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Good audio interfaces are essential to getting a good recording. Why use an audio interface and not your computer’s sound card? Because they are specialized for recording and therefore give much better results.

Audio interfaces are secondary external sound cards that plug in via USB (or Firewire / Thunderbolt) and have higher quality microphone preamps and analog-to-digital conversion chips, for a more pristine sound with far less noise.

Here are the top five interfaces under $200. To make this list, these had to have decent build and sound quality, be USB bus powered, have 48V phantom power for condenser microphones, and also a hi-z instrument input. Compared to interfaces above $200, these might be missing certain features or capabilities you need — so be sure to follow the Amazon links to read reviews and the description to get the full details.

1. Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 ($149 @ Amazon)

2. Mackie Onyx Blackjack ($149 @ Amazon)

3. Roland Tri Capture ($129 @ Amazon)

4. TC Konnekt 6 ($180 @ Amazon)

5. Steinberg CI2 ($115 @ Amazon)

Questions you should ask yourself when evaluating interfaces:

• How many mic inputs do I need? – One is enough if you’ll just be singing, recording a guitar amp or acoustic. Two will let you record in stereo, or sing and play acoustic at the same time. For recording drums, you will need at least 4 to 6 mic inputs, and no quality interfaces under $200 exist that have that many preamps.

• Do the mic preamps have enough gain for my mic? – If you have a condenser mic, all these interfaces should be fine. If you have a dynamic, beware that the SM57 needs 35-45dB for vocal and room-volume guitar applications, while the SM7B needs 55-70dB. Some cheaper interfaces only go up to 35dB.

• Can it handle my guitar without clipping? – While all these interfaces have an instrument input, not all can handle the hot signal of high output humbuckers or active pickups, even with the interface input volume turned down all the way. It will cause unwanted distortion as the internal preamp runs out of headroom. If that ever happens to you, you can use a DI box, which connects your guitar to the mic input instead of the limited hi-z input. Or get a different interface that can handle it, such as the more expensive (beyond $200) Roland Quad Capture or one of the Line 6 Studio GX guitar interfaces.

• Do I need monitor speaker outputs on my interface? – Not all interfaces have additional outputs for connecting studio monitors. They all have headphone outputs though. If you get serious about recording, you will need studio monitors. I recommend the Equator D5 Studio Monitor Speakers because they sound incredible for the price.

• How does the headphone/monitor output sound? – Some interfaces left off this list scrimped on the headphone outs. One of them couldn’t handle low-impedance headphones and had the bass totally drop out when listening. These ones below are fine, but one thing you get with higher quality

• What’s the maximum bit depth and sample rate? – For most modern recording, you really don’t need more than 24 bit 48kHz recording. Cheaper interfaces might max out at 44.1khz and 16 bit, which is alright for demos but 24 bit is really the way to go, you get more dynamics and headroom and a lower noise floor.

If you like your coffee and green tea but cannot do caffeine, don’t fret. Here are two healthy alternatives:

1) Starwest Botanicals Organic Barley Grass Powder

Add a teaspoon to a cup of hot water, instant green tea taste without the caffeine. Did you know that the most expensive green tea tends to taste like grass clippings, with a fresh sweet aroma? Well, barley grass isn’t as grassy, but it has a fresher “premium green tea” taste than cheaper green teas. It is not as bitter, more on the level of white tea. Also, even decaffeinated green tea still has caffeine in it, but barley grass does not.

2) Traditional Medicinals Organic Dandelion Root Tea

With some cream and sugar, this can pass for average light strength coffee. For those who absolutely cannot do caffeine, and are craving coffee, this is the next best thing. Use boiling water and put a lid on your mug to steep for 10 minutes for stronger taste. Dandelion root is also a known liver tonic.

To get photos and videos off your iOS device and save them to your computer:

1) First, plug in your iPod, iPad, or iPhone.

2) Then, go to your computer’s Applications folder and launch the Image Capture app.

The app will show your iOS device in the left pane, and all your photos and vids in the right.

3) Select the photos you want to transfer and drag them to your desired folder. Alternatively, you can select your destination in the “Import to” drop down (in the lower toolbar of Image Capture), and then click the ‘import’ or ‘import all’.

If you delete a file within Image Capture, it will delete it on your device. So this is a good place to clear up some room on your device.

Aside from Image Capture, which comes free with Mac OS X, you can also use iPhoto, which is part of the paid iLife bundle. iPhoto has more editing and organization features, like an iTunes for pictures, but Image Capture is faster and no frills.

