If you’re a guitarist looking to record your music and share your six-string skills with the world, you’ll need one of the best guitar audio interfaces to get the job done. For the uninitiated, an audio interface is a device which allows your guitar to communicate with your computer, allowing you to record your playing and even flavor your tone with effects conjured from inside your computer.
Once upon a time, great-quality guitar interfaces were only accessible inside souped-up recording studios, but thanks to a slew of technological advancements in recent years and a market shift favoring hobbyist and at-home guitarists, such devices are now widely available, and accessible to players with a variety of budgets.
But with a greater number of options comes greater difficulty in choosing the best guitar audio interface for your needs. Fortunately, here at Guitar Player we’re no strangers to guitar recording, and we’ve compiled a list of the top audio interfaces available in today’s market.
We’ve taken into account a range of factors, including sound quality, ease of use, and overall value for money, so you’re certain to find the perfect interface for you.
Best Guitar Audio Interfaces: Our Top Picks
If an audio interface with a minimal learning curve and setup time sounds good to you, we’d highly recommend the Focusrite Scarlett Solo. For its tantalizing affordability and compact form factor, it boasts impressively crystal-clear sound quality, plus its easy-to-understand user interface and USB connectivity render it the ultimate plug-and-play guitar recording solution.
If you’ve got a little more budget to play with, at the other end of the spectrum sits the Universal Audio Apollo Twin Mk II, a swanky high-end interface with unparalleled sound quality and a selection of extra bells and whistles – perfect if you’re looking to take your recording game to the next level.
Best Guitar Audio Interfaces: Product Guide
One of the most highly-regarded guitar audio interfaces on the market today, the 2-in-6-out Universal Audio Apollo Twin Mk II offers professional-grade sound quality and advanced features that position it as one of the best choices for serious musicians and recording engineers.
Chief among its features is Universal Audio’s Unison technology, which allows for communication between the analog front end and a host of Unison-driven plugins on the UAD plugin platform, which features meticulously crafted digital emulations of everything from mic preamps to guitar amps and effects. In Layman’s terms, Unison offers access to a wealth of studio quality analog-style sounds in the digital domain.
Additionally, the interface comes with Universal Audio’s proprietary DAW, LUNA, which might tip the scales in its favor if you’re still deciding on the right recording software for you.
Enter most home studios – or even professional studios, for that matter – and it’s highly likely you’ll spot one of these little red boxes. The Focusrite Scarlett Solo’s sky-high popularity owes to its alluringly compact form factor and easy-to-understand user interface, as well as its pristine audio clarity despite an uber-affordable price tag.
The Scarlett Solo is the definition of no-frills minimalism, with single XLR and ¼” TRS inputs allowing for simultaneous guitar and vocal recording – perfect for any singer-songwriter – while a direct monitor switch allows you to monitor your recordings with next to no latency.
Now in its 3rd generation, the Scarlett Solo features 24-bit/192kHz converters and an ultra-low-noise preamp, promising faithful guitar recordings at all times.
Additionally, the Scarlett Solo comes with a bundle of software, including Ableton Live Lite, a three-month Pro Tools Artist subscription, the Focusrite Red Plugin Suite, and more. With its compact design and high-quality features, the Focusrite Scarlett Solo is an excellent choice for guitarists who want to take their recording skills to the next level on a budget.
Personally, the Scarlett Solo has been my interface of choice for several years; the combination of its simplicity and superior sound quality is hard to beat, in my opinion.
Read the full Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen review
A kitted-out audio interface designed specifically for guitarists, the IK Multimedia Axe I/O represents a step up from the Focusrite Scarlett Solo and Positive Grid Riff, but still boasts a relatively accessible price tag.
Delivering pristine sound quality and exceptional performance thanks to its high-quality preamps, 24-bit/192kHz resolution and low latency, the Axe I/O is touted by IK Multimedia as “a truly high-end audio interface for everybody”.
In terms of connectivity, the Axe I/O sports two line inputs as well as two XLR mic inputs – perfect if you’re experimenting with multi-mic guitar amp recording – in addition to five outputs for plugging in with headphones, monitors, amplifiers and more.
Additionally, the Axe I/O also sports a unique Z-Tone impedance-adapting circuit – which allows you to adjust the input impedance of the preamp to match the tone of your guitar – as well as a built-in tuner. If you’re looking for an all-in-one guitar audio interface, this is a strong contender.
As we live in this age of digital innovation, many audio interfaces on the market sport modern design aesthetics to match. But if you’re a guitarist looking for the more old-school, tactile music recording experience, the SSL 2+ is the choice for you.
If you’re at all familiar with the look of some of Solid State Logic’s mixing desks featured in some of the most sought-after recording facilities in the world, you’ll recognize the same aesthetic in the pots of the SSL 2+.
With two XLR combo inputs – in which you can plug both XLR cables and ¼” guitar cables – six outputs and a MIDI in/out, the SSL 2+ makes for a pro-feeling desktop audio interface.
