If you have ever looked into recording or livestreaming your DJ sets, you will have hit a wall of confusing kit and even more confusing marketing – proprietary boxes with their own apps, handheld recorders aimed at filmmakers, podcast interfaces bristling with inputs you will never use, and prices from under £30 to several hundred. It is easy to come away thinking you need to spend big, or buy something DJ-specific, to get the job done.
You don’t. Every one of these devices does the same basic job: it turns the analogue audio coming out of your DJ gear into a digital signal your phone or laptop can record. That is the whole trick. The app, the SD card slot, the metal casing, the brand name – all of it is built on top of that one conversion. Once you see that, you can spend what you want to spend depending upon what extra features are actually important to you.
And that’s if you need an audio interface at all – if you’re a laptop DJ, and you’re livestreaming or recording on the same laptop that your DJ software runs on, you can do so without the need for one whatsoever – we cover how here. But if you’re not, read on to understand the reasons you need one, and all your options, with some specific examples.
So what does an audio interface actually do?
Your DJ controller or mixer puts out analogue audio, usually on a pair of RCA sockets. Your phone and laptop only deal in digital, so they cannot record an analogue signal directly. An audio interface sits in the middle and converts one to the other, and the part doing the work is the analogue-to-digital converter, or ADC.
A decent ADC costs very little to make. You will find perfectly good ones in a £30 Behringer and in a £250 Tascam. The dearer gear is not buying you a better conversion for the simple job of capturing a stereo mix – it is buying portability, a battery, a screen, an app, a pass-through socket, foolproof recording, better build quality, which may or may not be worth it to you.
Most of what fills the audio interface aisle is built for music production, not for DJs recording a finished stereo mix. You do not need XLR inputs with phantom power, talkback routing, four mic preamps, a mixer section or zero-latency monitoring. A DJ recording a stereo mix needs two inputs, left and right, and nothing more. Anything beyond that is weight, cost and menu screens you will never open.
What’s special about”DJ” audio interfaces?
When you see a DJ-specific box – an Evermix, a Howler – it is natural to assume the hardware is special, that something in it records DJ sets better than a generic interface. It isn’t. Underneath, these are class-compliant audio interfaces, the same category as a cheap Behringer. “Class-compliant” just means the device follows the standard USB audio rules built into macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, so it works the moment you plug it in, no drivers.
What the premium actually buys is the software and the convenience around the box – the app that records and shares, the pass-through socket, the one-button record. These can certainly can be worth paying for, but they’re not necessary – a cheap class-compliant interface plus a free app is capable of capturing an identical-quality recording.
The app does not care what you plug in: connect any class-compliant interface and the operating system either makes it the default input or offers you the chance to switch to that input, so any recording app captures your DJ feed instead of the built-in mic. Your phone or laptop cannot tell a £30 interface from a £250 one, and neither can your listeners.
So here are four ways to do this, cheapest to most capable.
Option 1: A generic audio interface and free software
If you just want to record your sets and you have a phone or laptop, you can do this for about the price of a round of drinks.
The Behringer UCA202 is a class-compliant USB interface with stereo RCA in and out, 16-bit/48kHz, bus-powered, no drivers, around £30 / $30 / €30. Being class-compliant, it plugs straight into any computer USB-A socket, and should work fine with most phones too with a suitable adaptor lead, although especially for android, check that OTG will work. It draws little enough power to run off the phone alone, with no powered hub (not true of bigger interfaces, which can throw a “device needs too much power” error).
You run your DJ gear’s spare output into the RCA inputs and on a laptop you can record in Audacity, the free editor for Mac, Windows and Linux, or stream using OBS – again, free and for all OSes. On a phone, AudioShare on iOS lets you capture a line-in feed and let you trim and export for free; on Android, any recorder that supports USB audio works, though again support varies by handset, so test yours before a gig.
Option 2: A DJ-friendly interface with a dedicated app
The step up from “cheap box plus free app” is a device where part of what you pay for is tighter hardware/software integration that saves you time, and the best DJ example is the EvermixBox5 (£149 / $199 / €172).
The hardware is another class-compliant interface, 24-bit/44.1kHz, this time with built-in auto level limiting and a wide input range that make it hard to distort. But it does not record anything by itself – it feeds your phone, and the recording happens in the app. No phone, no recording. (It’s sold as a phone-first interface, but I’m pretty sure it’d work fine with a laptop too – again, it’s just an audio interface).
So is it worth paying for? Well, you actually do not need the box to use the app, which works with any class-compliant interface, and basic recording and export are free. The money buys two things: hardware that is guaranteed to work, and the Evermix Pro feature set – livestreaming, simultaneous record-and-stream, video, WAV recording and one-tap upload to Mixcloud and SoundCloud.
Note though that pro is a subscription after a 30-day trial, and Evermix do not publish the price anywhere; you only see it in-app once the trial ends, and it may very depending upon where you are (we have yet to test it). Worth knowing before you commit.
If you livestream or publish to Mixcloud every week, and want a no-nonsense DJ-optimised interface, EvermixBox5 and a Pro sub will likely earns its keep. If you just want to record and keep the file, the free version of their app, or Audacity, or any phone recorder does that for nothing.
Option 3: A device with pass-through and on-device recording
The Howler Recorder + Streamer MK2 (€199 pre-order, €219 retail, around £233) is the only such device we know of that can do both of these things.. It has a built-in battery and records to a microSD card at the press of a button in 24-bit/48kHz, with no phone or laptop needed. That is the big difference from everything above it – the Behringer records nothing on its own, the Evermix records only to a phone (or laptop), but the Howler is also recorder in its own right.
