There are 3 basic hardware components to any computer recording rig:

1. A microphone
2. A preamp
3. An analog to digital converter

Obviously, you also need cables. Some products pack up #2 and #3 in one box - they’re called audio interfaces, and they usually connect to your computer via USB or Firewire. USB mics wrap up all three of these into one unit. I’ll get into why this can be an issue later on, but let’s first look at this stuff.

A microphone is what you stick in front of what you want to record. Duh.

A preamp is something that raises the mic’s output signal to where we can hear it. Usually 48v phantom power is supplied, sometimes there are low cuts, EQ, compressors, but basically a preamp is just a gain knob. Generally, the differences between cheap and expensive preamps, like cheap and expensive mics, are accuracy and noise. Making something louder is simple in theory, but incredibly difficult in practice.

An analog to digital converter (A/D converter, generally) is contained in any computer’s sound card. They also contain a digital to analog converter (D/A converter) so you can hook up some speakers or headphones and hear the signal. Like the preamp and mic, converting an analog signal to digital sounds simple, but isn’t. Again the main difference between your stock soundcard and the higher end ones is accuracy and noise. More accurate, less noisy. Don’t dog on it, by the way! You can still get some great recordings out of your stock card if you can’t afford a better one.

There is also bit depth and sample rate. Stock cards generally only work in 16 bits and 44.1 khz (CD quality). More expensive cards will allow you to record in 24 bits and 96 khz sample rate. What’s the difference? Mostly headroom and quality. You will end up mixing down tracks into 16/44.1 in the final stage of mixing. That doesn’t mean it ends up the same.

Let’s say you take two pictures of a landscape. One with a low quality, disposable camera at a low resolution, and another with a high quality camera at a very high resolution. The high quality picture is going to have more nuances, better colors, and most obviously of all, be bigger. If you shrink it down to the same size as the low quality picture, it will still look better.

That’s it for now, more to come next time!