Advice On Audio Interface Purchase

[Cirrus]

Hmm, the Audient stuff does not register, there?
The ID22, 24, and 44 have optical, (I don't know about the EVO line)
I have the 22, which I really like, two nice pres, insert points, four outputs for either reamping or dual monitors with nice monitor control via their software.
I don't really know about latency, though, because I never monitor through plugins, or the DAW.
I recorded an EP with it, and got really nice sounds.

https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/album/0U5Q5tgpRy81FAhchIIZKS?si=AH5vT5wdR3eGKI-bAbDVkA

I like the sound of those Audients - the preamps are perfectly respectable and playback sounds nice to me, and particularly 6 years ago when I decided to get the iD22, the form factor felt like a step in the right direction for small home studio setups since there was no need for a mixing desk/ Mackie Big Knob style monitor controller.

But... the drivers aren't amazing, and nor is the reliability. I've had some practically show stopping issues with both the iD22 and an iD44+asp800 combo I had for a year for an album project. The iD22 developed crackling/popping/ high noise floor issues across all ins and outs, I had to replace a capacitor inside which seems to have helped but not everyone can do that, and it's a very common problem looking online. The monitor mixer software has graphic issues with some AMD processors, making it essentially impossible to use, which really gave me a headache a few weeks back when we had a session player in.

In all, it's been enough to make me long for the golden days of my old RME fireface 800.

Latency's been nothing special with either card, and on the subject of that non-deterministic latency that's causing some friction above, I'm not gonna claim to be an expert on the technicalities but I've had some issues trying to hybrid mix with hardware from session to session, getting differing amounts of unreported latency that make synching printed hardware round trips back into the session a bit of an annoyance.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Latency's been nothing special with either card, and on the subject of that non-deterministic latency that's causing some friction above, I'm not gonna claim to be an expert on the technicalities but I've had some issues trying to hybrid mix with hardware from session to session, getting differing amounts of unreported latency that make synching printed hardware round trips back into the session a bit of an annoyance.

Usually that's a driver issue.

 

[James Freeman]

It has been two weeks since I've upgraded from my trusty Focusrite Saffire 24 DSP I use since 2010 to a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 Gen 3, they are equivalent in terms of i/o and functionality so I was right at home.
If the Firewire drivers were more stable/supported I wound not have 'upgraded', I grew tired of periodic disconnects and buffer issues with the Saffire, otherwise it was a long overdue necessity.

 

[laxu]

I had a bright idea to add a few extra mic pres to my existing audio interface. I dug out my old Echo AudioFire 4 and plugged that into my Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 2nd gen via SPDIF.

Of course, that didn't work out because the Echo AudioFire 4 didn't happen to be configured right. Since it's Firewire, I have no way to connect it to anything to configure it.

 

[James Freeman]

Trivia;
Firewire (IEEE 1394) was standardized around 1995 and had a speed of 400 Mbit/s, very convenient for plug-n-play digital data transfer, etc.
USB 1.0 was standardized in 1996 but was slow AF with pathetic 1.5 Mbit/s, it was not until 2001 with USB 2.0 that USB reached the speed of 480 Mbit/s but by then Firewire was the go-to for a ton of studio equipment and remained so for at least another decade.
---

Hopefully USB will be backwards compatible.... forever.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Since it's Firewire, I have no way to connect it to anything to configure it.

According to some articles, FW is still working under macOS Sonoma. Possibly not for anything performance related, but you might be able to install a control panel and adjust some settings. So all you may need is a TB/USB to FW adapter and some hope for the utility software to not use anything 32bit anymore.

 

[norminal]

Anyone know if using a coaxial S/PDIF to Toslink adaptor would add additional latency? Would I be better off just going analog out of my modeler into an interface?

 

[James Freeman]

Anyone know if using a coaxial S/PDIF to Toslink adaptor would add additional latency? Would I be better off just going analog out of my modeler into an interface?

No additional latency.

 

[Sascha Franck]

And fwiw, as Zoom f***ed things up royally (their firmware installers don't even allow me to fully revert to an older version, so the unit is in fact half-bricked...), I'm in the market for a new interface, too. Fortunately, ATM I really only need a simple 2 I/O solution so I may order a Motu M2 later on. Considered a used Babyface, but as the Hi-Z input comes with an impedance of 470kOhm, I'd rather test it before buying, which seems impossible (all offers are from the other end of the country).

