It’s fun to spend most of your budget on “sexy” pieces of gear — guitars, synths, amps, pedals, and so on; basically, the items that you can use directly to make sound and look awesome doing it! But don’t forget the “behind the scenes” gear — the required boxes and hardware that make recording music possible. And no unit is more important to getting those killer sounds into your computer than your audio interface. It might be tempting to spend as little as possible to get a basic interface, but you’ll be much better off in the long run getting a better one.
You can find interfaces that have a large feature set for not a lot of money, but you can’t judge on just features alone. You’re not just paying for the number of channels of A/D and D/A conversion. You’re paying for the quality of all the components. You’re paying for how isolated the components on the PC board are from one another, which will eliminate stray magnetic fields and noise. You’re paying for how much, if any, DSP comes with your interface.
Today, companies that make extremely high-quality, professional studio interfaces, such as Avid, Apogee, Universal Audio, Antelope Audio, Focusrite, MOTU, RME, and others, also make interfaces that are far more affordable. Often these interfaces have the same high-quality converters, components, and build quality, but generally fewer inputs and outputs. If you don’t need to record a ton of tracks at the same time, or output to many devices at once, you might want to look at these as a way to get exceptional sound quality for a lower price. And that quality is something that you’ll hear on every track you record, and every mix that you produce.