Find out how to choose the best sound card for recording, which features are essential and which ones are optional.
Whether you’re a musician, a youtuber or a podcaster, a good sound card for recording is undoubtedly one of your main allies. After all, it’s impossible to produce – and reproduce – quality content without an optimal system, useful for recording a sound source such as a guitar or our voice on a PC.
This is because, for those who don’t know, it’s a component that, used together with a computer, amplifies its potential when connected to the outside world. In a simpler way, we could say that the sound card is an expansion card that allows us to record an instrument and store the audio files created in our device.
A sound card for recording: what is it and what is it for
A sound card for recording, possibly external and connected to our PC via USB, has the function of converting an analog signal into digital, and then reconvert the signal into analog for listening. Ascertained its nature of direct responsibility for how the sound is managed in all its aspects, it is important to remember that its uses are disparate: we can record a voice, we can connect speakers or headphones, or we can combine it with a software to act as a bridge with our MIDI keyboard and play freely. The potential applications are really vast, but it is still easy to identify certain features that a PC sound card should have. Before analyzing in detail, and without expiring too much in technicalities, it is important to point out that a good tool should support the 24bit/48,000Khz, considering that at this sampling rate the sound is reproduced in a balanced way.
How to choose the best sound card for PC
If it is true that there are those who are satisfied with any sound and those who are always looking for the best, in the same way it is quite useful to establish precise parameters with which to identify the best sound card in circulation. The first one can only be the latency, which is the time it takes the system to process the signal, and that must be kept low to ensure high performance. Then we have the audio inputs and outputs, of variable number, as well as the presence or absence of MIDI ports – necessary in case you want to connect a MIDI keyboard or a controller of this type. Another aspect that shouldn’t be underestimated is of course the price, keeping in mind that this kind of item can cost from less than 20 euros up to a thousand – and even more!
Having examined all the aspects, an excellent sound card for recording at an interesting quality and price ratio is the Presonus AudioBox iTwo, which stands out for the solidity of the materials used and for the low latency. A good alternative is the Steinberg UR22 MKII, cheap and fast, as well as the Behringer UMC202HD. If you are looking for a sound card with a nice design, good preamplifiers and two inputs, you could go for the Scarlett 2i2, while the selection ends with the AIR 192 by M-Audio, with a much higher investment but unattainable for the people in the musical world.