[Gtrfinger]

I'm about to start taking my own recordings a lot more seriously and having used the same audio interface for the late ten years without any discernable problems, I was wondering if, not for the first time, some members could give me some advice.

I was talking to my boss yesterday about eyesight. He said he had gone without glasses for years thinking his eyesight was fine until he had had an eye test, in his sixties, and was prescribed some spectacles. All of a sudden he was looking at the world with wonder, thinking "why did I not notice this before? How could I have gone without these?!"

I'm curious, it may well be the same with audio interfaces. That is to say, I'm not noticing a big problem, I've sort of got used to the sound though it's not quite up to the standard I now want. I don't want to purchase a new audio interface if the sound quality improvement is not noticeable. On the other hand, it may well be that a new audio interface will produce the same response as it did in my boss with his new glasses, "Why on earth did I wait till now to buy a new one?"

I've been using an E-mu 0404 USB, for which the audio on my new windows 10 laptop had to be tinkered with quite a bit to get to work (as the word was that they were not compatible - well they are, but you have to look carefully at some advice on the net). You can hear the results on my YouTube channel.

I've heard it said that the converters now are a lot better than they were ten years ago, but how does that transform into specifications? In other words, is there a value that I can refer to on the specifications of different interfaces that will indicate which are better than others? As far as I can tell, they all allow recording at 24bit/192kHz.

So, my question is, what do I look out for in terms of specifications to compare between interfaces, or should I just stick with what I've already got? I'm recording solo classical guitar and steel string fingerstyle. I've been writing this project from scratch for some years. Cheers.