is good enough, there is no need for an external preamp, therefore we can save some money.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that Usb devices are driven by the Cpu. That means that they will keep busy some cpu just to run, and this might be a problem if we have a large project and try to make some resource economy. 

- FIREWIRE: this is a connection that is alternative to the Usb one, and it's not featured on every motherboard (altough a firewire Pci card can be bought for around 10 bucks), it does not support hot plugging (you must connect the device while the computer is still powered off, otherwise it may burn your motherboard), and also the average firewire interface costs a little more than an Usb one, so why does many people (me included) prefers those to the Usb ones?

Simple: a Firewire port carries more data than an Usb one (around 400 and 800 mbit/s, there are 2 different Firewire ports), it's more stable and reliable, offers a lower latency even handling big projects, and most importantly it doesn't make your Cpu work just to be active, therefore you have more resources to use on your project. There are many firewire interfaces, some of which are considered a standard among the semi-professional scene because of their price-to preamp quality ratio, such as the Focusrite and the Presonus ones.

- THUNDERBOLT: it's a new kind of port introduced by Apple, it can carry 10 to 20 gb/s, and today there are just a few (and expensive) audio interfaces that can use it, such as Apogee and Universal Audio, but probably (along with the Usb 3.0 standard) this is going to become the standard that over time will replace the Firewire connection. It carries a huge amount of data, it's reliable and today it's featured on the latest generation of Mac computers.

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HOW TO USE VIRTUAL CONSOLE EMULATIONS (with Free Vst Plugins Inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about Virtual Console Emulation!

This article talks about a particular kind of plugin set between a Saturation Plugin, an Harmonic Exciter, a Mix Buss Compressor and an Equalizer. Looks complicated? It's actually easier than it seems, in facts, like we've already seen with our Virtual Channel Strips article, it's just all about recreating a sound that feels a bit less digital, and a little more like the vintage albums. 

Back in the day, in facts, recordings were done analogically, by processing the sound through huge and expensive consoles that, just by passing the signal through them, used to give to the wave a particular colouration, and this colouration, featured on some classic, timeless album, is still today sought after from many sound engineers.

This "Colouration" of the sound consisted basically in some characteristic of the electronic components used for the console, and at the beginning they were meant to be as transparent and hi-fi as possible, but nevertheless the sound was inevitably modified by passing through them to the point that, once a real hi-fi and true-to-the-source recording has been possible, the engineers felt something was missing.

When the Drive knob is raised, those Virtual Console Emulators basically works halfaway between a Harmonic Exciter and a Saturator, so they add a bit of gain and a sligh compression too, and the hi-pass and low-pass filter tries to set the sound on the coords of the ones created with the virtual consoles. 

Some of these plugins works as a Summing processor too: a summing processor is a tool that is used to sum together the tracks, not only by stacking and exporting them on a single file, but  

adding a slightly 'bigger' and more professional sound, although this is the source of much debate in the pro audio world, since always more audio engineers are sticking with the "In the box" solution without problems.

Here are the best Console Emulation plugins, ordered by price:

- Terry West's Saturn Console emulation: A Free console emulator for single channels or busses with fixed Hi-Pass and Low Pass filters, a warm gain-driven saturator with a option to use the fine US-pre gain compressor and two meters.

- Sonimus Satson: another good console saturation plugin, at an excellent pricing, with adjustable hi-pass and low-pass filter and gain control.

- SKnote Stripbus: Four types of console emulation, hi pass and low pass filter, VU meters, stereo buss compression and a very low price.

- Waves Nls: Three different console simulations (Neve, SSL, EMI), which will add different tonal colourations to your single instrument or mix buss and work as Summer.

- Slate VCC: another console emulation that features 5 classic console models, and features summing capabilities.

- Acustica Audio Nebula: an impressive virtual console emulator

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HOW TO USE NOISEGATES (with Free Vst Plugins Inside!)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about Noise Gates!

When we record an audio from a souce, a microphone or straight with the jack into the audio interface, we may have some unwanted noise, generated for example by the hum of the pickups (especially the single coil ones), the quality of the cable, and every other ring on the chain that brings the sound into the Daw.

