SeriesFocusrite Scarlett 1st Generation

- Which technical specifications motivated your choice? The number of inputs/outputs, the rack-mounting possibility, the MIDI interface, and the brand - What do you use it for? To record in a mini-home studio (awaiting more resources to expand), alone or with a band, to keep the settings of each track. - What's your setup (motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard drive,...)? Adobe Audition CS6 Windows 8, intel i7, 8GB RAM (good setup for the most part) - Do you use it with other instruments or systems (mixing console, preamp, DtD, ...) and what's your setup? ... I'm a newbie, so I can't give any specific characteristics. I use it with a Presonus Studio Channel preamp to record vocals. UTILIZATION - Are the drivers stable? Never had a problem. - Which software do you use? Adobe Audition CS6 - no problems - What's the latency of your system? I record at 8 ms, and I think you can go further - How many tracks can you record/playback simultaneously ? ... Since I don't have a whole orchestra behind me, I have been able to record 4 tracks and play back 8/10 tracks without any problems. GETTING STARTED - Did you have any problems during the installation? You need an Internet connection to download the driver, after having validated a code. - Did you have any incompatibility problems? No, sir. - How complicated is the overall configuration? Even being new to it, I got how it works rather quickly, which means... - Is the user's manual clear and comprehensive? ... Uh... I haven't opened it. OVERALL OPINION - How long have you been using it? Two/three months, not longer. - Which feature do you like the most / the least? The most: everything, really, I'm very satisfied! The least: If you bear with me, I'll go look for something... - Did you try any of other models before buying this one? Two small interfaces: Presonus Audiobox USB and Yamaha Audiogram 3 The 18i20 dwarfs them both (fortunately!!) - How would you rate its value for money? For such a number of inputs and outputs, it's really a very good value for money. It is true that the preamps aren't of the best quality, but they are far from being bad. Anyway, at this price and given what the 18i20 offers, it couldn't be better. - Based on your experience, would you buy this product again? ... If I had the same budget, without hesitation.

The Scarlett 2i2 is produced by Focusrite, it seems to be a pretty standard interface for the home musicians looking to have quick and painless way to lay down some demos. It provides a very good quality on the go, and it should work with any system and any interface. One of the main things about the FocusRite Scarlett 2i2 is that it can be used in Pro Tools. They actually advertise that it will work in Pro Tools and use that as a selling point. I have never used it in Pro Tools but I have heard good things from others saying how well it works with it. The price tag on the Scarlett 2i2 was 200 dollars when it first came out which I though was a fair price for an interface that was very universal and worked in the all mighty Pro Tools. UTILIZATION The latency is very low and we never had the need to update the drivers because they worked great. We used it to record some very basic stuff, no more than one track recording at a time on our laptop that was running Windows Vista. GETTING STARTED Only problem we had with the FocusRite Scarlett 2i2 is when first installing it to my laptop we got a few error messages when plugging it in after the restart of the system. It wouldn’t recognize, so we just did the whole process over again and reinstalled everything and then got no more error messages. OVERALL OPINION The Scarlett 2i2 is a compact interface that can give you a solid at home recording for a small price. The price has come down on this interface about 50 bucks and cost around 150 now. The value for the price is top notch and I recommend getting this over a lot of other interface for the Pro Tools set up. This is cheaper and works just as well as some of the other “leading” interfaces for Pro Tools.