Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 DAC - opinions? Sound quality?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by MrRom92, May 5, 2013.

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  1. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    I know, I bought a piece of digital gear... :shh: shocking. Sue me!
    I just bought this little beast on Amazon, can't wait to get it. Seems to have the best specs in that price range between all the models I have compared, and a company like Focusrite seems to have a better reputation for top-notch quality than any of the other brands I compared. Could it be too good to be true?

    Two XLR/TRS inputs, 24/96 bit depth and sampling rate. I bought it to do hi-rez transfers of my two-track reel to reel tapes to digital. 15 ips masters/safeties, 7 1/2 ips pre-recorded, and things of that nature.

    What do you guys think?
     
  2. Metralla

    Metralla Joined Jan 13, 2002

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    No idea - never heard of Focusrite. Do they make cameras? ;)

    Link please.
     
  3. bootray

    bootray Forum Resident

    Location:
    D.M. Iowa
    Focusrite has an excellent rep for quality.
    Home studio musicians voice concerns about all usb interfaces like this one
    in terms of latency interfering with performance and overdub timing, but for your intended
    purpose it should work well. I have been shopping for a PCIe interface with better
    latency for home studio but they are scarce in this price range.
     
    McLover and MrRom92 like this.
  4. LeeS

    LeeS Music Fan

    Location:
    Atlanta
    :D
     
  5. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    Thank you :) I'm more concerned about the sound quality and faithfulness to the source. As you've mentioned, latency is of no issue for me. All the reviews I found were from a musician's point of view, so I was hoping an audiophile-minded person on here maybe also owned the unit.

    Hah! Good one
    http://us.focusrite.com/usb-audio-interfaces/scarlett-2i2
     
  6. Metralla

    Metralla Joined Jan 13, 2002

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Thanks for the link.
     
    MrRom92 likes this.
  7. boyfromnowhere

    boyfromnowhere Senior Member

    Location:
    missouri, usa
    Does anyone have experience with this for home recording, though? Is latency a big issue? Since upgrading my computer, I need a new way to record onto it and I've been looking at this one. Sorry if this is hijacking the thread!
     
  8. Gardo

    Gardo Audio Epistemologist

    Location:
    Virginia
    I'm using one of these on my home PC. It replaced a Lexicon Omega that was dying a slow death. The Focusrite sounds very nice to my ears for both DAC and ADC. I haven't tried any multitracking yet, so I can't speak to the latency performance.
     
  9. T'mershi Duween

    T'mershi Duween Forum Resident

    Location:
    Y'allywood
    Latency will only effect you if you're doing overdubs to existing tracks.
     
  10. bootray

    bootray Forum Resident

    Location:
    D.M. Iowa
    I'm looking at these usb units too. You're probably looking at the same units I have.
    Tascam, Roland, Lexicon, Behringer, Presonis, Focusrite....and more.
    I bet they all sound great. But the drivers are another matter.
    When reading the user reviews on Amazon, many love these units.
    Inevitably a few users seem to have driver issues resulting in unacceptable noise and latency
    with midi input devices and multitracking. Perhaps it's different Motherboards not playing nice
    with allocation of usb resources. 5 milliseconds seems the average decent delay, 3ms is excellent.
    Remember, standing 10 feet in front of a live stage apm has 2ms delay.
    I used an E-mu 1820 w/pci interface with few latency issues for years but they never released functioning drivers after WinXP. Most Mobo's these days only have PCIe slots.
    PCIe audio interfaces are better but more costly, so these usb units are appealing.
    Buy from somewhere with good return policies, order one and when you get set it up,
    give it a hard real world workout to see if it can take it. If not try another.
    Let us know how it goes, might help me decide.
    Good luck
     
  11. boyfromnowhere

    boyfromnowhere Senior Member

    Location:
    missouri, usa
    I definitely plan on doing a lot of overdubbing. I record all my songs by myself and often end up with about 20 tracks for each song!

    Thanks! It might be a while before I actually acquire one of these (lack of money), but I'll post again whenever I do. I didn't know it would be so difficult to find something that works with Windows 8.
     
  12. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY

    I actually just replaced the Linux installation on my laptop yesterday with Windows 8 to minimize any compatibility issues. Didn't wanna risk it or have to fiddle with anything.
    Still unsure where I stand on Windows 8. I do like the increased performance, native ability to mount disk images, and the new and improved file-transfer dialog... Just miss that start menu, and hate accidentally clicking into that start screen.
    It also doesn't seem to be working as well at opening things on my FTP server, but maybe that's just me expecting too much of it.
     
  13. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    I finally received it and set it up today, and I would appreciate any feedback you have or comments regarding the sound quality.

    I have made a couple of 1 minute sound samples from a couple of different tapes, one of which is one many you will be familiar with the sound of, although I am not.
    both sound samples are 24/96 WAVs, and the only processing applied was bringing the volume up a bit.

