I recently picked up the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
for recording audio from my Roland Synth and also my EV dynamic vocal mike. Amazon had it on sale for 137$ and i could not resist!...Read a bunch of reviews online, and it has got raving reviews compared to other interfaces in the price range. I have been running my home studio with a mix of m-audio interface and a small pre amp for a long time and wanted to move to something that gives me a little better quality in pre amps and also lower noise levels on my recordings.
I run a mid 2011 iMAC with 12GB of memory. I am sure this review can be applied to folks using PCs since the drivers are available for Win 7 too. I have not tested this on Win7 so if you are coming from the PC camp...read reviews on websites such as Amazon.com, zzounds.com or musiciansfriend.com....there are many on Win 7.
Install -- The install was very quick....pop in the provided CD....install the drivers and the plug in suite. Once that is done, connect the device to your usb port using the supplied USB cable. You should get a green led showing that power is on. And the cable supplied is around 3 feet in length. Once connected, the device should show up on your sound devices in the system preferences menu.
Setting the device up in Ableton Live
Open Ableton Live and follow the steps shown in the recording tutorial.
Once you find Scarlett 2i2 as the device, set it up as shown in the figure below. Important thing is to understand how the channel mapping works in ableton for the audio device. On any Audio track if you set the device up to be both channel1/2 then you are getting audio from both the inputs on the Scarlett 2i2. I saw many people have written down the device saying that audio comes only from one channel when they are recording their guitar. This is because they did not set up their channel and inputs properly.
Use the Following set up for recording a single Guitar or external Instrument. Make sure your guitar or external instrument is connected to Channel 1 of the interface and make sure the selector is set to INST. Set your gain to get the green light for the signal. In Ableton on the audio track choose the following setting for I/O.
Use the following set up for Recording a Mike and a Guitar at the same time. Connect your mike to channel 1 and set the selector to line input. Connect your guitar or other instrument to channel 2 and select Inst. Set the gain levels using the green indicator around the gain knobs.
Add two audio tracks and make sure to set each input for the vocals and instrument as shown below.
Sound Quality
The sound quality is crystal clear..the recordings come in without any noise. Just wrote a simple track to showcase the recording quality of the device. I recorded all instruments on separate tracks using the interface in Ableton. Some of the sounds are coming in directly from my Roland Juno DI
into the Focusrite on Input 2 with it set to Instr level. I will not say what they are :)..you can guess.
Drums - Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximizer preset
Bass- Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximizer preset
Hats - Scarlett EQ plugin
Guitar Right Channel - Compressor maximizer preset with a cement stadium reverb
Guitar Left channel - Compressor maximizer preset with a Medium Jam room reverb
Guitar Center - Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximixer preset
As always I recommend using balanced XLR cables for sending the signals into the interface.
Issues
I have had this happen a couple of times so far. Get popping noises on the audio track after a long session of use, the popping dies in about 10sec and the interface goes silent again. I will keep tweaking the bit rate settings and provide an update if the behavior changes. I also keep looking for new drivers on Focusrite website. I am using latest Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.1.
Conclusion
For a beginner or an intermediate home studio owner or a traveling musician this device is a no brainer. Very highly recommended....Kudos to Focusrite for putting out such a great device!
for recording audio from my Roland Synth and also my EV dynamic vocal mike. Amazon had it on sale for 137$ and i could not resist!...Read a bunch of reviews online, and it has got raving reviews compared to other interfaces in the price range. I have been running my home studio with a mix of m-audio interface and a small pre amp for a long time and wanted to move to something that gives me a little better quality in pre amps and also lower noise levels on my recordings.I run a mid 2011 iMAC with 12GB of memory. I am sure this review can be applied to folks using PCs since the drivers are available for Win 7 too. I have not tested this on Win7 so if you are coming from the PC camp...read reviews on websites such as Amazon.com, zzounds.com or musiciansfriend.com....there are many on Win 7.
Install -- The install was very quick....pop in the provided CD....install the drivers and the plug in suite. Once that is done, connect the device to your usb port using the supplied USB cable. You should get a green led showing that power is on. And the cable supplied is around 3 feet in length. Once connected, the device should show up on your sound devices in the system preferences menu.
Setting the device up in Ableton Live
Open Ableton Live and follow the steps shown in the recording tutorial.
Once you find Scarlett 2i2 as the device, set it up as shown in the figure below. Important thing is to understand how the channel mapping works in ableton for the audio device. On any Audio track if you set the device up to be both channel1/2 then you are getting audio from both the inputs on the Scarlett 2i2. I saw many people have written down the device saying that audio comes only from one channel when they are recording their guitar. This is because they did not set up their channel and inputs properly.
Use the Following set up for recording a single Guitar or external Instrument. Make sure your guitar or external instrument is connected to Channel 1 of the interface and make sure the selector is set to INST. Set your gain to get the green light for the signal. In Ableton on the audio track choose the following setting for I/O.
Use the following set up for Recording a Mike and a Guitar at the same time. Connect your mike to channel 1 and set the selector to line input. Connect your guitar or other instrument to channel 2 and select Inst. Set the gain levels using the green indicator around the gain knobs.
Add two audio tracks and make sure to set each input for the vocals and instrument as shown below.
Sound Quality
The sound quality is crystal clear..the recordings come in without any noise. Just wrote a simple track to showcase the recording quality of the device. I recorded all instruments on separate tracks using the interface in Ableton. Some of the sounds are coming in directly from my Roland Juno DI
into the Focusrite on Input 2 with it set to Instr level. I will not say what they are :)..you can guess.Drums - Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximizer preset
Bass- Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximizer preset
Hats - Scarlett EQ plugin
Guitar Right Channel - Compressor maximizer preset with a cement stadium reverb
Guitar Left channel - Compressor maximizer preset with a Medium Jam room reverb
Guitar Center - Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximixer preset
As always I recommend using balanced XLR cables for sending the signals into the interface.
Issues
I have had this happen a couple of times so far. Get popping noises on the audio track after a long session of use, the popping dies in about 10sec and the interface goes silent again. I will keep tweaking the bit rate settings and provide an update if the behavior changes. I also keep looking for new drivers on Focusrite website. I am using latest Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.1.
Conclusion
For a beginner or an intermediate home studio owner or a traveling musician this device is a no brainer. Very highly recommended....Kudos to Focusrite for putting out such a great device!
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