Advice on home music recording setup?

[maroonandwhite]

I am looking to start doing a little home recording and am trying to get opinions on what you guys might suggest to start out with. I admit it's been a while since I did any serious reserach on the matter. I know there are all in one type "mixers" that have a hard drive and all that but I am wondering if a good computer with some good software would be better. I would probably need a max of 8 channels. I wouldn't use all of those but don't want to buy too small.

I am mainly just playing acoustic and singing but would also like to add in drums and other instruments. I know this isn't a cheap hobby but I am wanting to get something decent without spending ALOT on the front end but halso have the ability to expand it in the future.

[mikegideon]

I have an AudioFire 8 and Sonar Producer. You're talking a decent chunk of change just because of all the incidental stuff that goes with it. When you start recording real drums (right), your microphone/preamp count goes way up.

 

I would do it with a PC, and mix in the box. Gonna have to be a decent one.

[xjsnake]

Computer with a board. The all in one units don't have anywhere near the capabilities. Get a couple good quality vocal mics and go to town. Not cheap to start and the costs balloon out from there.

[2.ooohhh]

You would be amazed to hear the recordings I've seen made in recent years with just a quality mic, preamp, and a mac running garageband. The same setup with some cash can be easily expand to way more channels than I've ever needed around the house.

[maroonandwhite]

Thanks for all the advice so far guys. I am hopefully going to be getting a new mac soon so I should have that part down. The software is probably my biggest concern but I am assuming most of the well know products are all about the same. I'm sure the mics and preamp are the most important piece of the puzzle.

[UncleJak]

I used audio magix for years and it worked well for me. It is like pro tools but a tenth of the price.  That with a good mic and you can accomplish a lot.  Don't cheap out on the mic, get a condenser mic and you will thank me later.

[2.ooohhh]

My advise does assume you already have a reasonably acceptable room to record in. Proper accoustics can go a long way to making a great recording.

 

 

My diffusor was probably my biggest bang for the buck change to my last setup and I've been dragging it around from house to house since. :)

 

 

Here it is in our living room at the last house pretending to be a sculpture.  :cool:

[mikegideon]

Thanks for all the advice so far guys. I am hopefully going to be getting a new mac soon so I should have that part down. The software is probably my biggest concern but I am assuming most of the well know products are all about the same. I'm sure the mics and preamp are the most important piece of the puzzle.

 

ProTools isn't that expensive if you don't use their hardware. Might as well use the same stuff as the real studios.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

A home studio is a worse money pit than a boat, guns or an RV but OTOH you can use the home studio when the weather is bad. :)

 

Here are a couple of big forums that are good places to learn/discuss/ask--

 

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/

 

http://www.kvraudio.com/

 

The tech is constantly evolving in both good ways and mediocre ways. Some fabulous gear and techniques of yesteryear are gone, and some current gear is really good bang for the buck, and some current gear is cheap shoddy crapola, but I suppose that was always so.

 

The book "Modern Recording Techniques" has been routinely updated and new volumes published since at least the mid-1970's. I have not seen a recent revision of the book but learned a lot from one of the earlier mid-1970's versions of the book. Many of the skills perfected long ago on live vinyl cutters and analog tape are still relevant. Perhaps more relevant than the latest whiz-bang gear and software. I'm just saying, a fella who could make a great recording in the 1930's or 1950's could make a great recording on ANY of the modern gear, even the shoddiest of modern gear. But no gear can substitute for knowledge, talent, experience.

 

Just saying, apparently the last edition was 2009 so in many regards is already "obsolete" because things change so fast, but unless they removed all the good basic stuff from the book since I last looked at it, there is a lot of info in the book that would be useful even when you are recording with plasma microphones, optically connected to quantum computers storing the result to dilithium crystals. :)

 

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Recording-Techniques-David-Miles/dp/0240810694

[maroonandwhite]

All great advice guys! I didn't have time to sit down and look at alot of the products last night but it looks like I will probably get a decent preamp and some good software to start. I already have one nice mic so that should get me started. Am I correct in assuming most preamps have an interface that will connect to the computer? Also since I am new to macs will I have to get an upgraded sound card?

