Why hardware when I can just use software and built in stuff ?

TheSaka24

TheSaka24

Member
I am watching some videos where guys explain how these big mixers work and what do they feature(effects,eqs...)
And I am wondering, why would I ever need it when I have all in FL Studio or any other daw ?
Or why people use external sound cards when you can plug most stuff if computer ?
For example I have USB studio microphone and why would I ever need a external sound card when I have it already in computer and I can use Asio4all driver, why ?
 
Last edited:
TheSaka24 said:
I am watching some videos where guys explain how these big mixers work and what do they feature(effects,eqs...)
And I am wondering, why would I ever need it when I have all in FL Studio or any other daw ?
Or why people use external sound cards when you can plug most stuff if computer ?
For example I have USB studio microphone and why would I ever need a external sound card when I have it already in computer and I can use Asio4all driver, why ?
Click to expand...

I don't use a hardware mixer (to mix at least - I have one used as a patchbay for synths/drum machines) anymore - but I've never owned a mixer of any real quality...
I use a USB interface and a mic - I've used a USB mic - the quality does not compare. You can't get the same quality on a USB mic.
I use a focusrite soundcard right now - it's driver is infinitely better than asio4all and the in-built soundcard in my laptop. Both the pres and DA are of much better quality and the focusrite card and its driver process audio much more efficiently (taking load off my CPU)

Quality. That's why.
 
Big mixers are somewhat redundant now due to large track counts and rather than have an expensive mixer comprising of a lot of cheap channels a lot of people opt for a single high quality channel strip or two, better pre-amps, EQ and also compression/peak limiting and that's something you can't do after you have already recorded the distortion into the computer....
 
Well, back in the days, there was no software to produce proper music, there was only super heavy gear that is having still its characteristics which are popular still today, like super nice analogue sounds from real hardware synthesizers.

But today´s software is so advanced and well produced, that they offer everything you need to produce proper music without any hardware gear, except a computer, ofc :D

There are 2 reasons why people still use hardware gear today:
1. its unique sound
2. cause it makes more fun playing with these toys than a simple software :P

If you wanna use a microphone, people still recommend to have an Audio-Interface as well, so you can pre-adjust the signal that goes into your computer, as well as your input latency will be way better than the crapy default sound card that comes with a "usual" mainboard :D

Also your ASIO-Power becomes better (still not getting all of the stuff that´s going on there :D) for example if you have way too many VSTs and effects and stuff like that, your ASIO-usage goes up, if it hit´s a certain point, your sound starts to crackle and some effects don´t even react anymore, so you can actually increase the buffer size in your ASIO-Driver and as far as I know, a good audio card can handle that ASIO usage better than usual software stuff like ASIO4ALL, not 100% sure though :D
 
Yeah that's about right and one of the reasons I don't recommend USB mics is because it's only like 1/4 of a basic audio interface, that is to say it's an audio interface with just a single input thus requiring an additional audio interface for monitoring, usually on-board audio using ASIO4ALL which can introduce problems like latency......USB mics are ok for pod casting but you can't do de-essing or whatever on the way in with them....that is unless you are talking about taping a pencil to it.
 
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