Audio Interface and PC Speakers

[sedulus]

Hi Guys,

I use my home desktop PC for work, and am forever on conference calls. I have a cheap USB microphone going in, and a pair of TIBO monitors connected to my motherboard's optical out. It works great for this, plus casual music listening and youtube, etc.

I'm interested in getting an audio interface to plug a guitar in, to do some recordings, playing along with lessons etc.

Will this take over my whole setup? Is there anyway I can route the audio from the interface back out through the PC speakers without altering my current setup? I don't mind changing settings in software I suppose, but I don't want to be unplugging things all the time to change things. My speakers do have a spare set of phono inputs I could connect the outputs of the interface to, which may help?

I'm looking at one of the cheaper behringer interfaces, if that makes a difference. Probably the UMC22:

Behringer UMC22 Computer Audio Interface: Amazon.co.uk: Musical Instruments

Buy Behringer UMC22 Computer Audio Interface. Free delivery and returns on eligible orders.

smile.amazon.co.uk

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[KungFuPro]

You should be able to set it up without having to change hardware each time, just toggle between audio interfaces via taskbar audio properties.

In Win7 (yeah, I'm still using it for main pc) it would be right click on the speaker icon>Playback Devices, then right click on whichever device you want to use and "Set as Default Device"

In Win10 it would be right click speakers> open sound settings>choose your input/output device.

You'll be able to plug the Behringer up to your existing speakers but looking at the Tibo remote it has buttons for RCA, aux and digital. I'm guessing you would have to use the remote each time you want to swap.

You could use the Beringer as default audio device and forget about onboard audio, not 100% sure but as the mic is USB it might work fine alongside the Beringer set to default, difficult to know without testing.

The Beringer UMC22 has both mic and guitar inputs (2in/2out) so you could buy a cheap mic with 6.35mm jack lead and use that at the same time as guitar.

 

[sedulus]

That's great! Thanks for the advice! Will give it a go!