Nice choice.
As long as you don't end up like this:

 

@DoubleTake I´m under the table, you just don´t see me

 

Any internal soundcard, better any interface up to $500.
U pay just for:
- external volume control,
- Mic preamp
- Hi-Z (if it does)

if you don't need anything of that, stay on internal soundcard

 

For that price range, I would go for either the Audient ID14 MkII or the SSL2. They can be picked up new on offer or used in that price range or less.

 

These look nice and had good reviews. I'd go the extra few $ and get the Duo though personally, mainly for the 1/4" outputs rather than the phono RCA outputs of the Uno.

 

For which application?
For Music production in the box? You can use any of them.
For streaming? Content creation? Get a Presonus REvelator. mediocre preamps, but useable. With real-time DSP (Presonus Fat Channel. HPF, Gate, EQ [Standart, passive, Vintage] Comp [Standart, FET, tube], limiter, Reverb special effect delay some others. loopback, and separate monitor channels.
If you want to record to create music. Save a bit more money.

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2023

kinda agree with this,
physical volume control is really nice, it's better to have digital volume control with physical knob than having mediocre monitor controller,
I went personally bit further and got RME ADI-2 DAC where I can physically control volume using remote, it's worth the cost for me, but it's borderline expensive,

mic preamps are literally most expensive thing on audio interfaces, and often makes biggest quality difference,
better audio interfaces often have ADAT I/(O) so they can be expanded further - here I'd just add that optical output on motherboard's internal soundcard is SPDIF, not ADAT, and only an output, so not usable to plug any preamp there,

Hi-Z instrument input(s) are nice, but with budget interfaces you can buy dedicated DI (+reamp) boxes separately to be more versatile in the long run, there's varied quality on Hi-Z instrument inputs, and it does affect the recorded signal noticeably when guitar impedance doesn't match,

with all that said, internal sound card won't give you hardware-accelerated ASIO driver, which is often crucial, because Microsoft hasn't been able to come up with own low latency audio drivers built into Windows (this is literally one of reasons people often use Macs for audio, with CoreAudio natively built in),
that is important for any recording tasks where latency matters, on the other hand if someone is just mixing or mastering, any casual DAC chip with suitable output connectivity is okay, because audio interface has no impact on audio rendered/bounced from your DAW, plugins will give you ton of latency, and nowadays computer processors are powerful enough on their own

 

Well, I'd argue that unless you hurl it off the top of tall buildings regularly the build quality is fine. If one needed something rack mountable and built like a tank for the rigours of touring one wouldn't be looking in this price range.

 

It's just economics, if you take away the sales tax and the profit for the manufacturer and retailer, there isn't much money left over to pay for components.

 

I'm not joking: Have a look at the Asus Xonar U7 MKII 7.1
It's about 80 bucks and has very decent asio drivers, gets down to very low latency values with low cpu overhead.
Audio quality is fine too.
I know, people are going roast me for posting a gamer soundcard. But I use it on the road when I travel light.
At home I love my RME pcie card, but I didn't want to spend what the babyface costs for that.
In the end I was very impressed.
You just have to switch off whatever fx the driver applet offers. thats all. from that moment on you have a lot of value for the buck.
//edit// I got that right you won't need mic inputs, didn't I?

 

There is a contest if you want better sounding/performing preamps and headphone amplification, which is why I suggested the Motu M2.

 

When I bought the Studio 24c, I gave no thought to its loopback feature since I wasn't sure what it was or if I'd need it. Famous last words! I've used it in Soundop to record sound effects off the internet as well as audio from YT. More importantly, I've used it in Cubase to live-record drum sequences from Playbeat and other samplers, with latency set to 3 ms so it's on time with the other stems.

 

I’m using my old MacBook late 2011 with internal sound card, and sometimes at my parents home motherboard h87m.
The biggest benefit of internal sound card - they all have powerful headphone amp.
I’m using Senhaiser Hd600 - and didn’t get any problem.

Also, latencymon - u can’t achieve same numbers with external sound card, especially with MacBook with bootcamp.
Internal sound card have also one big benefit - stable drivers (if we talking about Realtek)

Yes, it need some tweaks to works as it should.
The best persuasion I can provide is blind tests.

you can compare, or search, some DAC in internal and external sound card, results will be interesting.
I swear

(btw, I’m talking only about playback, not recording)

 

https://www.avshop.ca/images/motu/m2_1.png

The MOTU M2 does not have insert jacks so be aware of that along with the lack of Pad buttons. That's why I chose the Behringer over the Motu. MIDAS is also now owned by Behringer if you are into the higher end pro Audio live stuff.

The Midas ( consumer cut down versions)preamps are a little hot on these Behringer units so don't go full board on them. Been using this unit for a while and works great.

48+V
Inserts
Pad
Sysex messages over midi

Top features that I look for.

 

Last edited: Jan 16, 2023

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Last edited by a moderator: Feb 28, 2023