[Steelharp]

Well, I make my living doing this. My setup is: an mBox 2 for the physical interface; it has pre's in it, and comes with ProToolsLE, which is plenty for most needs. That was $400. My computer is an old MAC G5 tower with a 21" Samsung monitor. I got that from a friend in the computer biz for $500. My main mic is a Cascade ribbon, a 731R. It seems to capture the sound I'm putting out on anything better than any other mic I've used. I even carry it to studios with me, because the engineers I work with have come to expect the quality of sound I give them with it. If I forget to bring it, they pretty much gripe. I forgot it Saturday, and Frank was pretty much "Whiny Wendell" all day.

[maroonandwhite]

Well my mic isn't THAT good haha. It's one of the higher quality Shure mics but I guess you would call it a stage mic.

[subsonic]

For mics, look into Audio Technica.They have a wide assortment of affordable mics that perform beyond their pricepoint. I run a studio business and have more of them than any other brand in my mic locker. There are several brands of interfaces available with 8 channels and built in preamps, although the quality of the preamps is a crapshoot. I use an RME interface without preamps, prefer mine to be outboard for better quality. Look at a small Mackie board. They get scoffed at by gear snobs, but there have been hit records made on them and the preamps are sufficient. For software, there are some affordable choices. Reaper has a lot of fans on the audio forums. I use Sonar Producer, but Sonar is a PC only DAW, so that's off the table if you're going Mac. If you'd still consider going with PC, look into OEM boxes designed for gaming, from vendors like directron.com, that's what I'm using and it's a workhorse.  Don't forget about decent monitors, headphones and cables. The incidentals can rack up a large chunk of change. 

 

As far as tracking drums, you can do a lot with four channels, you don't need to mic every drum in the kit. Holler if I can ever be of assistance.

[mikegideon]

Sonar Producer is real capable with the right PC. I haven't played with it in awhile, so haven't seen it since Version 6. You need a big monitor, or dual monitors if you are going to do projects with a lot of tracks (is there any other kind?).

[Guest Lester Weevils]

There is an embarrassment of riches in good usable "affordable" gear and software nowadays. How much and what to get depends on your music style and recording goals. 

 

MaroonAndWhite, what kind of music would you start out making? Solo folk songs need a different "minimum setup" compared to a rock band, or rap, or heaven forbid big band or orchestral.

 

Yep, any thing that gets popular gets crapped on by gear snobs. Peavey made so many reliable cheap "affordable to the working musician" amps long ago, that the gear snobs turned their nose up at anything Peavey. And then the gear snobs initially liked Mackie when it came out. Until it got popular, and then they decided that Mackie is the new Peavey.

 

Audio Technica mics used to be excellent for the money. I'm only saying "used to be" because I haven't bought a mic for a long time, but the AT mics I bought sounded fine for the money and I'm assuming they still do. AT mics tend to be "squeaky clean ruler flat" types of japanese mics. People that get "into it" and spend lots of money buy lots of "non-flat" special purpose mics so they can try to get their ideal sound by switching mics rather than experimenting with position or equalization, but you can go a long way with a flat neutral mic, experimenting with positiion, and getting friendly with an equalizer.

 

Going in from scratch, I'd get a pair of "flat as possible" small diaphragm condensers and a Shure SM-57 dynamic. The Shure SM-57 has a "classic sound" for certain stuff like drums and electric geetars, and good small-diaphragm condensers are generally flatter and better behaved and "more generically useful" than large-diaphragm condensers.

 

Looking at current prices small diaphragm condensers, I used to like AT 4051 "for the money" and the AT 4041"for less money". Both of them ruler-flat able to handle loud volumes without overload. Both sound about the same except the 4041 is noisier and wouldn't be as good for "distance miking" such as plopping a mic pair several feet away from a string quartet. But fine for close-miking within a couple of feet. But those have got pretty expensive nowadays. There are lots of crazy-cheap chinese condenser mics sold by numerous third parties nowadays, and some of them are supposedly pretty good for practically nothing money-wise.

 

If you read magazine mic reviews or internet mic discussions, they read like mystical religious discussions. People hear different stuff, and one set of "good ears" might hear a certain mic as "tubby" wheras another feller with "good ears" might hear the mic as "shrill and thin". One variable in this might be the mic preamps in use. Some condenser mics have transformers and some have active balanced output electronics. Similarly, some preamps have transformers and more-and-more modern affordable preamps and mixers have electronic balanced input circuits without transformers.

