Hi,
It's been a long time that I got new audiogear in my studio. But here it is, the Scarlett 2i4.
Since my new laptop didn't had a firewire port, it was time for me to look for a descent soundcard. I did had an Alesis iO2Express which sounds realy OK, but it had one large drawback: it can't share the ASIO4all driver between different programs which is a nuance. My first option was to go for the lovely RME babyface... but this one costs over the 500 euro's. As you might have noticed, there's a economic resession going on, so more than 500 euro's for a soundcard to take on the move with a laptop... hmmmm.... yes... if I could explain this to the my budget keeper...
So let's look for something that goes below the 200 euro, gives a real good sound quality and offers stable drivers with a low latency.
I allready owned a Sapphire 40Pro which is really great, so Focusrite was my first stop. The Scarlet 2i4 has very good specs. So yesterday, I ordered one at Thomann and today it allready arrived.
So, first impressions:
The device looks realy great. Build quality is oustanding: a metal solid casing, solid knobs, nice red looks... yes... hardware wise this looks like a good product. Totaly different than the Alesis Express which has a plastic casing. Don't get me wrong here: since the Alesis Express is half the price of the Scarlet, this can hardly be regarded as a critism on the Alesis. On the other hand, there are plenty of interfaces out there at 200 euro which don't have the build-feeling of this Scarlet. Good points for Focusrite!
Installation: registering the product you are directed to the download url of the drivers. I installed the USB driver and noticed that the setup panel is realy basic: you just specify the desired latency and that's it. The knob goes well low... all the way to 1ms.
Sound quality: the technical specs promised a lot. I can only confirm that this device is giving you outstanding sound quality. No small artifacts whatsoever, not the slightest giss... just perfect. I haven't tested the sound quality of the inputs yet but I expect that they will be close to the quality level of the Sapphire 40Pro.
Driver: Ok, let's enter the critical zone: starting up ABleton live, putting the latency at 96 and hit the test on a 80% cpu usage: perfect sound, not a single drop out. Pushing the card to it's limits and put it at 1 ms latency... not a glitch. Promising indeed ! I returned the setting to 2 ms of latency which works with a buffer setting of about 96 which is really OK. The driver looks good. Ok, time will tell but in any case this looks very promising. Note though, I'm working on a recent i7-363QM laptop which is also a determining factor for reaching this low latency setting.
Shared driver? Yes ! It works: while keeping the sample rate at 44.1 Khz, I can now switch between my browser and Ableton or another sound application. Sond keep playing
Conclusion:
First impression is very positive. This sound interface meets fully my expectations.
If you're looking for an usb-sound interface in the sub 200 euro area, than this one should be definetly on your short list.
I don't have the habit of braging with my gear but this one can be recommended without hesitations.
Moon