 

[Sascha Franck]

Anyone know if using a coaxial S/PDIF to Toslink adaptor would add additional latency?

No.
Oh, whoops, James beat me to it.

 

[norminal]

No additional latency.

So going with say, an Audient iD14 MKII and one of these, it’d still be an advantage over going into it analog?

Optical-to-Coaxial OR Coaxial-to-Optical Digital Audio Converter, ROOFULL Bi-Directional Digital Coaxial to/from Optical Toslink SPDIF Audio Converter/Adapter/Repeater

 

[mavrick102000]

Direct monitoring latency improved from the MKI to MK 2 and a slight improvement on RTL, but the HP power out you have to be careful with.

HP power is improved and and a flat response but still requires at lease 80Ohm cans to get the best listening experience up to about 150 Ohms. Any higher Impedance headphones above 150 ohms will required USB-C to USB-C connection to use 150 - 600 Ohm Headphones. USB-C to USB-A cannot supply sufficient power above 150 Ohms.

You can watch Julian Krause's review here for the details.

 

[norminal]

Any higher Impedance headphones above 150 ohms will required USB-C to USB-C connection to use 150 - 600 Ohm Headphones. USB-C to USB-A cannot supply sufficient power above 150 Ohms.

I’m using 300 ohm headphones at the moment, but I have the capability of running USB-C to USB-C.

 

[James Freeman]

So going with say, an Audient iD14 MKII and one of these, it’d still be an advantage over going into it analog?

Optical-to-Coaxial OR Coaxial-to-Optical Digital Audio Converter, ROOFULL Bi-Directional Digital Coaxial to/from Optical Toslink SPDIF Audio Converter/Adapter/Repeater

Yes, but you will have to set the audio interface to external clock, otherwise you will hear clicks.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, just got my Motu M2. It's almost phenomenal. The two most important things:

- RTL at 44.1kHz, 32 samples buffer size (which I will easily be able to treat as "set and forget" on the new Macbook Air) is 3.5ms. That's every bit in the league of RME.

- The Hi-Z input (in fact, it combines Hi-Z and line in without any adjustment options - but that seems to work absolutely fine) is great! Helix Native sounds and responds just like the real deal. I haven't done any more scientific comparisons (maybe later), but I've played the Floor and Stomp enough to know pretty well how they feel under my fingers.

Caveat: driver-to-host communication is not correct. At the same settings, the driver reports a latency of 2.5ms - but the analog measurement via RTL utility told the real truth. There's a difference of 45 samples between reported and measured latency. As a result, there's a recording offset of the same value - something that defenitely shouldn't happen with an interface of a company such as Motu. Fortunately, Logic allows to globally compensate for that offset, but you really shouldn't have to do that (that compensation is meant to be there when using external converters the interface doesn't know anything about).
I already filed a support ticket and amazingly enough, a Motu guy got back to me just half an hour later. Let's see what they will make of this. Should be a kind of easier fix, but as a result, the reported latency numbers would be higher than before, causing existing users (unaware of the latency being higher anyway) to get all salty. We shall see...

For now, I'm a super happy camper, though. 3.5ms is pretty much stunning and the dynamic feel is great, too.

 

[norminal]

Well, I ended up grabbing a gently used Audient id14 MKII. It seems to “tick all the boxes” for me. I’ll be running my FM3 into it via S/PDIF and will use one of the mic inputs for mic/vocals. The form factor is important as the controls are on top versus the front on most other interfaces. The footprint is perfect for the space I have available. But like anything, we shall see.

Thank you for your input everyone.

 

[laxu]

I ordered the Audient EVO 8 as a local store had a small sale on it. The features seem good for <200 € price and latency seems to be similar to what I get from my Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 2nd gen. Compact form factor is a plus too. I can return it if I don't like how it functions or performs.

I felt the auto-gain feature will likely be very useful for setting up the gain level for multiple mics. The plan is to use the extra mic pres on the EVO 8 to setup a FRED mic setup with dual SM57s on my BluGuitar Nanocab (I think it records better than the Fatcab) and the AT2020 or XREF20 as either a room mic or close mic on the Fatcab.

I also picked up the Melda MAutoAlign plugin on sale. It's a track phase correction plugin that is dead easy to use and will save me a ton of time setting up mics to be exactly in phase. You just add the plugin to the tracks you want to correct, set them all to the same group (so you can use the plugin for different sets of tracks), hit analyze and it will calculate and apply the required correction.