 

Many years ago, sorting thru user reports, I came to a theory that perhaps non-transformer good preamps get flatter, less-funky results with non-transformer mics, and that transformer mics are treated better by higher-end transformer preamps. I'm just saying that if you read some recording guru telling you what mics do and do not suck plugged into his $5000 boutique tube preamp, then it is useless information unless you also plan to get the same $5000 preamp. All the mics will have a different nature plugged into a Mackie or some generic $75 chinese preamp. Some of the mics that suck on the $5000 preamp won't suck so bad on a cheaper simpler preamp, and some of the "great sounding" mics on the $5000 preamp might not sound so good on affordable gear.

 

Now one reason I was at one time supposing I had such good luck with AT mics, is because I was plugging them into transformerless preamps, and the AT mics are also transformerless. Also, though the "nominal impedance" of a mic might be rather low, a good transformerless preamp with a "fairly high" balanced impedance, maybe 2000 to 10000 ohms, might treat a transformerless mic kinder than a rather low-impedance transformerless preamp. But once you put the transformers into the mess, they follow slightly different rules to encourage flat frequency response thru the chain.

[LowBb]

Good monitors are a must.

[glowdotGlock]

I use Mixcraft. I do t to a lot of advanced stuff though. The program has many more features than I'll ever use. I have a "Snow Ball" USB mic too. It wasn't that expensive. About $80. You should look it up on YouTube. May be a good start.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Good monitors are a must.

 

It depends on the intended recording goals. I love good monitors of course, but for instance if a fellow was doing songwriting and recording a few tracks plus vocals demos-- If he could just master tracking so his tracks don't suck, he could hire somebody with experience and a big room to mix and master his stuff so it sounds good coming out. That might in the end be lots less expensive than spending a lot of money conditioning a room and populating it with expensive monitors.

[maroonandwhite]

Lester right now I am pretty much just going to be doing 1-2 guitar tracks and voice. Nothing too loud or major, mainly just doing it for my own enjoyment and improvement of my skills. I want to be able to hear how I sound is what it mainly boils down to.

 

LOTS of great info here and I appreciate the time ya'll took to type all of this.

 

Since their seems to be ALOT of music heads on here I'd like to ask a guitar question. I have a classifieds thread started looking for some pickups / pickguard for a strat 50's reissue (American). My grandmother THREW AWAY the original pick guard and pickups so I am wanting to put something in it's place. I went through the whole phase of putting high output humbuckers on it but finally grew out of it and realized what a strat is really supposed to sound like.

 

My question is rather than buying one of the american standard loaded pickguards, would I be better off just buying the empty pick guard and getting some pickups,pots, etc. and wiring it myself? I would rather not have the ceramic magnet pickups but would like to hear some advice from you guys who clearly know more than I do.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Lester right now I am pretty much just going to be doing 1-2 guitar tracks and voice. Nothing too loud or major, mainly just doing it for my own enjoyment and improvement of my skills. I want to be able to hear how I sound is what it mainly boils down to.

 

LOTS of great info here and I appreciate the time ya'll took to type all of this.

 

Hi maroonandwhite. Questions such as yours are as irresistible to musicians as questions about glocks or 1911s to glock/1911 fanatics. 

 

Do you have a max budget in mind? That would be of use to "balance" the capabilities of the entire system. On the other hand it could in some cases be useful for future expansion to blow "too much" of the budget on one item that is mission-critical, and fill out the rest of the system with cheez disposable items. But the weakest link in the chain affects the entire path, so that matching quality of the various items into the budget might derive the "strongest chain" even if the budget is small.

 

I run macs and pc's. They are both good platforms. I've been programming music apps on Mac since 1986 and PC since1996, and from the "programmer viewpoint" have lost patience with apple and refuse to program macs any more, though I'm typing this message on a mac and have nothing against mac from a user perspective. Apple changes so quickly and breaks old code too often and I got tired of constantly having to throw so much monkey-work time just keeping old features working on new macs, wheras on PC the old code doesn't get broken so quickly so I can work on new features rather than trying to repair old features that used to work just great til apple broke them (again).

 

But from the standpoint of the user, who doesn't have to put up with that crap, the mac offers advantages depending on one's taste. I got so busy programming didn't play or record much and recently re-setup up a subset of the old studio gear.

