I’m guessing an audio interface, any suggestions ? Got around 200 euros budget.
Cheers,
Look up Focusrite. They have a couple of options for USB audio interface. The scarlet and the Safire models. You just need two inputs. Both models should be close to your budget.
i use a roland quad-capture, which i highly recommend. it has higher recording resolution than the adjacent focusrite products and an auto-sens feature that automatically adjusts gain levels. the drivers have been completely hassle-free.
i have a focusrite 2i 4 , so 2 mono in, and 4 outs, from which 2 are balanced, i heared these are best to plug into the DAW
my daw is ableton9 on win xp 64bit
powered by usb ONLY… so you maybe wanna use the soundcard without having your computer on … i cant do that, its a bit of a draw back.
focusrite has a neat monitoring feature… if I had to buy again, I would probably buy one with more inputs and probably also one that runs on external power so i dont have to run my pc…
sound quality, latency, driver support, built quality, additoinal features, signal to noise ratio … all i cannot complain about!
microphone pream, pad trigger option, stereo mono switch, headphone source AND headphone out …
phantom power lablbalbla
ooh it has midi in out, but i am not using it at the mo
dont forget to get one with a midi interface and/or a midimate
so you can record what you are doing on the machine to your daw and playback your machine with that midi track.
to me that makes recording the machines super easy
you can basically just jam and record the midi, and afterwards build a track with that midi information and re-record it 
way easier then in song mode, at least to me
I’ll also back Focusrite. Had a Saffire 24, loved it and upgraded to the Pro 40 for more I/O. Sounds great, and I like that it works in standalone so I don’t have to bother with the DAW until I’m ready to record.
yep i have the saffire 14 too its great, also if you are using apple, all the focusrite firewire cards can be used with a firewire to thunderbolt cable 
I thought the A4 didn’t transmit any MIDI data?
just started focusing on this. i know its not the best way but im just running the A4 into a mixer and into the sound input on my macbook. i connect to the A4 via usb so i can send transport control to the A4. definitely want an audio interface in the future
I thought the A4 didn’t transmit any MIDI data?[/quote]
It only has midi clock/sync. Doing what “inevitablecrafts” wrote is indeed the way just about all other manufacturer’s instruments will behave, and still my pet peeve in not having basic midi note out on the A4. Midi has been around for what…30 years now! Makes no sense unless you drink the same fanboy koolaid that makes you not care and spend $$ on another Elektron box just to get that functionality…like Pokémon or something!
I thought the A4 didn’t transmit any MIDI data?[/quote]
It only has midi clock/sync. Doing what “inevitablecrafts” wrote is indeed the way just about all other manufacturer’s instruments will behave, and still my pet peeve in not having basic midi note out on the A4. Midi has been around for what…30 years now! Makes no sense unless you drink the same fanboy koolaid that makes you not care and spend $$ on another Elektron box just to get that functionality…like Pokémon or something! [/quote]
Yeah that’s what I thought, so I guess inevitablecrafts must be getting mixed up with another instrument.
I also use a Focusrite Interface (Saffire Pro24 DSP) which is very nice.
Here is a nice small info on how to adjust midi-clock compensation in order to sync the a4 with ableton live from http://www.analogindustries.com/b1822/Analog+Four/:
[i]"After playing around a bit, I hooked it up to Live to try making a track. This engendered the usual raft of problems with syncing Elektron gear. Took me an hour or so of fooling about before I remembered that Live 8 and 9 have an adjustment in the MIDI setup panel to time-compensate MIDI clock. In order to get the correct timing differential (which is a result of several factors, including the latency of the audio I/O) I recorded a couple measures of the metronome in the Analog Four, time-corrected them in Live so that they were exactly on the beat, then adjusted the MIDI clock delay value until the recorded metronome and the one coming from the A4 were flanging. For me, this was -40.5ms, but your mileage may vary. In hosts that don’t have this clock compensation method, you’ll have to delay all the non-A4 tracks by the appropriate amount.
It doesn’t seem to have the timing drift and end-of-cycle hiccups that plagued the MachineDrum and MonoMachine (at least when I had them); once I compensated for the clock offset, it is rock solid, timing-wise. I recorded 64 measures of a 16th note white noise tick just to make sure, and a visual check showed every beat was perfectly in time."[/i]
Really the question is how much money you have:
Then you have to work out how much I/o you going to need, do you need preamps, driver stability…
I use a metric halo 2882 which is a mid price converter but like the elektron of the audio interface world - but mac only.
They make a 2 channel uln2 which has the same conversion as the 2882 but the pre amps are the best out of any interface period.
Another good place is black lion audio - they do interface upgrades and replace the rubbish components with high quality Opamps and caps, ect. The do a mod of the m-audio pro something 2626 and it’s supposed to be excellent.
This is one area where you have to spend a bit of money but if your smart you don’t have to spend a fortune
I never think about conversion but I know people that have budget interfaces and I did too and they’re alwYs complaining about the conversion. Do it properly once and pretty much apart from expanding with more I/o you’ll never bother need to upgrade-it’s the only way to get analog into digital and back out again and if it’s shit well how are you possibly going to compress, eq - mix.