notato8

25 minutes ago, John Vere said:

I made a short video on the topic that will answer all your questions. The M4 was a great choice for me, but it might not be the best for you. It's a common mistake to buy an interface just because 20 other people use it and recommend it. Just to find out after you buy it that it's missing an important feature that you need. And just to make it clear, most all audio interfaces have at least 1 pre amp. This is covered in the video. 

 

Hey John, thanks for the video. I ended up purchasing the Motu M2 and I feel confident in my decision. I think having two combo ports is perfect for me as a solo artist/hobbyist, and hopefully it shouldn't hold me back if I start to have higher demands.

27 minutes ago, scook said:

It does not matter how the MIDI data gets to the DAW, the audio from the soft synths return to the interface just like the audio from a mic or guitar when monitoring through the DAW.   To hear the synth audio while playing make sure the instrument/MIDI track has input echo enabled.

That actually makes sense, I don't know how I didn't realize that. I had tried this setup with the interface and there was latency from the MIDI instruments, but I switched to WASAPI Shared driver mode and the latency is no longer noticeable.

3 hours ago, tecknot said:

You got your MIDI covered with the adapter, so it just depends on how many MIDI devices you want to incorporate into your setup.

47 minutes ago, 57Gregy said:

An audio interface with MIDI ports will allow you to connect your keyboard to the interface and never have to worry about some MIDI driver that may need updating periodically.

Thanks so much everyone, I got more insight than I ever could have hoped for. I actually just found out my brother has a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, so he let me experiment with it to see if it worked for my setup and it was exactly what I needed! The only issue was that it doesn't have MIDI in; I could work around this by monitoring my keyboard's actual audio while still recording MIDI input directly through my laptop, but I would much rather be able to hear whatever midi instrument I'm playing instead.

As far as MIDI goes, the best options I was able to find for under $200 were the PreSonus AudioBox USB 96, PreSonus AudioBox iTwo, M-Audio Air 192/6,  Behringer UMC204HD, and Motu M4. Are any of these a particularly good/bad choice, and did I miss any other good options? Thanks again! I'm hoping to buy as soon as possible.

Hi, thanks tecknot! Glad to know I was on the right track, I do still have some questions.

1 hour ago, tecknot said:

A preamp is not an audio interface.  They are usually one or two channels; however, higher quality audio interfaces do have preamps.

How can I determine if I'll need a built-in preamp or not? From what I could gather, they are mostly necessary for microphone recording, which I don't plan to do.

42 minutes ago, tecknot said:

You don't necessarily need an audio interface with MIDI since you can buy a controller or keyboard with MIDI over USB.  However, consider an interface with MIDI if you have an older synth or keyboard/controller that has MIDI but not USB.

My keyboard has MIDI in/out ports, but no USB, so I use an adapter cable to connect both MIDI to my laptop's USB. Would this plug into the interface instead, or would I still plug it directly into my laptop?

48 minutes ago, tecknot said:

There are a few other factors that can affect latency, so having a "good" audio interface (with excellent ASIO drivers) will not guarantee low latency.

What do you mean by "excellent ASIO drivers?" I wasn't aware of the existence of anything other than ASIO4ALL! (which is what I tried using, and had used successfully on my last computer)

49 minutes ago, tecknot said:

Other factors can be your CPU, HDD speed, memory, buffer settings and interface (USB, firewire or thunderbolt), not to mention any plugins you may use.

I assume that my computers other specs should be good enough considering it is a gaming laptop (Ryzen 7, 16GB of memory, and some SSD). I don't have thunderbolt, but my ports are USB 3.2 Gen 1 at best.

I would like to record piano audio on my laptop (and potentially also use my computer as a guitar amp), but I have been unable to do so without output latency in Cakewalk while input monitoring. I disabled audio effects while attempting to record, which did not fix the issue. I also tried using ASIO, but I couldn't get any audio to output through my speakers, despite successfully doing so on a previous computer. These issues, combined with the fact that I'm using a gaming laptop, have led me to believe that my integrated audio is not powerful enough even for my most basic goal. (of course, I may be completely wrong about this and just doing something wrong). I should also mention this isn't a Cakewalk-specific issue.

To my understanding, what I need is a preamp/audio interface/USB sound card (I don't know if these mean different things)? Assuming that's even the right move for me, this brings up a some questions:

1) Can/should I use an audio interface for MIDI, or is using USB fine for that?

2) Would I still have the benefits of using an audio interface while using Bluetooth headphones or my laptop's built-in speakers?

3) With a good enough audio interface, would I be able to monitor guitar input after running it through amp software, without latency?

I'd appreciate any insight, I'm pretty lost on this topic and I'm only doing this as a hobbyist so hopefully my problem isn't too complicated!