 

Am not trying to advocate one or the other platform, but if one will basically have a dedicated music computer, here are the PC advantages-- 1. More variety of available music software 2. Lower cost of software 3. More variety of available audio/midi peripherals 4. Lower cost of SOME of the peripherals 5. You can buy a stronger computer for the same money on PC (though if ya got the money, apple makes some real strong computers).

 

I'm getting old and stupid and semi-retired over the last year, but the company I worked with numerous years, the PC versions of our software always had a richer feature set than the Mac, because for instance if I spent 6 months per year on each platform, on the PC I was writing new features and on the Mac I was spending lots of time patching up old features and then in the remaining time laboriously porting over features we had already released on PC. Sometimes porting features to the Mac would take longer than originally writing them on the PC, and even if the port would go pretty quick, there wasn't as much time to port new features because of the inevitable monkey work trying to keep the old features functional. Therefore, year in, year out, the PC version would perpetually accumulate more features than the Mac, until it got ridiculous how far ahead was the PC version. We'd find ourselves laboriously trying to port a feature into Mac that we might have added 5 years ago on PC.

 

Maybe our company is the only one that unintentionally developed that feature-disparity. Its not like we intentionally set out to make a weaker Mac version, but one can only do what one has time to do. There are only so many hours in a year. I'm just saying, even if you love Mac for other work, it is at least worth considering the PC platform if you are setting up a dedicated music machine.

 

Another alternative (not advocating this, merely mentioning the idea for consideration)-- When you get your new mac, you could get double the disk capacity and a retail version of winders and install boot camp and winders the first day the Mac comes home, before you install anything else. Then you could boot into winders for dedicated music and boot into Mac for everything else. I run VMWare fusion with retail winders installs on my MacPro and MacBook and that works fine for everything EXCEPT heavy-duty music or heavy-duty video type tasks. To run winders multitrack audio/midi software on yer mac, parallels or fusion is too slow emulated for real-time tasks, though its great for everything else. But if you direct boot into winders on a fast mac, you can't hardly buy a PC any faster than the fastest Macs, direct-booted into winders. OTOH, I still prefer the typical assortment of plugs that come with a nice PC. My quad core HP PC will read memory cards, has lots more USB ports, and lots more adaptable video out options compared to the newer macs paucity of built-in connectors and "oddball" connectors like thunderbolt. I like my older MacPro and MacBook lots better because they have more-standard connectors and work with lots more dirt-common peripherals, though they don't have "enough" connections IMO.

[2.ooohhh]

Another alternative (not advocating this, merely mentioning the idea for consideration)-- When you get your new mac, you could get double the disk capacity and a retail version of winders and install boot camp and winders the first day the Mac comes home, before you install anything else. Then you could boot into winders for dedicated music and boot into Mac for everything else. I run VMWare fusion with retail winders installs on my MacPro and MacBook and that works fine for everything EXCEPT heavy-duty music or heavy-duty video type tasks. To run winders multitrack audio/midi software on yer mac, parallels or fusion is too slow emulated for real-time tasks, though its great for everything else. But if you direct boot into winders on a fast mac, you can't hardly buy a PC any faster than the fastest Macs, direct-booted into winders. OTOH, I still prefer the typical assortment of plugs that come with a nice PC. My quad core HP PC will read memory cards, has lots more USB ports, and lots more adaptable video out options compared to the newer macs paucity of built-in connectors and "oddball" connectors like thunderbolt. I like my older MacPro and MacBook lots better because they have more-standard connectors and work with lots more dirt-common peripherals, though they don't have "enough" connections IMO.

 

I'll 2nd this idea, I purchased a pair of new mini's last year and immediatly installed a second HDs and maxed out the ram. Installed 64 bit Win 7 on one drive and OSX on the other. I travel with them to support some heavy duty GIS mapping with the red cross and have to say having the option to boot into and run software natively in either platform is invaluable. I would have kept my g5 mac pro forever but it was getting hard to find parts for it, now I'm glad I finally made the switch. Really hard to beat what the minis offer for thier size.

 

 

The old setup was much less portable, but was still happily chugging along as an entry level Final Cut Pro/Adobe CS4 workstation when I sold it.

