Haha!
Back in the day you used to have to buy a very expansive tape deck. (5 or 6 figures) Learn the maintenance and calibration. Tape cost $40 - $80 a minute depending on the speed you used.
Only 30 years ago the only choice for AD or DA converters that worked reasonably well cost $1000 per channel.
That you can get 8 - 16 channels of mic preamp, AD conversion, and some digital I/O in addition for $300 - $1000 now and record for free to hard drives with a computer is happiness and light X1000!
PS. The expense is in the analog circuits and analog stages of the AD and DA circuits. Look up an SSL console if you want to see what "expensive" really means!
There is a lot of frugal minded advice in this thread. The audio interface is a bullet point part of a recording system.
|