KVR Audio

Moniatre · Post by **Moniatre** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 8:05 pm

Hey guys, sorry for the nooby question but I've been asking myself this question all the time. I've spent quite a long time mixing stuff and I do have an audio interface as well as studio headphones (no proper monitors yet). But most of the time I just plug my headphones into the mini jack on my laptop without using the interface. I've read loads of times that it's important for your listening experience to have a proper interface between your HP or monitors and the pc/laptop. But what difference exactly does it make in terms of the sound? Thanks very much!

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 8:16 pm

If you have decent monitors and interface in a good room, then your mixes should translate better to other listening environments. If not chances are your mixes will not translate well to other systems.

rod_zero · Post by **rod_zero** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 8:33 pm

Well the audio interface has different converters than the computer, are they better? maybe, I think that listening to differences in D/A converters is quite hard.

Using monitors is way more important.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 9:28 pm

What I notice when I compare, using my DT770M headphones, the (presumably not great) audio interface on my Acer Chromebook with my Echo AudioFire 4 that I have on my music PC is the audibly different level of background hum. The Echo has none that I can hear. The Acer... well, it's clearly there. That hum will mean you're not hearing your mix clearly, regardless of the next component in the chain. I don't know how well the on-board chipsets that most PCs come with perform in terms of noise but I wouldn't expect them to do all that well - isolation from the other close components is unlikely to be a high priority - but possibly better than a cheap laptop.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 10:29 pm

The external audio interface will have better converters and lower noise. But an interface is much more important in terms of providing low latency monitoring, not to mention i/o options.

d-s-m · Post by **d-s-m** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:20 am

Yeah I get loads of floor noise when I use my headphones plugged straight into my laptop, I get none when I use my interface.

Also the sound is much more clear and detailed, also much lower latency....etc.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:49 am

There are very good tools that can show the difference, for instance Rightmark Audio Analyser (RMAA)
http://audio.rightmark.org/manifest.shtml

Download that and install. First measure the loopback of your main audio interface for reference. Then plug the headphone out of your laptop into the input of your interface and let it measure and compare that.

Expected results: built-in headphone out has higher noise floor,more harmonic distortion, less flat frequency range, less dynamic range, in short: lower quality. But now you have exact scientific objective measurements to back that up.

enduser282 · Post by **enduser282** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 4:27 pm

Practically you should be able to hear errors and imperfections in your mix, but that's the whole monitoring and room combo. You need good converters and speakers to reveal as much detail as possible, when you improve things and it sounds good at those, going back to worse speakers it will sound better too.
In other words it affects your decisions during mixing.

Panphobia · Post by **Panphobia** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:35 pm

I started out with a m audio firewire 410, which I thought was very good. Eventually I switched to a presonus interface, and there was a world of difference. The presonus sounded so much better that I was floored. So in my experience quality D/A converters make a big difference.

What difference does a proper Audio-Interface make when listening to my mix?