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Today's Bonus:
- High Quality Mic Preamps
- Excellent Digital Performance
- Rugged Metal Unibody Case
- Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface, Truly Portable Interface
- Included Software - DAW and Effects
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It took me a while to get this device set up properly. Technical support was little help, and by the time I got their number, I had figured out the issue on my own. This difficulty wasn't the product's fault it was mine, for being new to using ASIO. I was still trying to output via my soundcard, while inputting via the interface and the applications were dying in the process.Once I quit splitting the workload between the devices, everything worked like a charm. I got the latency down to acceptably microscopic. 6ms actual tested return latency at 64 samples in+out @24/96khz (compared to the DAW claimed latency of 2ms).
My current signal chain: Mic -> Trakmaster Pro (hardware compression is vital when recording digitally) -> 2i2 -> PC.
Even when I was recording on directsound drivers, it sounded pretty good except for the latency. But now the latency is sufficiently small that it's not a major distraction during tracking. There will be people who claim that 6ms is far too much, and maybe they are really that time sensitive. However, For the average home recording hobbyist, 6ms is a synonym for imperceptibly fast.
If you're looking for that secret $150 audio interface that is exactly as good as a $1500 MOTU, let me assure you that it does not exist. That said, I defend my 5 star rating as follows:
The 2i2 is a massive step up from recording with a cheap PC microphone through your onboard sound chip. The latency is far improved, the D/A conversion is superior to a soundcard not specifically designed for recording, and the whole thing is reasonably transparent.
It's only got 2 inputs, but I only record 1 musician at a time to avoid bleed, and I never record drums. So even recording in stereo, I'd never need more. It does exactly what I need, which is to allow me to interface my audio hardware seamlessly and transparently into my computer.
It even comes with a reasonably decent DAW (Ableton Live Lite)
There's a lot of people out who want to start recording, but don't have a lot of money to spend. It's easy to get caught up in the 'which one is better' game, causing costs to escalate quickly.
No interface is going to make your $20 radio shack microphone sound professional. If your recording equipment is good you'll get good results from the 2i2.
Buy Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2 In/2 Out USB Recording Audio Interface Now
I use this little guy in connection with my DAW and digital piano. I run the piano sounds through balanced cables into the line-in ports for recording, and I also run VST intruments on my DAW that I trigger via USB MIDI from the piano and use this device for digital/audio conversion. I listen through Sennheser HD 595 headhphones plugged in to this and I also have some studio monitors attached using balanced cables.I purchased this to upgrade from my previous audio interface, the Behringer UF0202. That device worked quite well for this purpose as well but lacked two things: a volume knob, and balanced in/outs. The volume knob thing I could work around, but my current monitors seem susceptible to ground loops (even with a ground lift plug), so I needed to go with balanced cables. I'm glad I did. The balanced cables completely eliminated my noise problems. This was a good purchase. However, I would say to anyone who doesn't need balanced cables and is on a budget that they should consider the Behringer. It's a tiny fraction of the price and it works pretty well. Further, it's class complaint so you don't have to use Behringer's drivers. It's plug-and-play.
I have some good things to say about the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (all about the hardware) and some bad things (all about the software). I've tried using the driver version 2.1, which came with the disk, and the udpated 2.2, which I downloaded from Focusrite's website.
To let you know what I need in an interface:
1. Balanced stereo in/out
2. High quality headphone amp
3. Volume knobs for headphone amp and for the main line
4. Good digital-to-analog conversion
5. Low output latency (input latency not important to me)
I don't use the Mic preamps, which is one of the big selling points of this device.
================ The Good ====================
This box is simple and well-designed. It does what you want, has very convenient controls, and has high build quality. I'm pleased with the digital-to-analog conversion. It has a great big volume knob and another for the headphone amp. It has switches so each input can be a line-in or microphone pre-amp. It has a switch for zero-latency monitoring (of whatever is coming in).
* The headphone amp was of particular concern for me. I use headphones a lot and a poor headphone amp can be quite a problem. The Behringer headphone amp was only ok. Specifically, it has an output impedance of 50 ohms. The rule of thumb for good headphone/amp matching is that the output impedance should be 1/8 the impedance of the headphones--my hd 595's have 50 ohms of impedance. Breaking this rule you get distortions of the frequency response. In my case mostly this meant attenuation of the bass. Most manufacturers don't list their output impedance, possibly because they are embarrassed. Anyway, Focusrite does, which is one reason I trust them a little more. The output impedance is less than 10 ohms--respectable but not amazing. Still not as low as I would need in principle but I can notice an improvement in the bass response in my headphones. There's plenty of extra voltage here too, so I could drive higher impedance cans if necessary. Anyway, good headphone amp. Check.
* Balanced ins and outs work very well, The ins accommodates a 1/4 TRS style in and XLR. The light around them shows when something's actually coming in and shines red when it's in danger of clipping. There's lots of gain available. I have them turned all the way down almost. The outs are TRS style (balanced or unbalanced) and are located on the back.