 

[peejman]

I'm guess my method of sitting the cassette recorder on the floor in front of the amp isn't going to be adequate for your needs.  The kids yelling in the background makes a nice ambiance.  :rofl:    But I don't sing so 1 track works fine.  My wife always complains that I have a 1 track mind...  

 

I'm completely ignorant of the whole recording process but find it very interesting.  I'm learning lots of stuff.  :cool:

Edited March 27, 2013 by peejman

[maroonandwhite]

Sounds like a PC is the way to go then for me. I am not familiar with Macs anyways. I don't really have a budget set yet. I have to get my strat project finished first and go on vacation but once we get back I will be ready. Gotta talk it over with the wife too. I still haven't had a chance to research but honestly not including the cost of the PC i'd like to start out with around $1000. I know that is chump change when you look at high quality stuff but keep in mind that is just to get started. I would like to get a DECENT interface/preamp and some good software. A good mic will also be needed.

[maroonandwhite]

I'm guess my method of sitting the cassette recorder on the floor in front of the amp isn't going to be adequate for your needs.  The kids yelling in the background makes a nice ambiance.  :rofl:    But I don't sing so 1 track works fine.  My wife always complains that I have a 1 track mind...  

 

I'm completely ignorant of the whole recording process but find it very interesting.  I'm learning lots of stuff.  :cool:

:rofl:  I'm the same way. I kind of know how it works but not really. It's kind of like guns I guess. I will buy a Taurus first then once I get a feel for what I want buy a 1911/Glock/M&P.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

On the topic of audio software, if you compare feature bullet-points, there are scads of softwares that "on paper" look like they have equivalent feature sets. However, the user interface of how those equivalent features can vary. Some can be a matter of taste, as in one product's GUI "makes more sense" to the user than another product's different method of letting the user use the same features. Other variations (which can also be somewhat a matter of taste)-- Perhaps the audio graphic editor on one product has a big row of tool buttons. You have to click one button if you want to trim the audio head, and then click on another button if you want to trim the tail, and yet another button if you want to slide an audio region in time, or copy/paste a region, etc. Then another software might have the same features, but you would hold various modifier key combinations to access the various features, which might be much faster than having to click on a new tool button for every little different thing you want to do, but on the downside requires two hands, one on the mouse and one on the modifier keys, and if you don't use the software routinely maybe you would forget the key combinations or fall out of practice with them. Other audio editors don't need all the tool buttons or modifier keys because the mouse is position-sensitive. If you hover over the beginning of an audio clip, you can click and drag the head. Hover over the end of an audio clip to edit the tail. Click on a top or middle of a region to drag the clip in time or to another track, or hold shift and drag the middle of the region to graphically slide an "instant copy" of the audio clip to another time location or another track. Which is good and fast if you have good mouse skills, but maddening if you don't get along very well with a mouse.

 

Different folks appreciate the various different ways of accomplishing the same sets of tasks.

 

At the dawn of "affordable" digital audio there was a now-defunct company Opcode, who made StudioVision for Mac which was for a long time my favorite GUI for fast accurate editing. Lots of people love protools gui and features. I used protools some "in the old days" and the GUI seemed klunky to me back then, but millions of users can't be wrong and maybe its better now for my tastes, and apparently the GUI was always fine for lots of people's taste. Another early company still in existence is MOTU. After Opcode went out of biz I switched to MOTU Digital Performer for a long time. Digital Performer had/has (to my taste) just about as fast, precise and powerful GUI as Opcode StudioVision. Both were very feature-rich products even way back then. I got too busy for heavy recording about when mac switched to intel processors, and coincidentally about the same time the PCI card that went along with my MOTU 24 port audio interface didn't work on new macs and I would have had to spend a few hundred bucks updating Digital Performer and a couple of hundred bucks buying a new-version PCI card that would run in a new mac with my lovely MOTU audio interface, and apple quit putting ADB plugs on Macs so I would have had to spend $500 on a new USB MOTU MIDI Time Piece AV because overnight my old excellent ADB MIDI Time Piece was no longer usable as a MIDI interface, only as a live midi patcher and/or doorstop and/or paper weight. :) So I never got around to keeping a Digital Performer mac studio computer in-service, though I still admire the MOTU company and products.

