Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2 In/2 Out USB Recording Audio Interface
3Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2 In/2 Out USB Recording Audio Interface
- 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
The Scarlett 2i2 is a 2 in/2 out USB recording interface featuring two award-winning Focusrite preamps. Housed in an attractive anodised aluminium unibody chassis, the interface not only sounds fantastic but looks great too. What’s more it’s solid enough to take on the road when you travel. For more than 25 years, Focusrite has designed some of the most popular microphone preamps in the industry. This experience has been used to create the transparent, low-noise and low-distortion preamp fou
List Price: $ 199.99
Price: $ 199.99
Dr. Avery
A great choice for starting out.,
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.
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|G. Farnsworth
Excellent hardware–Horrible driver,
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…
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|jeremyguy
Having trouble with drivers on Windows 7? Read 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!
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