1) Buy quality gear that you can feel proud to own, even if you have to save up longer and buy it one piece at a time. Cheap gear quickly loses resale value and will bring you regret and frustration in the long run.

2) As long as it has the features you absolutely need, it’s better to get a higher quality thing with fewer features, than a lower quality thing with lots of extra features. In other words, better to get a very good single channel audio interface than, say, a 12-channel mixer with tons of knobs, if that’s all you really need.

3) Research thoroughly before buying: the manual, user reviews, and forum threads. Look for cut corners, missing features you might need, and general shortcomings.

4) Instead of having a poor performance or poor sounding audio source and expecting to fix it later with plugins, get the source sounding as good as possible first, so that you need as little processing as you possible. Reason is that trying to fix things with plugins introduces artifacts that take away from the realism.

5) Beware of how your recording space sounds — the echoes, reverb, reflections, etc… of the room. A small room with a metallic echo, or a microphone placed too close to a wall, will make even the most expensive of microphones sound bad. Learn about acoustic treatment: hanging up blankets or mattresses, reflection filters, portable vocal booths, or using acoustic foam, bass traps, diffusion panels. Acoustics have more impact on your recording tone than the brand of microphone used.

6) Condenser microphones are more sensitive to room acoustics as they pick up a wider field of sound. Dynamics are less sensitive to that, but they also sound a bit more up close and stuffy on vocals. Dynamics are great on loud blaring sources like electric guitar cabs, trumpets, snares, and so on. Condensers are best for acoustic guitar, vocals, piano.

7) How you position the mic relative to the audio source, and how both of those are positioned in the room, is very important. Mic position relative to your mouth or the guitar amp speaker, that’s something you’ll really have to play with. Do many tests to see what sounds best.

8) Pick five or ten songs from your music collection that you think have the best production sound similar to what you’re going for. As you mix, constantly refer back to those songs to see how you’re matching up. Make sure volume is adjusted so that your song and theirs are equal volume.

9) Beware of ear fatigue. That’s where after several hours of listening, your ears get numbed to certain frequency ranges and your sense of hearing is totally inaccurate. Most likely you’ll be unable to hear lower bass and upper mids and trebles, and will attempt to turn them up in the mix to compensate, only to realize the next day that the mix sounds scooped and harsh. When your ears are fresh, listen to an awesome sounding professional song … then as you mix, refer back to that song … when it starts sounding dull, you know your ears are shot for the day. Give it a break. For severe ear fatigue it can take up to a week to recover to 100%.

10) Studio monitors must be your single most valuable investment. Do not skimp on those. If you are serious about recording, you must get good, flat spectrum, accurate studio monitor speakers. They are your microscope into the mix. If they are off, your mix will be off. Good monitors are ones that, if what you make sounds good on them, it’ll sound good as can be on everything else. For mixing bass, since subwoofers are expensive and room acoustic resonance will make them inaccurate unless your room has bass traps everywhere, you may need to invest in some Audio Technica ATH-M50s headphones to accurately judge the bass.

This will allow you to buy studio monitors in the 5-6” cone range (way cheaper than the 8” ones) and not worry about having to mix bass only on those. You can also mix on the Audio Technica cans, but speakers will give you better judging of relative volume levels and not be as ear fatiguing. The cheapest good monitors are the Equator D5 for $300+shipping per pair, which is cheaper than many monitors for each speaker. If you can’t afford good monitors, then mix on the best you have, and then listen on car stereos, pc speakers, anything you can find to see what you need to fix. But I swear, good monitors are the key to good music production.

11) On microphones. My personal preferences.

Dynamics: SM57, Sennheiser e906, or Audix i5 on guitar cab. SM7B on vocals.

Condensers on vocals and everything else: Audio Technica AT2020, AT4050, AKG C214 or C414, Studio Projects CS5, Kel HM-7U.

Beware that dynamic mics need a lot of gain (40-65dB) and some cheaper audio interfaces aren’t powerful enough. Also, condensers require 48V phantom power and not all audio interfaces have those either.

12) Audio interfaces. If you’re not recording a whole band or a drum set, all you need is a 2 channel USB interface. The cheap unreliable ones are under $75. Passable are $75-$165. Decent are $165-$225. Good are $225-$350. Very good are $350-750. If you want an all around good interface for under 300 with 2 mic inputs, check out the Roland Quad Capture.