 

Cakewalk Sonar is a powerful workable product, though for my taste the GUI is not so elegant, but the GUI is good enough to get work done in and practice makes perfect on any GUI. Steinberg Sequencers and Logic are also mature powerful products. Then there are many others that are quite capable enough to get-er-done. If one had time to spend several days trying each one, there would be one or more favorites that would rise to the top, though different people would have different favorites according to their taste and preferred way of working.

 

That Reaper program earlier mentioned-- They make Mac and PC versions, the feature set is pretty deep, and the GUI doesn't seem "unworkably klunky" in the times I've briefly experimented with it. For personal use the license is only $50 with no annoying copy protection to make you tear out your hair. I know some guys with rather large commercial studios who have switched from Protools to Reaper they like it so much.

 

I've had Reaper on the Mac a couple of years, look at it once in awhile. Now that I'm starting to play a little music again, think I'll install Reaper on the PC and record with it awhile and see how it goes. I've got lots more soft synthesizers and plugins on the PC and Reaper might play nicer with them on the PC, dunno without trying. A few days ago was toying with Reaper on the Mac, first time I tried Reaper MIDI feature. The way to set up external MIDI to a MIDI track to a soft synthesizer wasn't as "clear" in the GUI as with some softwares, and I only had a couple of soft synthesizers installed on the Mac. Reaper would drive an AudioUnit softsynth fine, but though it would display and appear to connect to a Mac VST softsynth, it didn't actually make any sound. VST is dirt-common on PC and "the odd man out" on Mac, so I'm expecting that Reaper will play nicer with the plugins I happen to already have, on the PC. However on the Mac in previous brief audio-only tests, Reaper seemed quite solid.

 

With Reaper, you could download it and test with your current Mac and your current Mac's built-in audio inputs/outputs without costing you one red cent. So you would only need to look for other software if you decided you absolutely hate Reaper. :)

 

With Protools, which is the closest thing to an "industry standard"-- A few years ago Digidesign's holding company bought M-Audio. M-Audio had been around a long time making "pretty good" inexpensive niche products. Most of the M-Audio audio interfaces come bundled with a "light" version of protools, and the M-Audio interfaces are decent enough and the price ain't bad, and the M-Audio interfaces will work with just about any software in addition to Digidesign software, so it might be an attractive option. Over the years, the actual Digidesign hardware is "high end" in quality and also price, and Digidesign is so self-centric that it can be maddening to try to use Digidesign hardware with non-Digidesign software. Digi just apparently doesn't care how bad their hardware sucks with other companies software. So the M-Audio route into ProTools makes sense on many levels.

 

For your stated purposes, you probably can get along fine with a stereo-in, stereo-out audio interface. However, unless every penny matters, it would be good to get a 24 bit capable interface. Often a firewire interface will work out better than a USB interface, because of several technical factors that would be boring to describe. Also, you could probably get away with not even buying a mixer or mic preamps, at least for starters, if you get an audio interface that has 1-- At least two, three-pin low-impedance Mic inputs 2-- Phantom Power so they will be compatible with condenser mics.

 

The other "low budget" alternative on the input side-- Get some kind of inexpensive small mixer and a "bare bones" inexpensive stereo line-level USB audio interface. But unless your little mixer has phantom power, you also will have to buy phantom power adapters to use all but the cheapest battery-powered condenser mics. So if one can get "all of the above" by spending a little more money on a "fairly nice" audio interface you might come out ahead.

 

There are so many brands of audio interface and lots of basically nice-sounding units. I've had a lot of different low price and medium price interfaces of different brands, because we would get em free or cheap, not for resale, for software compatibility testing. Some customer asks about compatibility with the XY brand interface, you can't give him a definitive answer without testing it. And when bug reports come in, one needs gear suitable to try to reproduce the bug.

 

Anyway, I haven't seen every interface available, not even close, but my current favorite "medium price" interface has been attached to the PC a couple of years. I just love the little thing. A FocusRite Pro 24--  http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SaffPro24/

 

It has real good sound as far as I can tell, very feature-rich for the money, and it is just rock-solid. Some interfaces (or their drivers) can be quirky and cause the computer to misbehave if you load to computer down with too much work. But not only is the FocusRite a great little hardware box, the drivers are rock-solid and has never made the computer misbehave when heavily loaded, and you really have to load the computer very rudely even to get occasional audio dropouts.

 

Maybe there are lots of other $300 interfaces even more gooder than that FocusRite, but I really like it.