Let's start by saying that there are different types of "noise": Hiss (which are the frequencies that produces sibilance), Hum (which is the low background noise), Clicks and Crackles (which are the snappy sounds sometimes presents when digitizing vynil recordings, or when a source goes into peak, distorting the signal) and the Ess frequencies, produces by the sibilance of the human voice.

The noisegate usually works by selecting the typical frequencies that we want to remove (for example the hiss frequencies, in the case of the DeHisser), and once they occour, heavily compressing them, lowering their level to silence. 

So we're talking about plugins that are both Equalizers and Gates (a Gate is a Compressor that works on the opposite way: when a signal is below a certain threshold, instead of boosting it, it brings it down to zero decibel).

Also Gates are used when recording an acoustic drumset, to remove unwanted bleed of other drum parts on a microphone (e.g. to remove the snare sound from the kick microphone).

Many commercial noisegates (like Waves, Sonnox or Izotope) features a "Learn" function: you play a part of the track where only the noise you want to remove is hearing, and the program will remove it from the whole track leaving the other frequencies untouched. This function is featured by some free plugin too, as you can see on the list below.

Focusing on guitar sound, the main issue here is the low background noise, or Hum, generated by the pickups and sometimes by the cable too. We need to clean the sound before entering in the amplifier, or, especially if we use the distorted channel, the noise will be distorted and amplified too, resulting in a strong hum and feedback.

If we are recording an amplifier by Microphoning it, we must use a Hum remover OR just manually cut away the silence parts that feature only noise, retaining the full harmonic richness of the played parts.

If we are recording straight to the interface using Virtual Amp Simulators, instead, we can use a Noisegate BEFORE the virtual amp, and before the eventual virtual Overdrive that boosts the amp.

Many DAWs today features a bundled Noisegate that eliminates the hum, but if your bundled noisegate is not good enough or if it's completely absent, here's a selection of the best free Noisegates:

- FRETTED SYNTH GATE PLUS - a Noisegate with all the features of a Compressor.

- GVST GGATE - One of the most used ones, very simple.

- 7AMP NOISE GATE - One knob gate with Learn function: you simple hold your guitar strings for a second, or keep your microphone in silence, allowing the plugin to study noise pattern, then you set filtering level.

- REAGATE - the free Gate from the Reaper Daw

- FLOORFISH - A versatile multi-purpose Gate, with Learn function.

- How to use a Noisegate to remove unwanted background noise or microphone bleed: Let's load a noisegate on the track we wish to "De-Noise", and set the Threshold control wery low, so that no signal is below it, and therefore there is no gating. 

Now raise the Threshold control until only the hum is gated, and adjust the attack and release control in order to decide how fast the Gate should kick in, and for how long it should be active. It's as simple as that, just remember, when you use it to clean up your guitar tone, to adjust it with your distortion on, or the hum will be almost inaudible.

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THE BEST FREE VST GUITAR AMPS (a guide with free Vst plugins inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about a long awaited topic: the best free guitar amp simulators, which ones are, where to find them, how to use them :)
First off let's put it this way: the last ten years have seen a very fast acceleration towards guitar amp modeling, with the release of increasingly accurate softwares that recreates hardware circuts, both solid state or Tube driven, that tries to recreate the final result in terms of sound. This effort to bring hardware processors to the digital domain has brought to the birth of digital amp modelers, both hardware (like the Line6 Pod, that we have already covered on This article) and software.

