Home Recording Equipment: Signal Flow

 By Mosses Itkonen

Signal flow is an important part of any home music studio. A creative thought goes from your mind to electrical signal through various components of your home music studio. how they work together and relate to one another is important. If you wrap your head around signal flow, all the inputs and outputs and how they relate to one another you will be in more creative control of your home music studio. When it comes to troubleshooting this also applies because you can improve how your studio works, adding new equipment and making it easier to transfer your ideas into recordings faster.

Using a simple set up with a computer, audio interface, speakers and microphone I can show you how to understand a home music studio signal flow. the truth is it is about inputs an outputs, that simple. Knowing how inputs and outputs work together in your recording chain will give you the freedom to add and multiply equipment in your home music studio and keep you in control of the creative process

Having a creative idea is just the start, that creative idea leaves as an analogue sound wave, lets say from a guitar and IN a microphone. That signal then comes OUT the end of the microphone cable and IN an audio interface or microphone preamp. At this early stage you will connect your microphone cable to the input of the audio interface. Now that the signal has made its way into the audio interface the signal needs to leave OUT of your speakers so you connect your speakers to the output of the audio interface. Most home recording equipment have multiple inputs and outputs so that you can put equipment in different places in the signal flow .

The first thing an audio interface does is convert analogue sound waves into a digital format so computers can understand. The second function of an audio interface is to again flip the digital audio into analogue so that speakers can playback audio from your computer. The reason why I say to go the audio interface route is because of the sample rates they use to convert analogue to digital and digital to analogue. This sample rate makes a big difference for quality recordings.

The two outputs of an audio interface makes it possible to playback audio from your recording software as well as being able to connect the output of the audio interface to the USB or firewire input of your computer

I realize this is a very simplistic example but if you learn to move around your studio thinking about the IN and OUT concept you can add to your home music studio, set up and experiment connecting the inputs and outputs of all types of gear together and putting you in control.

Looking to buy the best Home Recording Equipment? Get the low down now with our comprehensive Home Music Studio overview.

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