Do you need an Audio Interface if you only do Electronic Music?

A reader wrote in with a question:

“Do you need an audio interface if you only do electronic music?”

The answer is, as always:

It depends.

At first, I thought the question was kind of weird. Well, of course, you need one.

But after thinking it over, there are instances where you don’t need one. At least not yet.

Producing Electronic Music in the Box

On one hand, you can easily go without an interface if you’re only interested in making music inside your audio software and you’re only going to listen to what you’re doing on headphones.

In that case, knock yourself out. No need to buy an audio interface for electronic music production.

Technically, you can still produce music without an interface. And you might actually get pretty far without it.

But you’re creating severe limitations for yourself.

You Still Need an Audio Interface for Electronic Music Production for Checking Your Mixes

If you go without an audio interface, then you won’t have any way of plugging in a good pair of monitors to really listen to your mixes on speakers.

Headphones can only go so far, and even if you can get a good headphone mix, you need to check if your mix translates to other speaker systems. It’s much harder to do this if you’re only mixing on headphones because they give you a skewed image of what music sounds like in a room.

You Need an Audio Interface for Recording

If you don’t have an audio interface, forget about recording vocals. Or any other acoustic instrument for that matter.

Without an audio interface, you won’t have anywhere to plug those things in.

It’s harder to know how your mixes translate to other systems without mixing them in a room. You can double-check your mixes on other systems around your house and in your car, but it’s time-consuming and inconvenient.

My Recommendation?

In the long run, you do need an interface. You can get away with a good pair of headphones and Reason to begin with. But if you want to do any serious mixing, investing in a cheap audio interface and some nice reference monitors is definitely the way to go.

If you’re looking for a cheap audio interface, check out this guide on the best audio interfaces you can use for electronic music production under $200. Any of them will get you started off on the right track.

What do you guys think? Have you gone without an interface while still producing music on your computer? Leave a comment and let me know.

Image by: furibond

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