On the software side the scene is rapidly evolving, with the release always more accurate modelers, such as Peavey Revalver, which features the proprietary license of Peavy amplifiers, or Ik Multimedia Amplitube and Native Instruments Guitar Rig, and the market is lately trying to explore the smartphone and tablet market too.
Those abovementioned products are commercial all-in one bundles that features an array of virtual amps, cabinets and stompboxes, but also in the freeware domain there is a wide range of quality software, developed by engineers that decides to share with the public domain community the results of their researches, often offering products that have absolutely nothing to envy to the commercial ones. Here are the most used:

- LEPOU PLUGINS

LePou - Lecto - Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Clone
LePou - LeGion - An original voiced amp by LePou, very popular in the DIY Djent world
LePou - Le456 - An ENGL Powerball Amp Clone
LePou - SoloC - A Soldano SLO100 Amp Clone
LePou - Hybrit - A Marshall Superlead/JCM800 Hybrid

- THE SERINA EXPERIMENT PLUGINS

TSE - X30 - Based on ENGL E530 Rack Mounted Amp Unit
TSE - X40 - A Hybrid between A Mesa Dual Rectifier and A Peavey 5150
TSE - X50 - A Peavey 5150 Clone

- NICK CROW LABS

Nick Crow - 7170 Lead - A Peavey 5150 Clone
Nick Crow - 8505 Lead - A Peavey 6505 Clone

- ACME BAR GIG 

AcmeBarGig - C15 - A Very High Gain Amp
AcmeBarGig - Series 60 - An Original Voice amp, is supposed to replicate a "8000 Watt Head"
AcmeBarGig - Razor - An Original Voice Amp, capable of many different tones.
AcmeBarGig - Shred - A Full guitar amp suite, featuring 6 different amp models with interchangeable tone stacks (Engl, Mesa, Marshall, Vox, Krank, Fender).

There are also many other great, free, amps available from AcmeBarGig in their "Classic Hybrid Line."

- NDZEIT

NDZeit - DirtHead - Sounds like some kind of Peavey clone but with a voice control that lets you shift the voicing from American to British, similar to what Blackstar have done with the HT series. It includes a Cab sim that we'd recommend you switch off.
NDZeit - TubeBaby - Pretty basic emulation but with different amp "types" including. American, British and Custom. It includes a Cab sim that We'd recommend you switch off.

- IGNITE AMPS

Ignite Amps - NRR 1 - Great Sounding High Gain 3 Channel Amp, the digital version of their actual  hardware Soldano clone
Ignite Amps - The Anvil - A VST version of the Amp designed by Andy Zeugs

- How to use these virtual amplifiers: the typical chain to use these Virtual Amp Modelers is the one we've already seen on the Basic Guitar Chain article:

NOISE SUPPRESSOR -> OVERDRIVE -> AMP SIMULATOR -> SPEAKER SIMULATOR ->EQUALIZER->COMPRESSOR.

The Noise Suppressor will clean our sound from the hum of the pickup-cable etc, then the overdrive will be needed only if we need to boost the amplifier, giving it that extra "chug" required for modern metal tones, but if we don't need a sound that edgy we can skip it.
Then we need the Speaker Simulator to recreate the cabinet sound taken from a microphone, and then an Equalizer to filter the unwanted frequencies before they become Louder due to the Compressor, whose main use is to tame the lows. Finally, if we need to boost some frequency, we can add another Equalizer after the Compressor.

Comment if you wish to suggest other Virtual Guitar Amplifiers!

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HOW TO USE VIRTUAL CHANNEL STRIPS (with Free Vst Plugins inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about Channel Strips.

Today, in the DAW era, we're used to think about channel strips as a sequence of empty slots on our track, ready to be loaded with any plugin we want, of any brand we choose, on any order, but it's not always been this way: with the term Channel Strip we refer to the single channel of a hardware mixer, which includes one or more Microphone Ins,  a volume fader, an Eq section, and often other features, such a compressor/limiter, an Fx Mix control, a Noisegate, and so on.

Is it still appropriate to talk about Channel Strips today? Maybe, since the last few years we have seen an increasing interest in trying to recreate a sound that has a common colour, like all the instruments were recorded through the same gear and mixed using the same processors, in order to ease the workflow and give the sound a slighly analog and coherent style.  

Let's start immediately by saying that the software house most dedicated and professional about the recreation of Channel Strips is Waves, and one of the most famous vintage channel strip emulations is the Waves SSL, which recreates the single channel strip of a Solid State Logic Mixer, one of the most used mixers of the best studios of the last 30 years.

