In this segment of the "Free Ableton Live 12 Music Production Class" tutorial, J. Anthony Allen explains why the tiny audio chip built into computers and phones is sufficient only for basic playback, and why higher‑quality recording requires a dedicated audio interface. He describes how standard microphones use three‑pin (XLR) analog outputs that computers lack, necessitating an interface that provides appropriate inputs and converts analog signals to digital via USB or other connections. Allen also discusses USB microphones, noting that while they embed a small converter within the mic and can be a cheap alternative, their quality varies and they may not match the performance of a dedicated interface. He concludes by setting up the question of when a user actually needs an external audio interface.
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So there is an audio interface built into your computer already. If it makes sound that you can hear, there's one in there. Your phone has one in it because it produces sounds that you can hear. But the one in there is a little tiny microchip, and it's not the highest quality. If we want to do something with higher quality, we need a dedicated box that looks like this. This is an audio interface. Okay? More on that in a second. Now, there's another reason we might want to have a dedicated box, and that's so that we can plug things into it. For example, here is a microphone, okay? This is a standard microphone. The output of it looks like that. It's got three pins, okay? Now look at your computer. Look all over your computer. Do you have an input that has three pins like that? You don't. You don't have an analog microphone input on your computer. No matter what kind of computer you're using, I guarantee you don't have one. So we take a box like this. It has a whole bunch of inputs for a microphone, and then it has an output to go into a computer. Usb. Usb, C. Whatever, right? So this can do the conversion for us. We can plug in a whole bunch of microphones, and it can do the conversion and send that digital signal to the computer. Okay? So that's why we need one of these boxes. Now, there are USB microphones that exist where it's a microphone and then it goes. It has a USB output, and then you can plug that directly into a computer. Those exist, and I used to make fun of them and say that they're garbage. But I've listened and played around with a few of them in the last couple years, and some of them are actually really good. I'm not going to lie. Some of them are good. What that means, though, is that they have the converter built into the microphone. Okay. Which means it's a tiny little converter. It's not going to be that great. But again, I've heard some really good ones. So if you want to do that, that's okay. That is a cheap way around buying an audio interface. So that's what an audio interface is. Now, let's talk about if you need one or not.
