f
For some use cases this is the best audio interface below 400$.
Nice quality metal chassis. Great sounding input and output preamps.
Enough gain on mic inputs to drive sure sm57 without additional amplification. Gain control could be a bit better. First 90% of gain gives smooth slow change. On last 10% every movement gives much more pronounced changes. Also the last 10% starts to get quite noisy - escpecially so with the phantom power engaged.
Headphone output is great with higher impedence headphones. Unfortunatelly with low impedence headphones it losses its flat response.
The instrument input on the front is great for both low and high output guitars and basses (had some software glitch at first which made high output guitar clip even on lowest gain setting, after reset it handles the output with enough headroom). However using the instrument input takes over one mic input so You can only record two tracks at once, but I think that most interface in this price range behave that way.
My biggest gripe is latency. At buffer size of 32 I am getting about 7 ms round trip latency on 2020 Macbook M1 (tested with rtl utility and cable looping back output to input). It's about the same that my 12 year old Komplete Audio interface. It's not that bad for tracking guitar (depending of course on additional latency introduced by plugins used) but tracking vocals with this latency gets quite annoying.
The software mixer that comes with the interface is very nice. You can create seperate mixes and easily control the routing of inputs to ouputs. Internal loopback is a nice addition, though it would be nice to be able to assign virtual loopbacks input to different mixer inputs. Now the loopback is on inputs 11 and 12, in some applications (like zoom, teams, discord etc.) you cannot choose which input is being used - they just pass whats on input 1 and 2 by default.
All in all very nice interface. Superb audio quality for the price. If you don't plan on using high gain guitars and don't mind the round trip latency, this is the best audio interface to buy at this price point
Enough gain on mic inputs to drive sure sm57 without additional amplification. Gain control could be a bit better. First 90% of gain gives smooth slow change. On last 10% every movement gives much more pronounced changes. Also the last 10% starts to get quite noisy - escpecially so with the phantom power engaged.
Headphone output is great with higher impedence headphones. Unfortunatelly with low impedence headphones it losses its flat response.
The instrument input on the front is great for both low and high output guitars and basses (had some software glitch at first which made high output guitar clip even on lowest gain setting, after reset it handles the output with enough headroom). However using the instrument input takes over one mic input so You can only record two tracks at once, but I think that most interface in this price range behave that way.
My biggest gripe is latency. At buffer size of 32 I am getting about 7 ms round trip latency on 2020 Macbook M1 (tested with rtl utility and cable looping back output to input). It's about the same that my 12 year old Komplete Audio interface. It's not that bad for tracking guitar (depending of course on additional latency introduced by plugins used) but tracking vocals with this latency gets quite annoying.
The software mixer that comes with the interface is very nice. You can create seperate mixes and easily control the routing of inputs to ouputs. Internal loopback is a nice addition, though it would be nice to be able to assign virtual loopbacks input to different mixer inputs. Now the loopback is on inputs 11 and 12, in some applications (like zoom, teams, discord etc.) you cannot choose which input is being used - they just pass whats on input 1 and 2 by default.
All in all very nice interface. Superb audio quality for the price. If you don't plan on using high gain guitars and don't mind the round trip latency, this is the best audio interface to buy at this price point
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FM
Sound and quality is great. Features are a bit minimalistic
Sound quality is top notch. Bulid quality great too. Visually appealing as well.
In terms of features, you get a more or less simple set, compared to what other brands offer, in the same price range. But aside from that, everything you get is high quality. It feels like an apple or porsche product.
The preamps and digital converters are the same ones you will find in a professional grade mixer, so you can expect high quality recordings.
The downsides for me are:
1- Lack of own software to control EQ and input and output levels. If you're using a daw, you can do that, but for example if you're playing videos from youtube, or other source online, you won't be able to control the sound parameters, other than volume and maybe pan.
2 - it is good that the unit is directly powered by the computer, via USB-C, but I miss a separate port/input for power. This because if I want to play sound from my phone via the audio interface (this unit), it won't work because the phone won't have enough power capacity to feed it. I would have to use some additional equipment to make it work (and still not sure if it will work). Perhaps a powered usb hub? Not sure.
3 - a lack of Bluetooth is nowadays a fault. You need to use cables if you want to work with great audio quality. But for simple playback, the bluetooth is for sure convenient. Anyway, not a big issue. You can always overcome this by connecting a Bluetooth transmitter in the audio output.
In terms of features, you get a more or less simple set, compared to what other brands offer, in the same price range. But aside from that, everything you get is high quality. It feels like an apple or porsche product.
The preamps and digital converters are the same ones you will find in a professional grade mixer, so you can expect high quality recordings.
The downsides for me are:
1- Lack of own software to control EQ and input and output levels. If you're using a daw, you can do that, but for example if you're playing videos from youtube, or other source online, you won't be able to control the sound parameters, other than volume and maybe pan.
2 - it is good that the unit is directly powered by the computer, via USB-C, but I miss a separate port/input for power. This because if I want to play sound from my phone via the audio interface (this unit), it won't work because the phone won't have enough power capacity to feed it. I would have to use some additional equipment to make it work (and still not sure if it will work). Perhaps a powered usb hub? Not sure.
3 - a lack of Bluetooth is nowadays a fault. You need to use cables if you want to work with great audio quality. But for simple playback, the bluetooth is for sure convenient. Anyway, not a big issue. You can always overcome this by connecting a Bluetooth transmitter in the audio output.
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D
Plug & play sorta...
This unit is quite straightforward, kinda plug and play but it did require a little bit of getting used to with the ID mixer software. Love how small and light yet robust build this unit is. All knobs feels solid and love the clicky big knob which can be assigned to different functions.
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B
Very good
The Audient has given me the best sounding vocals I have been able to record at home. Far superior to the Focusrite Scarlett (same mike, same preamp) and also much better than the Volt from UA.
Unbelievable price for this quality.
Hopefully they will also be inserting a built-in compressor in the future ...
Unbelievable price for this quality.
Hopefully they will also be inserting a built-in compressor in the future ...
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m
A great audio interface
It's a great sounding interface, with very clean preamps. I love that it has the loopback feature. The guitar jfet output sounds very nice and is very powerfull, a lot of gain on it. The only thign i don't like about it so far is the headphone out input impedence(its 20 ohms), so i don't recommend you connect headphones that are lower them 80 ohm impedence. It might affect the sound a little. The other thing they could easily fix from the last years model is the preamp gain on the mics, its not very usable between 9-10. It gets a little noisy. But its all good up to 9. Depends on how sensitive your mic is really. Other then that no complaints. I use it on PC and i had no crashes or weird glitches so far. Would buy again.
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A
Greate Audio Interface
This is a high-quality audio interface at a reasonable price. It doesn't have substantial analog gain but it gets the job done. Preamps are low-noise and clean.
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g
Great sound with this price tag
Works smoothly most of the time.
Excellent built quality, great clean sound.
Gain level need to be turned up on every start up
Excellent built quality, great clean sound.
Gain level need to be turned up on every start up
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