Audio Interface Question

Hey Everyone,

 

I'm coming back to music production after a lengthy break. Please forgive me if my question is a silly one. Incidentally, I used to post questions (often silly) on sonikmatter back in the day, if anyone remembers me.

 

My question is, I plan to record music which doesn't require any audio going into Logic; it's all software instrument based. So I currently have a Sennheiser HDV 820 headphone amp https://en-us.sennheiser.com/digital-headphones-amplifier-hdv-820 which has XLR outs. This means you can connect headphones and active monitors to it. Would it be okay to use this in place of an audio interface? Would issues such as latency and IO buffer size come into play here?

 

Thank you all for your time.

 

Kind Regards

Rich

I just read the instruction manual and it looks like it would work.

No issues. It should be absolutely fine in theory (I am no expert).

 

It's an expensive unit and has excellent D-A conversion. Latency occurs when audio is converted from analog to digital and then back from digital to analog.

You are only converting once. To be honest, latency is really only a problem when tracking. If you are recording a guitar and the audio you hear is later than the moment you played, it will throw off the performance.

 

Furthermore, the Sennheiser website says that it is compatible will ASIO which means they have written drivers for Windows (and is already compliant with Mac).

 

Many people, including myself, mix at high buffer settings with high latency (to save cpu), as it is not noticeable during playback, at least to my ears. I track at low buffer settings without cpu intensive plugins (usually a guitar sim). Even so, my latency isn't RME low due to the age of my computer.

 

You should be fine. Use what you have, upgrade when you have outgrown it.

If it doesn't work, buy an interface.

@pranaearth

Thank you very much for taking the time to read the manual, I appreciate it.

 

@mkruse

Thank you for the info regarding latency and conversion. That is very useful and I'll keep it in mind.

 

If I may ask a little follow-up question:

 

I'm going to purchase a pair of Genelec monitors to go with my headphones and amp. In terms of gain staging, what would be the optimal approach? Would it be better to set the amp volume at 100% and use the Genelec's volume control to set an acceptable level?

 

Thank you.

Nah, I would never put it at 100%.

Find a balance between headphones and speakers.

Thank you, triplets, that sounds like a sensible approach. Knowing me, I'd probably forget to adjust the volume before switching back to headphones.

Yeah, you don't wanna destroy your ears because of that.