Beside the Waves ones, there are other Channel Strip emulations too that worth mentioning:

- De La Mancha Strip Ts, which features a Gate, A Filter, an Eq, a Compressor, a Clipper, and a Meter, and has a very good price.

- Sugar Bytes Vogue Channel Strip, another good channel strip which features almost everything: Gate, Preamp (Gain, Highpass, Overdrive), Compressor, 3-Band Dynamic Equalizer, Filter, Delay, Reverb.

And finally here are some free ones, some of which can rival even the most expensive ones: 

- Terry West's Cs4 and Cs12: these are 2 channel strips one with a 4 band eq dedicated to the single tracks and one with a 12 band eq for the master buss, with a wide range of features, including a Tape Saturation tool.

- Two Notes Torpedo-Pi Free: a very interesting Channel Strip dedicated to Guitars, including a Harmonic Exciter and a Cabinet Simulation tool.

- Variety Of Sound Nasty Vcs: this plugin emulates the response of a vintage console, and features a Filter, an Eq, a Compressor and a Phase Alignment tool.

- Variety of Sound PreFix: this is a very particular kind of Channel Strip, featuring a Filter, an Eq, a Compressor and a Phase alignment tool, is specifically made to take place upfront the mixing process. It provides tools set to clean-up, fix and align audio tracks concerning overall frequency correction, phase alignment, spatial stereo field corrections and routing.

Try and experiment for yourself how these tools can improve your mixing routine, as they can really add a new dimension to the sound!

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HOW TO RECOGNIZE THE FREQUENCIES (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about How to Recognize the most important Frequencies, in order to help you having a mental reference on where to intervene while Equalizing a sound.

Obviously we will try to point out and memorize just the main areas, and once there, we will still need to sweep with a Paragraphic Equalizer to find the exact frequency that we need to boost or cut, but it's pretty important to have a mental scheme: it will improve mixing a lot and make it much faster.

We're going to analyze the various octaves that covers almost the full spectrum of audible (20hz to 20'000hz); an octave is the double of a frequency, so if we choose as our first frequence to analyze the 63hz one, the second will be 63x2=126, the third 126x2=252 and so on.

63hz: this is the area of the low thump, it will give punch to kick and bass. 

126hz: this is the first octave of the first frequency we analized (it's the double in hertz), and adds even more weight to the sound, especially of the bass.

252hz: the second octave of the first frequency (the double of the double), it's the "mud area", and it's often cut on guitars and snare drums to add clarity, because if it's too high it produces a "boomy" sound.

504hz: the third octave of the first frequency lies in the "cardboard area", becaused it makes the sound a bit "boxy". This is harmful for guitars, in facts this area is often widely scooped out, but adds weight to vocals and snare, and presence to the Reverb effect (that's why this area is often filtered out from the reverb Fx Tracks, because it tends to act uncontrollable). 

1008hz: the fourth octave of the first frequency creates a telephone-like sound to the voice and gives it kind of an obnoxious horn-like effect, so it's better not to boost this area.

2016hz: the fifth octave of the first frequency gives bite to the guitars and attack to the snare, but too much boosting here will cause listening fatigue.

2500-3000hz: this is not a proper octave of a precise frequency, but it's called the "vocal area", and worth a mention since it's the range our vocals usually are, and it's the range the human ear is used to pick up most. It is therefore suggested to leave room on this area to let the vocals sit, also by cutting away some db from this area on the other instruments.

4032hz: the sixth octave of the first frequency causes the hissy effect on distorted guitars, and if left untamed can lead to a seriously harsh sound.

8064hz: the seventh octave of the first frequency brings out the brilliance of a sound, and works well to bring the vocals closer to the listener, but an excess on this area can also generate too much of a fizzy sound, especially on high frequency oriented sounds, like cymbals.

16128hz: with the eight octave, we're getting close to the end of the spectrum of the human audible (usually around 20000hz). This frequency adds some more air to the sound of the most high frequency oriented instruments, but needs to be listened very closely in order to be actually heard.

Hope this was helpful!

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