I know nothing about MIDI Interfaces except that I need to buy one in order to lay some vocals on a track. Im hoping that someone will be able to tell me what qualities one should look for when buying a MIDI Interface and if there any qualities I should be especially looking out for if my main purpose is to record vocals.

I dont know why you would want a MIDI interface for this purpose, MIDI has very little to do with vocals and you cant use MIDI to record vocals its not used for audio signals its used for interfacing signals, eg a keyboard telling a computer that the middle C has been depressed, or a sequencer telling a synth to play a certain note

Your after an Audio Interface, such as MOTU's products. However you could just get a new soundcard with analogue in's and outs and you'll prob get midi with it as well. Go to www.turnkey.co.uk and have a word with them. Hope this helps, Tom

If your serious about your vocals then your probably gonna need a mic pre-amp too to go with the soundcard!! and of course a decent mic.

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IN TRANCE WE TRUST

So, say if I wanted to get an audio interface that has 1 midi I/O, and a few other analog inputs, and I wanted to connect some instruments, would I need an extra midi interface box to connect the instruments to the audio interface in order for it to be recieved as a midi device in the computer, or could the audio interface do all that through midi to usb? and would those analog inputs I mentioned earlier be midi ready through usb also??

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"eh...kinda gamey!!" - Philip J. Fry

Lets get this straight


AUDIO is for AUDIO, SOUND


MIDI is for SYNTHESIZERS, DRUM MACHINES, SOUND MODULES, IE IT SENDS CONTROL DATA


Audio has nothing todo with midi. Sometimes audio interfaces have a midi port on them, which is really pointless unless you just have one midi instrument.

From what you describe you need a motu 896 or 2408. These have 8 audio inputs so you can record 8 mono sources at once or 4 stereo sources. A vocal track is mono, but a synthesizer is stereo unless it is very old.

True is said above about a Nice mic and a Preamp. A nice preamp costs $1000 and a nice mic cost $1000 if you really want todo vocals. You can get a digidesign M-box and it has 2 preamps and they are pretty damn good, I think it has a single midi port too.

But get it straight, midi is for sending control data and audio is for sound.

So just to sum things up..if I had an audio interface like audiophile, an ozone midi controller, and synthesizer and sequencing progs as well as a headphone monitor, i should be good..yeh? the rest I could prolly figure out..thanks for your input, mahaloz brah

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"eh...kinda gamey!!" - Philip J. Fry

so let me make sure ive got this straight. in order to record vocals i would need an audio interface rather than a midi interface, a mic and mic pre-amp, and someone also recommended that i buy a good audio editing program like soundforge. anything else? also, as far as audio interfaces go would you recommend the m-audio audiophile 2496 pci digital audio card? its the one ive seen the most frquently while ive been researching this and it looks like it has everything i need. please advise : )

I have the audiophile, it is great. If you want to record vocals, the Digidesign M-Box would be a better choice because it has pretty good mic preamps for a little box. That way you don't have to spend money on a preamp right now. Just get a decent mic, $200-500 and the m-box $400 new, you can get it used on ebay or something.

For recording, yah you need some software to record. I use cubase now because it can do midi and audio tracking. Soundforge just does audio editing. Honestly I don't see the point in Audio Editors: Why, because most sequencing programs have audio editors built in that are fine.

Protools, Cubase, Logic, Digital Peformer, Sonar all can edit audio just as good as sound forge and almost cost the same. If you want a cheap version of Cubase, the current verison out is SX3, you can get a academic discount for $500 or you could buy the last version used on ebay for $100 which is Sx 2

I use SX 2 and it works great. If you really want you can upgrade to Sx3 for a $75 registration change charge and then the $150 upgrade fee. Still for $225 you are getting the latest software package for a fraction of the cost.

Or if you want, I'll sell you my M-Audio Ozone which is a recording interface, has a MIDI output for your synths, and a nice ass MIC preamp built in. I'm just not using it as I have an M-Audio Delta 1010 with a Mackie 1402-VLZ PRO.