Audio Interface

A hardware device which acts as the physical bridge between the computer’s workstation software and the recording environment. An audio interface may be connected to the computer (via USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire, Dante, AVB or other current communication protocols) to pass audio and MIDI data to and from the computer. Audio Interfaces are available with a wide variety of different facilities including microphone preamps, DI inputs, analogue line inputs, ADAT or S/PDIF digital inputs, analogue line and digital outputs, headphone outputs, and so on. The smallest audio interfaces provide just two channels in and out, while the largest may offer 30 or more.