* I like the look of the box, with a red metal case, and the front and back are sturdy and attractive as well.
* The USB cable is just a type B port. This means you can replace it if it gets damaged or whatever. The Behringer, for example, was hard-wired to its cable...king of annoying.
* It's bus-powered. I actually would have been fine with a wall-wart, but this is even more simple.
I really have no complaints whatsoever about the hardware.
===================== The Bad =========================
The driver for this thing is horrible under Windows XP. I have a clean installation with nothing installed except my DAW software, acrobat reader, and this driver. I mean, my computer is really stripped down. Performance using the Behringer was good. The latency (time between playing a note and hearing it out the speakers) was 8 ms using the Behringer, which isn't really perceptible.
Unfortunately the focusrite driver, though it's technically ASIO apparently, doesn't have anything like an acceptable latency. The lowest latency I could set it at and get sound out instead of crackles and pops was 23 ms. At that level the instrument begins to sound very sluggish and laggy. It's very difficult, at least for me, to work with a large latency like that.
I was ready to return this device when I decided as a last ditch effort to install ASIO4ALL. That's sort of an ASIO driver to use if you absolutely cannot make the manufacturer's driver perform at a decent level. I installed it and it worked. The output latency was a tiny 4.3 ms (only .3 of which are actually output latency, so this is REALLY impressive). I conclude that the hardware is very, very good in this machine, but the software is horrible.
Unfortunately, you can't actually uninstall the focusrite driver because otherwise windows doesn't recognize the device and it never even turns on--it's not class compliant, unlike the Behringer. So now I have two drivers for it installed, only one of which I use.
The bad news is that this configuration is very buggy. In general when I just turn the computer on and try and play my VST instrument, all I get is crackles and pops until I open the ASIO configuration panel and increase the buffer. The funny thing is that it doesn't matter where the buffer starts out, I always have to increase it before I get any good sounds out. I can start it out with a huge buffer--lots of latency--and it will crackle until I open it and increase the buffer yet more. I have to do this every time I turn on the computer. Also, sometimes if I leave it on for a while and come back, it will be crackly again until I increase it yet another step. We are talking about major bugs here.
I decided to try ditching ASIO4ALL and trying to make the focusrite drivers work again--maybe there was a setting I was missing. As I was trying to set the buffer size, I heard the sound of an explosion and then my computer rebooted. When it came back I couldn't get good sounds out, even when I turned the buffer way up. Tried rebooting a few more times, still didn't work. So I uninstalled and re-installed the focusrite software. At first it didn't work. I had to install ASIO4ALL as well, and now I can sort of get sounds out of it, half the time.
I hope you are getting the idea. These drivers are terrible. Awful. A monkey could have written a better driver. I would give it 1 star if it wasn't for the fact that the device works very, very well when all the stars align and the driver recognizes the drive and allows it to play. I guess I'm willing to sacrifice convenience and stability for nice hardware when it works. I would never use this in a live situation or when time is critical.
The good thing about drivers is that they can update and fix them. I'm hoping for that. They have already revised the driver once, which is amazing because even the 2.2 driver is seriously an abomination, just like the 2.1.
================ Closing Thoughts =======================
Unfortunately, there really isn't a USB interface that has a good driver. The Behringer driver always worked, but if you moved the interface from one USB port to the other, it was no longer recognized and you had to reinstall the driver. However, you didn't have to use the Behringer driver and ASIO4ALL would give you 11 ms and perform without any complications. That's about as trouble free as I've seen in this type of device.
If you read about the Presonus Audiobox USB and the M-Audio Fast Track Pro (probably the two closest competitors to this focusrite), what you get is a bunch of comments just like this one...horrible, horrible drivers that never get fixed. Actually Mackie makes a competitor as well, the Onyx Blackjack--but the reviews of that show that the driver is possibly even worse than this one. Unfortunately none of the pro music manufacturers cares about their drivers, so we have to live with unstable systems that only work half the time. Maybe it's better under mac. I don't know.
Interestingly, this is really the only USB 2.0 device in this range. That's quite shocking considering how long the USB 2.0 standard has been around. The only real implication of this is that the USB 1.1 devices like the M-Audio and Presonus can only do two channel 24/96 audio in OR out, not both at the same time. There's not enough throughput in USB 1.1.
So in light of the competition, the Focusrite looks kind of ok. Unfortunately all audio interface manufacturers--at least in this range of device--think there's no need for good hardware and (especially) good software. At least the hardware in this one is up to spec. We can cross our fingers for improved drivers in the future.
Bottom line: this is a fantastic, 5-star device...if you can make the software work consistently.
If you are on a tight budget or don't care about balanced in/out, I'd recommend you go with the Behringer UCA202 or UFO2020. They are tons cheaper, class complaint, and have better drivers. If you use a high impedance headphone with it, even the headphone amp is pretty good on that one.
