- Could this be the audio interface of my dreams,
and potentially, your dreams as well?
You see, as worship leaders in a worship ministry context,
we are looking for a particular type
of audio interface that's affordable
and has only the functionality we need
to run a click tracks or to send
out keyboard sounds from MainStage.
Well in this video, you'll learn
how this guy does the trick, and you're gonna see it
in action in my worship ministry.
Comin' up.
(upbeat music)
This video is brought to you by Worship Leader School,
where you're gonna find all the essential training,
advice, and support you need to plan and lead worship.
Click the link in the description to learn more.
My name is Jake Gosselin with churchfront.com,
an online resource teaching you
how to lead gospel-centered and tech-savvy worship.
If you're new to the channel,
consider subscribing so you don't miss out
on any of our latest content that's gonna help you grow
yourself and grow your church,
and be sure to check out the show notes below
for some cool resources for your worship ministry,
including a link to this USB audio interface,
which is the topic of today's video.
Let me explain a little more of the context
behind why I purchase this audio interface
and why I think it's a great fit
for worship bands who wanna run a click and tracks,
or they wanna send sounds out
from a computer running MainStage for their keyboard.
The primary benefit of using an audio interface
to send audio from your computer to your sound system is
that a audio interface will help relieve
some of your computer's processing power
and reduce the chance of having any pops
or glitches or errors in your audio.
I've had this happen to me before
using MainStage, especially.
MainStage is not a very processor-efficient software,
so it's much better to send audio
from your Mac running MainStage
using an audio interface like this one.
An audio interface can also come in handy
if you're running a click and tracks on your laptop.
Maybe you use Ableton Live or Prime.
An audio interface is also great
if you're sending audio from your laptop
that's containing your click track
and your backing tracks for worship.
You wanna have an audio interface
that has a bare minimum of two outputs.
One output's gonna be for your click and guide cues,
the second output is gonna be for your backing tracks.
I wish I knew about this audio interface
a long time ago, 'cause when I first started using
a click and tracks our worship,
or when I first started sending audio
from MainStage to my sound system,
I went about the route of using a 3.5 millimeter
to a dual quarter inch cable to a DI box
that has stereo outputs on it,
and then you run those two XLR cables
into your stage snake, which then goes to your sound system.
It sounds like a lot.
If you can avoid that setup, please do,
because there's two problems.
One, it's more gear, it's more expensive,
and two, it's not that reliable,
especially if you're running MainStage on a laptop
using the headphone jack on your computer.
There's gonna be lots of audio processing issues,
pops, crashes, the world's gonna end.
Just kidding, the world's not gonna end,
but bad things will happen.
I've had it happen to myself.
That's why I've completely eliminated
a 3.5 to dual quarter inch cable setup
and have exclusively started using audio interfaces
for the outputs on my computers.
The other big reason why I think this guy is
a great fit for a worship ministry context is
often we only need audio interfaces
with outputs, and, specifically, XLR outputs make
our life way easier, 'cause during
a worship service, we don't need
an audio interface that has inputs
on the front of it because we're not recording anything.
We simply need those outputs to get our signal
from the computer or laptop to the soundboard,
and we also want that signal to be a balanced signal.
I don't really understand the science
behind how it all works, but that's why I use
a DI box, and you have to have a balanced signal
to send to your sound console,
or else, supposedly bad things will happen,
and that's why this audio interface is great,
because it has two XLR outputs that are balanced.
So I can go from the USB cable
from the computer into the interface
on one end, and then out of the interface XLR inputs
directly into our stage snake,
and I didn't even mention yet,
this guy is only $47, and this is even cheaper
than having to go from a 3.5 millimeter
to a dual quarter inch cable plus a DI box.
Sometimes that can add up to over $100.
So now I wanna go ahead and take this out of the box
and give you a close-up of what it looks like.
I'll bring this closer so you can see what's goin' on.
So, it's a cool little box.
You can see how big it is in reference to my hand.
So on one side, we have the USB input,
that's where the cables gonna go in
from my computer, and then on the other side,
we have the XLR outputs.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, on the front side too,
you have a switch so you can make
the outputs stereo or mono.
I'm really impressed with the build quality of this guy.
It really feels nice and sturdy, which is important.
At our church plant, we set up and tear down,
things get used and it's really important
to have some solid gear.
This guy did not come with a USB cable,
which kinda surprises me, but that's okay.
You can pick up a USB cable on Amazon for cheap,
or I have a bunch of extra ones laying around.
So now let's see how well this interface plays
with Ableton Live.
So I have Ableton pulled up here,
I have the interface here, I'm gonna go ahead
and connect it to my computer with the USB cable.
A little light comes on on the interface.
It's powered on.
So it should be working fine.
I'm gonna have it on stereo,
and we'll see what happens here.
I'm gonna go to, "preferences," in Ableton Live,
and then under my audio output device,
I'm going to select, "USB audio DAC."
So that's what I'm assuming this guy is,
and then on your output configuration,
apparently there's not a whole lot I can do there,
and then when I go to my outputs here,
I can select, "cue out," to go to one,
and then, "master out," containing
all my other tracks to go to track number two.
So Ableton detects this audio interface okay,
and of course, I can't actually test the audio right now,
because I need to plug these guys
into my sound system to hear how well
it separates the tracks and hear how well the signal sounds.
So what I wanna do right now is jump ahead
to tomorrow morning when we set this interface
up with a computer that runs MainStage.
So let's go.
Alright, so here we are at church
at Mission Lakewood on a Sunday morning.
We just set up our keyboard rig.
Ashton here is playing keys for us.
So we have the M-Audio Hammer 88 Keyboard,
then we have a MacBook Air running MainStage.
So, the MacBook Air is connected to the MIDI keyboard
via just one USB cable, and then to send the audio out
to the sound system, we're going out
through a USB cable to the new PV USB-P interface,
and we hooked it up inside MainStage.
You're just gonna go to, "preferences,"
then go to, "audio output," and assign it
to that USB interface, and it's up and running.
It works great.
What are your thoughts, Ashton?
- It's wonderful.
It sounds amazing.
- Hopefully by now you know if this interface is
a great fit for your worship ministry
and your audio interface needs.
I know I wish I came across this a lot sooner.
I love how it's so simple.
USB in, two XLR balanced outputs.
That's all I need.
You can find a link to purchase this interface
on Amazon below in the description of this video.
It's only $47, and finally, if you are driven
and motivated to grow yourself as a worship leader,
I wanna invite you to check out Worship Leader School,
where you're gonna find all of the essential training,
advice, and support you need to plan and lead worship.
Click the link in the description
or visit worshipleaderschool.com.
Thanks so much for watching this video.
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