But where the SSL 2+ really excels beyond its competitors is in its 4K buttons. These, inspired by SSL’s 4000 E console, allow you to add some 4kHz sheen and sparkle to your audio on the fly.
If you’re hunting for a guitar audio interface on a higher budget, the Apogee Symphony is one of the ultimate options available to you. This high-end model packs Apogee’s legendary rack-mount Symphony I/O Mk II interface into a smaller, desktop-appropriate form factor, offering the appealing combination of pro-grade sound quality and lightweight portability.
Under the hood, the Symphony Desktop features some of the industry’s most respected and sought-after analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog converters and mic preamps – as well as 24-bit/192kHz resolution for an unrivalled sound experience.
In addition to its revered internal components, the Symphony Desktop features a futuristic aesthetic, with a single minimalist control knob and an immersive touch screen interface, offering the best of both tried-and-tested vintage sound quality and forward-thinking UX.
Audient desks and equipment sit in some of the world’s most renowned recording facilities, so it’s safe to say the British company knows a thing or two about audio signal processing. And while some of Audient’s pro-level gear carries similarly pro-grade price tags, the Audient iD4 MkII is an audio interface any guitarist can get their hands on.
Priced under $200, the 2-in-2-out USB C-powered iD4 MkII houses Audient’s decades of technological and design expertise, featuring an instrument DI input for your guitar, in addition to a mic preamp so you can record the speaker cone of your guitar amp, too. The latter also features a phantom power switch, so it’s compatible with both dynamic and condenser mics.
The interface also sports a smart scroll wheel – allowing you to physically adjust settings within your software – as well as a selection of outputs for playback monitoring, including two monitor speaker outputs and dual headphones outputs.
If you’re a solo guitarist – and occasional collaborator – looking for an all-in-one interface solution, the iD4 is one of the best value for money options you’ll find.
The most compact offering on this list, the Positive Grid Riff is an interface designed specifically for guitar players, so if all you want to do is record your guitar playing with no additional hassle, you won’t go far wrong here.
Featuring 24-bit/96kHz high-resolution audio – so your recordings are laid down as intended – the Riff measures about the size of a smartphone, with a plug-and-play USB design and sleek, modern-looking digital user interface, courtesy of a single control knob. This takes care of all of its main functions, including volume and input gain levels, and also allows you to switch between three preset preamp emulations – mild compression, full range and mid boost.
To sweeten the deal, the Riff also comes with a free download of BIAS FX 2 LE, a Lite Edition of Positive Grid’s industry-leading BIAS FX 2 amp and effects modeling software. At no extra cost, this digital suite brings 24 presets, 15 amp emulations, 22 effects and more.
Read our full Positive Grid Riff review
Native Instruments is an industry leader when it comes to both music software and hardware, and they bring their decades of expertise to the table with the Komplete Audio 6 MK2. A high-quality audio interface designed for guitarists as well as producers and DJs, it features 24-bit/192kHz resolution for crystal-clear sound, as well as a host of ins and outs for a range of recording situations.
If you regularly collaborate with other musicians, the Komplete Audio 6 might just be the ideal solution for you, thanks to its dual headphones outputs, which allow for the connection of two sets of headphones at the same time. And despite its pro-level input and output configuration, the Komplete Audio 6 features USB connectivity, so it’s a prime pro-level plug-and-play device.
If you’re still deciding, it might seal the deal that the interface also comes with a bounty of Native Instruments software to get you started, including Ableton Live 11 Lite and a host of effects for flavoring your guitar tone.
Best Guitar Audio Interfaces: Buying Advice
How to choose the best guitar audio interface for you
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It’s easy to get lured in with all the additional bells and whistles when it comes to buying the best guitar audio interface for you, but ultimately your biggest consideration should be your input and output requirements, or, the number of inputs and outputs you need to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. For example, if you’re a solo guitarist happy to work primarily on your own using overdubs, you probably don’t need to spring for an interface with many inputs, as most of the time they’ll go unused.
And on the subject of ins and outs, you should consider whether you’ll primarily be recording direct in with a ¼” guitar cable, micing up a guitar amp, or a combination of the two. If you will be recording with a mic, pay attention to the quality of the preamps in your interface of choice. This could be the difference between average and great recordings.
If you have the money to spend on a more mid-level or higher-end interface, it’s better to go for a better-quality model with only one or two inputs. Price is often dictated, in part, by the number of ins and outs, so buying an interface with more than you need will eat into your budget needlessly.
Next up in your buying considerations should be sound quality, or more specifically, the quality of the components (preamps and converters, for example) housed within. In general, it’s best to look for an interface with a high sampling rate and bit depth, as this will directly translate to the improved quality of your recordings. You should also ensure that your audio interface of choice has low latency. This is, in general, a standard across the recording world, but it’s still important to do your research and confirm, as trying to record accurate tracks with high latency is a terribly frustrating endeavor.
And finally, paying attention to the brand of audio interface will pay dividends. Generally speaking, the big players here – Focusrite, Universal Audio, SSL – have the reputations they have for a reason, so shopping where others have before is often a pretty safe bet.
Read more on how we test gear here at Guitar Player.
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