================ Update May 2012 ==============
A new version of the driver, 2.3, came out since the writing of the above. The new driver actually works. I have stopped using ASIO4ALL and I get decent latency. Once in a while--not too often--it will inexplicably require me to edit the settings and increase the buffer, and some percentage of the time when I do that it will reboot my computer. If I don't change anything, most of the time, it works ok. I would never use this in a mission-critical setting (i.e., gigging or pro work), but for my home use, it's good enough now. If you have issues with the driver, definitely update.
Read Best Reviews of Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2 In/2 Out USB Recording Audio Interface Here
Hi,I've had this interface for a few weeks now, and my final rating is basically what everyone else has said:
Drivers: Horrible
Hardware: Fantastic
I'm am running Pro Tools 10 on a new(ish) HP Pavilion Core i5, with Windows 7 64 bit. Add the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, and if you Google around, you'll find this is a perfect recipe for disaster. Maybe you have a pretty similar set up, and that's why you're reading this. Well I'm here to tell you that although Pro Tools 10 is somewhat buggy on the PC, and although Focusrite's drivers are horrendous, I got everything to run pretty smoothly after 3 or 4 days of errors, intense googling, and even contacting Focusrite. I'm going to give you the steps that I took, and maybe, if you're having the same problems I was, you can make it work, because honestly, we all would love to give this interface a five star rating.
So the drivers installed great, no errors or anything. Plugged everything in, and opened up Pro Tools. Pro Tools found the interface, and I was like "YES!!!". It appeared everything would be ok. But when I started up a new session at 24 bit and 44.1 kHz, but got an error saying that the ASIO properties for my interface had been changed, and Pro Tools needed to restart. After posting on Avid's Pro Tools forums and seeing what they had to say, I came to the conclusion that I needed to set the 2i2's sampling rate BEFORE I opened Pro Tools. Unfortunately, the Focusrite drivers don't give you that option. The only way I knew to change the sampling rate was from inside of the DAW. I Googled like mad, and after many hours of being frustrated, and being THIS close to sending the 2i2 back and getting something made by Avid or M-Audio, I finally got everything to work. Here is what did it:
Step 1
Download the MOST recent drivers at beta.focusrite.com, not the ones off the public Focusrite website. Instal them.
Step 2
On your PC, go to the Start Menu>Control Panel>Hardware and Sound> Under Sound click "Manage Audio Devices". Click the recording tab, and set the Scarlett 2i2 as the default device. Click "properties" and then "advanced", from here you can set default format to "2 channel, 16 bit 48000 Hz".
Step 3
Go to the Star Menu, and type "Focusrite" in the search, and then bring up the Focusrite USB 2.0 Audio Control Panel. Set the buffer length to 6 ms.
Step 4
Open up Pro Tools (or your DAW of choice). Start a new session at 24 bit 48 kHz. If it says (like it did for me) that the ASIO properties had been changed, and that it needs to restart, click ok, but than click cancel when it asks you if you want to save. Then go to "Setup" and then "Hardware". From here set the sample rate to 48 kHz, and set the buffer length to 6 ms.
Step 5
Close Pro Tools, open up the Focusrite Audio Control Panel on more time and double check that the buffer length is set to 6 ms.
Step 6
Open Pro Tools, start a new session at 24 bit 48 kHz, and pray no errors will show up when you press record!
And there you have it. This took me about 4 days to figure out. Hope it works for you! And if it doesn't, or if you have any questions, leave comment below and I'll see what I can do!
As for the 2i2, yeah, its a fantastic little interface. Super quiet pres, awesome halo clip indicators, phantom power. Some people are complaining the headphone gain doesn't get very loud, but I found it sufficient. The little line/instrument switches are plastic, by the way, the pictures make them look like metal, but its plastic ;) Altogether, its a sturdy little box, great for the price, I just wish Focusrite would put a bit more effort into their drivers.
Cheers!
Want Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2 In/2 Out USB Recording Audio Interface Discount?
I spent 15 years as a professional recording engineer and recently sold much of my gear including my 24 track recorder and large console. I just wanted a simple interface for my Mac at home. I bought this last week and am quite impressed with the build quality and sound. The unit has very low noise from the preamps, not really any color to speak of (as expected at this price point) but very clean. Definitely better sound quality than the MBox. It can also handle high end Microphones with the built in Phantom. Some of the interfaces I tested had issues delivering enough current. I used this one with a Neumann TLM-170 for several hours last week without issue.The couple of cons I would list with this are:
1. Powered only via USB. This is more of a nuisance issue as my Mac seems to drop power and restore it randomly when I leave the computer idle so I have started turning off my active monitors when stepping away.
2. I am not a huge fan of the included Ableton SW and the fact that it limits you to 4 active plug-ins. This is not really an issue for me since I had always planned to use this with Pro Tools 10, but I think this limitation should be considered for beginners looking at this as a sole solution.
Having used the Focusrite high end analog gear for years, overall I am very impressed with what they have done here for less than $150. The plug-ins alone are worth that much so getting a clean interface bundled with the plug-ins is a great bargain.
Also, it feels durable, knobs and inputs are all in very well placed areas, everything is very easy to get to, cables dont really get in the way. Direct monitoring is great as well.
Love this audio interface!
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