Audient iD14 MKII

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

Sometimes, there's "something" that doesn't quite fit. For this unit, this wasn't the look, the style, the form factor or the features, it was something deeper, intangible, like troubles in the back of your mind.

The things that I liked:
- This is solid metal, it feels rugged and yet "toy-ish" at the same time. It looks great though and clean.
- Buttons are solid and have a nice feel on your fingers.
- 8 channel ADAT !! Hello ! For this price point ; unbeatable.
- Nice access to Hi-Z plug for the guitar,
- nice little "flick switch" for the phantom power (independent also),
- Pressing the big knob to mute is a great feature too.
- The assignable ID button is a great idea too, and it works !

But yet, something didn't "gel" with me. Here are the things I didn't enjoy:

- The initial setup was worrying and not smooth. I was asked to update the latest firmware out of the box, and it failed systematically (macOS 15 sequoia + macMini M1). I contacted Audient support via chat (automatic AI chat bot... proof that the bug is known and common) the issue was solved by removing preferences and caches in the Mac library... Nevertheless, that was not a great and easy set up as promised. I thought this thing was plug and play with no fuss... but yet, it took me 45 mins to get it updated to the latest firmware.
From this point, I felt unsure. As described above, it worked well but the initial excitement vanished pretty quickly and the whole experience and navigation of the unit got me wary.

- I got confused between the headphone button and the main volume button.
- The ID software worked ok overall but sometimes I got no sound from the interface, so I had to launch the ID software first to get the sound working.
Got me to a point I had to open Spotify or YouTube first thing to make sure 100% I got sound coming out.
- I got confused with the direct monitoring and the routing...
- And... the (in)famous "pop" at boot or shutdown. Not too loud though, but a "pop" in the speakers nonetheless.
You have to remind yourself to mute the things before turning on the speakers, or turn off your speakers before shutting it off (still mute it just in case).

All in all, those weren't earth shattering, big issues, just nuisances, gremlins, sand in the cogs that made the whole experience unpleasant and made me "walk on egg shells" every time I turned on the computer.

Uncertainty, unpredictability, confusion... even the beautiful look couldn't redeem it. It sounded good while it lasted but I had to return it. I can't possibly start projects knowing (or not knowing) what is going to happen with my hardware. I'm here to make music and the hardware is the tool to achieve this, I can't be worried about this.

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.

This audio interface boasts a robust build quality, exceptional XLR sound clarity, and a rich JFET TRS sound. With its versatile 6 outputs and virtual audio jack, it offers unparalleled value for under $300, making it a standout choice in the market.

UPDATED:
In a fairly short time of use, I have discovered two problems that really irritate me, and which were absent on Scarlett.
1. The device does not remember the volume settings, and after each restart of the computer you have to tweak them again.
2. When I put my Windows into sleep mode and bring it out of it, the sound from the audio interface simply falls off (the volume mixer on the Windows 10 taskbar does not see it). You have to restart the device, unplugging and re-plugging the cable into it.

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.