The Audio Interface Thread!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > Musician's Lounge > The Audio Interface Thread!

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

I got one of the red models and it starts humming when you turn phantom power on both channels.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2014 16:47

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:32

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

So I'm going back to school for music composition and have to get a new Macbook Pro. Is it worth investing in a clarett2 interface now when I have a Akai Pro EIE and a Firewire Solo I could adapter into working with thunderbolt or just deal with the slow usb 1.1 speeds of the EIE? Should I try to sell them at this point since I hardly use more than an interface or two and the clarett would last me a while and can be upgraded to have more inputs? And hell I just thought about compatibility issues man I should probably sell some stuff and get new gear.

# ¿ May 23, 2016 01:44

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

Hmm it's able to use USB-C (cable is a seperate purchase) and has a specific driver for that that I see some mention as helping the latency but I can't imagine that'd you'd see a huge change from gen 2 to gen 3 for latency otherwise.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2019 06:08

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

Focusrite says it can use USB C but yes except for the low latency driver (which says it�s for the USB c) you won�t notice a big difference.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2019 22:44

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

Like bluntly, buy the gen 3 if you want the air boost, otherwise who gives a poo poo.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2019 22:51

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

chippy posted:

Where do they say this? I'm failing to see why there would be a different driver for a USB-A <-> USB-C cable vs USB-C <-> USB-C. It's just a different form factor for the physical connector. Unless your device supports USB 3.0, which the new interfaces don't, USB 2 over USB-C cables/connectors is still just USB 2.

Well I do if the latency is lower as they claim. Live performance/looping is one of the main things I use Ableton Live for and I'm really sensitive to latency while playing keys (not so much with guitar and vocals, not sure why, but I'm a much more competent and technical pianist than I am a guitarist, so maybe that's it) so I want it as low as possible.

I misread something on the protoolsexpert review about the driver being because of the USB-C (although all the reviews all talk about the USB-C being a factor for better speed which is nonsense to me). So there is even less of a reason to get it for latency.

Like seriously your buffer and sample rate will do more for latency than the device driver. Like I said, get the new one if you want the air boost or I guess the direct monitoring since that's also new. Or wait until someone puts numbers out but that might be a long wait since most of these reviewers won't do that.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2019 19:25

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

Oh huh, i didn't have much experience with the gen 1s, they didn't have the control software until gen 2 I guess.

Also I only got to look at a solo for a minute a couple weeks back before it was gone, is the control software how to activate the pad and air boost and it's just lights on the physical unit?

# ¿ Sep 13, 2019 04:00

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

Just a warning that I�ve been finding some interfaces don�t play well with adapters. The clarett 4 pre (thunderbolt) driver doesn�t seem to work with a thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2019 16:58

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

Radiapathy posted:

It's weird. I revisited the topic last year, in a test that includes the Novation Audiohub (which is more or less a re-skinned Scarlett 2i2 that uses the 1.x drivers) amd the Focusrite Clarett 2Pre USB, which uses the newer drivers.

http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2018/04/comparing-usb-audio-interface-latency.html

I found that the Clarett driver performs notably better than the original Scarlett USB driver on smaller buffer sizes, but gets exponentially worse with increasing buffer size- to the point where latency is worse than even the original 2i2 drivers, once the buffers reach a certain size. After doing that work, I learned of a theory that the new Scarlett drivers internally double the buffer size selected by the user/reported by the driver, which would explain the exponentially-increasing lag if true. But why they did that, I don't know... could be they were focusing on reliability/stability over performance when doing comparative testing at different sample rates and that was a quick hack to make it seem like they're reliable as RME at the same settings, for example.

Again, this was April 2018. Focusrite might have tightened things up since then. But yeah, on Windows at least, with ASIO, driver quality might be the #1 factor in low latency performance.

I would give up an arm for more testing for audio interfaces that do shoot outs like that.

chippy posted:

Well that's kind of annoying, I asked around when I was researching my last purchase and everyone told me the same thing, it makes very little difference, it's down to your computer.

I ended up with a 3rd Gen Scarlett 18i20 and I'm happy with it so far, so I'm glad to hear they have improved. It's definitely better than the Mbox 2 Mini it replaced, with that I couldn't play certain instruments live in Ableton with a buffer size of 64 without getting crackles and popping, and i can with the Scarlett, so there obviously is some difference.

Yeah that was last page, I had mentioned reports of the USB-C driver helping with latency on the gen 3s but being unsure if that would be a significant difference because someone saying, "It's better than before!" without quantifying it means so loving little. Sorry if I gave a bad impression on that.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2019 06:34

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

I wonder if it's something to do with how it does monitoring. Is the sound when you do tracking/recording the direct input sound or the processed sound? Are you setting up garageband to do input monitoring?

# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 00:39

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:32

Weird BIAS: Jul 5, 2007; so... guess that's it, huh? just... don't say i didn't warn you.

I think the response was just because it's a newer product that is very similar to the original except for it's gimmick of having sounds built in which is a weird one. Either that or someone has never been to a non-english Amazon before? I dunno.

So cable wise get a 1/8 inch trs/stereo/headphone to 1/4 inch ts/mono/guitar/instrument/patch and you're set yeah.

From searching: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Hosa-CM...88583053&sr=8-1

# ¿ May 4, 2020 10:05

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > Musician's Lounge > The Audio Interface Thread!