Hi,
Following my other newbie thread, I have read several posts which mention external sound cards or external audio interfaces.
Can anyone explain in simple language what the benefit of one of these would be, as they appear to be designed for multi-instrument use and studio work?
Would I even notice the difference?!
Maybe I could be pointed to a simple beginners guide on the web somewhere.
Thanks again, and regards to you all.
Jeremy
indeed they are very useful for multi-instrument/studio work. but they are also like a dedicated mini-computer designed to deal with the demands of audio (in particular they'll do A/D conversion) that will take some of the load off your CPU. definitely a solid investment. i have a Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6, an inexpensive entry-level unit, and it's great.
The first and simplest answer is: latency. In most cases, an external audio interface will provide much better values than any internal sound card. The second is perhaps even simpler: better sound quality.
Sometimes life is simple!
Depending on your use case, you may or may not need an audio interface. If you're just using Pianoteq to practise piano playing, don't have much latency, or it's not to the point it bothers you, then you probably don't need one of those audio interfaces.
I mostly use a desktop computer with Pianoteq. It is connected to an amplifier, but first through a Focusrite 2i4 audio interface. If I connect it directly to the amplifier, I get unbearable static noise. So I need an audio interface, not only for Pianoteq, but simply to use my amplified sound system.
I have connected my digital piano to a laptop with just the onboard sound card, to another amplified system, which doesn't give me static, and it works fine, with not too much latency. I had to change some power settings, and what not, but the laptop works fine with Pianoteq now.
Here's an excellent article about this issue, though it doesn't cover the use case of piano practising. There's a link in the article to a video about what an audio interface is.