    Sample #1 is from a 15 IPS safety master of Led Zeppelin's Custard Pie. I actually have no other version of Physical Graffiti, so I have nothing to compare it to, or any expectations of how it "should" sound. So any comments regarding the SQ would be appreciated. To me it doesn't sound like the track was recorded with the best fidelity, but it may be quite good compared to what is out there for this track, for all I know.

    Sample 2 is from a 15 IPS tape copy of a recording by the Count Basie band. To my knowledge, this recording has not been issued in any form. All I know is that it's a performance at a Hollywood private party, New Years 1961. The recording is quite good, and if any recording would test the limits of the DAC, it would be this one. Extremely dynamic and clear with an excellent soundstage and excellent extension into the frequency extremes, seems to be a simple 2 microphone affair with lots of tubey goodness, eerily realistic. I couldn't think of a better recording that would expose any shortcomings of the DAC.


    Once again, I'm very interested to hear the feedback of others on this forum. So far I'm very pleased, and I'd like to run some more tests on it. It's very bare-bones but it's very good at what it does.
     
  14. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Count sounded great, been looking at the focusrite for needledrops, do you recommend?
     
  15. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it. I would easily reccomend this unit, so far I'm very pleased with the sound and can't find any faults with it. Only thing is that when you choose "direct monitoring", at least through the headphone jack, it monitors everything in mono - presumably so it's easier for a musician to hear themselves, but the proper stereo feed is output to the computer and can be monitored from the computer. I'd rather direct monitor than to also have the laptop I use have to deal with monitoring the audio as well - I fear the processor is struggling enough, as it's an older model. So this is a bit of a downside for me, albeit a minor one. I'm not sure if the same thing happens when direct monitoring out of the rear balanced outputs.
     
  16. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Thanks for the info, should be receiving mine today, 1st up ELO-Eldorado :)
     
  17. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    Sweeeet, post some samples when you get a chance, I'm pretty excited to hear how this thing handles vinyl!

    I think you'll find with line sources, unless they are very quiet you will want to do the transfers with the gain knobs set all the way down.

    Just yesterday I was actually entrusted with performing the digital transfer of an absolutely priceless tape of a previously-thought lost recording (now considered the master), and I used the Focusrite on the job. Wouldn't have done it if I didn't trust it entirely. This is one seriously good sounding piece of gear - maybe there's some old Neve designed circuitry in there? Ultra low noisefloor, especially when working in 24 bit, and it doesn't seem like it's coloring the sound or affecting it in any real negative way. Very neutral, I like it. Most pieces of hear have some "sound" of their own to impart in my experience.
     
  18. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Just started recording, using wavlab, gain is at about 10 and lab is receiving at -7 and below, will post in the needledrop thread, this is a nice little box. The funny thing is under windows sound settings it see's the focursite as a recording device but the drop down only lets me select 16/96 as maximum, is this something to worry about or does asio trump it?
     
  19. Meatface

    Meatface Forum Resident

    If the windows driver is installed, you should be able to select your Focusrite asio device within Wavlab using the manufacturer driver. It will operate directly from the Wavlab software. You will then be able to set the resolution and bitrate to the full capabilities.
     
  20. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Thanks Meat that's what I did, the reason I ask is that my old interface could only do 16/48 but wavlab saw the driver and let me record at 24/96 , i'm assuming it was padding it
     
  21. Meatface

    Meatface Forum Resident

    Ah. I see. It's been a while since I've used wavlab. You can playback your needledrop through the spectrum metering and look for any low (very low) activity above 24k. If there is anything at all, you'll know it's at least above 48k. If there isn't anything it still could be 96k, but too low to show on the meter. I think there is a bit meter too.
     
  22. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    It showed the same under the settings as a sound device in windows, but when recording into Cook Edit, I was able to confirm that it was indeed recording correctly at whatever sample rate and bit depth I chose and not making a "false" recording of a low Rez stream. Tested at 44.1, 48, 96, 16 and 24. All combinations of each. Also tested at 192, but this was just making a false 192 recording of only a 96k samplerate source - super sharp cutoff, no signal recorded after 96
     
  23. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Thanks guys for the info, much appreciated :)
     
  24. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Rom, here's a drop of What Do You Want The Girl To Do- Boz Skaggs Columbia USA 76
    This is exactly the Box I was looking for, thanks for starting this thread :)
    http://www.sendspace.com/file/xvi45j

    Technics 1900
    At120E
    MF-VLPS-II
     
  25. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island, NY

    You're very welcome! I'll have to listen to it as soon as I get to a computer. I appreciate posting the sample, as I'm very curious to hear how it handles vinyl.


    Does anyone know if a second one could be used simultaneously on another USB port? For, lets say, 4 channels of simultaneous recording? I know there are other devices made for this but it would be cheaper to just get a second one of these daisy chained for the job, if this actually works that is. I have another tape deck that is quad capable and I could do hi-Rez transfers of quad tapes this way.
     
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