But it also solves the single-output problem. Plenty of entry-level controllers have one output pair, already feeding your speakers, so a normal interface has nowhere to plug in. The Howler’s thru socket passes the signal straight back out to your speakers, so one output is enough.
The MK2’s headline feature is that it records to the card and works as an audio interface feeding the signal to your phone (this is another phone-first interface) at the same time, whereas the original made you choose. Combine that with the pass-through and you get the trick no other box here manages: from a single output, run your speakers, record to the card, and stream from your phone, all at once. There is no app, because Howler is transparent that any recording or streaming app handles the phone end.
On levels, the Howler records at a fixed level with no limiter, capturing exactly what the mixer sends. the Howler team says that the signal clips at the mixer before it clips at the box, so as long as you keep your channels out of the red you’ll be fine – but the levels are on you.
What if I want to record and livestream at the same time?
There are two ways to do this.
The first is on the hardware, and we’ve already covered an example above, the Howler MK2. It records to its own microSD card while passing the signal to to your phone for livestreaming at the same time – so you can be live on Twitch while keeping a local backup that does not depend on the phone or the connection. The Zoom and Tascam recorders in option four do this too; the Howler is just the only DJ-built one, and the only one with a pass-through.
The second is in software, which is what you do with a cheap interface or the Evermix. On a laptop, OBS Studio (free, Mac/Windows/Linux) records locally while streaming anywhere – there is no mobile version. On a phone it is fiddlier, and most apps do not do both: Streamlabs Mobile streams but will not record locally, and on Android cannot capture internal audio. The two that do record locally while streaming, on iOS and Android, are Larix Broadcaster (our favourite, free, streams to YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and any RTMP target) and Prism Live Studio (free with a premium tier, but we’ve not tried this one).
The Evermix Pro app does the same in one DJ-specific app, but remember its recording lives on the phone, not the box. Pull the phone from the Evermix chain and there is no recording; pull it from the Howler chain and the card keeps recording.
Option 4: A handheld recorder that does double duty
The last route is the handheld recorder – the posh dictaphone. It records to its own card, runs on battery like the Howler MK2, and the better ones double as an interface that records and streams at once, again the same as the Howler but in a fuller standalone recorder.
The catch is that the cheap ones cannot do both at once. Tascam’s sub-£100 DR-05X and DR-05XP work either as a recorder or as an interface, not both. The ones that manage both cost more: the Zoom H4essential (around £170 / $200) and the Tascam Portacapture X6 (around £250 / $300, with a touchscreen). Both are more recorder than a DJ needs – you would feed your output into the 3.5mm line in and ignore the XLR inputs and mics – but they earn their place because they record in 32-bit float, which the Howler does not, and which can be useful to a DJ.
Why? Because if your set creeps up in level and the signal goes past you recorder’s or interface’s ceiling you get clipping, which is baked into the output for good. 32-bit float is not higher quality than 24-bit at a given level, but it has so much headroom that you cannot clip it in practice – record too hot and you pull it back down afterwards in an editing app with no distortion. For anyone who has ever lost a set to a level that crept up mid-recording, that is the real reason to buy a Zoom or Tascam.
The Howler and Evermix handle the same risk differently. The Howler relies on you keeping the mixer out of the red. The Evermix limits the signal to catch peaks. Both are plenty for a steady feed off your own mixer; the 32-bit float boxes are for when you would rather never think about levels, or you are recording an unpredictable source like a club’s booth feed. Two caveats: float only protects the digital side, so it cannot save a mixer that is already distorting, and the files are about a third larger.
Howler 2 vs Zoom H4essential vs Tascam Portacapture X6
All three record to a card and stream at the same time, so they are the natural comparison.
The Howler is the only one built for DJs: pass-through, one button, no menus, pocket-sized. It records 24-bit/48kHz at a fixed level, which is all a well-set feed needs, but it does one job and has no clipping safety net beyond your own discipline.
The Zoom H4essential is the value option if you want more. 32-bit float means a hot level is recoverable, and it works as a full recorder, but it has no pass-through and the XLR inputs and mics are wasted on a DJ.
The Tascam Portacapture X6 is the most capable and most expensive, adding a touchscreen that makes it the easiest to drive. It is the best general recorder of the three, but also the least DJ-specific.
So: Howler for pass-through and simplicity, the Zoom for the most recorder per pound, the Tascam if you want the touchscreen and all bells and whistles.
A quick word on cables
What often catches people out is the connection, especially if it’s from a generic interface to a phone. From your DJ gear you run RCA cables out of a spare output (Rec Out or Booth Out on a club mixer) into the interface – RCA or 1/8″ minijack depending upon the make/model. To the computer, the proprietary boxes ship with the right cables, usually just USB-A, but you may need a USB-A to USB-C. Generic interfaces may need you to supply the cable: the UCA202 has a fixed USB-A cable, so you will need a USB-A female to USB-C for a USB-C phone, or the Lightning to USB-A Camera Adapter for an older Lightning iPhone. (Avoid the plain USB-C-to-Lightning adapter, which carries power and data but not audio.) Laptops just take a standard USB lead. Sort the right adapter before you need it.
Finally…
Recording your sets is not the technical hurdle the marketing makes it look like. Spend £30 on a Behringer and use free app if you just want a recording or to livestream and are prepared to do a bit of setup. Pay for the EvermixBox5 if its app saves you time. Buy the Howler MK2 if you want pass-through and a dead-simple DJ box that records on its own. Go for a Zoom or Tascam if you want clip-proof capture and a recorder that does other jobs too.
What you should not do is pay a premium for high-end devices thinking the hardware is necessary. It isn’t. It turns analogue into digital, the same as the cheap box does. The rest is optional.
Phil Morse
