Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (4th Gen) USB Audio Interface Review / Explained

greetings earthlings and welcome back to podcastage this is my review of the brand new interface from Focus right the 2i2 fourth gen if you are interested in this interface it costs about $200 like always I'll throw some links in the description down below full disclosure I bought this with my own money all of my recording settings will be listed in the dublo as well as the description and now let's talk about what comes in the Box what a surprise you are going to get the audio interface an approximately 3T or 1 M USBC to usba Cable a little bit of documentation and if you register this with Focus right you get a bunch of software as well then as far as the build quality this interface feels pretty darn good it has an all aluminum chassis with plastic on the front and the rear the inputs and the outputs all feel very nice with minimal Wobble the dials are all nicely attached and they feel great to turn they also have minimal wobble and in case it matters to you this interface is made in Malaysia on the top of the interface you have the Focus right logo on the bottom you have a bunch of information as well as four rubber feet on the back you have two XLR inputs a set of balanced quarter inch outputs to run to your studio monitors a USBC port to connect this to your computer or device a USBC port to power the interface in case your device doesn't offer sufficient power and a Kensington lock port on the front you have two Quin line level or instrument level inputs you have two encoder dials to set the gain for those quarter inch or the XLR inputs surrounding those dials you have meters which will show you what your gain is set at and they also function as a much more useful meter compared to the prior Generations halo lights you have a select button to choose which input you're adjusting a 48 volts phantom power button to turn on phantom power for both inputs simultaneously an instrument input selection button an auto gain button to automatically set your gain a clip safe mode button an air circuit button which allows you to turn on a presence boost or a presence Boost Plus drive mode an output dial which controls the studio monitor outputs on the rear a direct monitor button which turns on mono or stereo monitoring of your inputs a head phone volume control and a/4 in headphone output then as far as the specs this offers 24bit up to 192 khz conversion the preamps have an EIN of minus 127 dbua they offer a gain range of 69 DB noise 48 volts of phantom power and up on screen here are all of the other specs in case you want to pause and take a closer look at any of this interfaces offerings as far as the headphone amp if you want a super in-depth analysis go check out Julian krauss's coverage of this interface but I was able to drive the hd650s which are 300 ohms to a more than reasonable listening level and with the nth1 100s which are 32 ohms I had no issues with it introducing any kind of hiss so from my standard headphones which range from 32 to 300 ohms this amp performed more than ably and I had no issues now in order to really test out the preamps of the 2i2 fourth gen I have the sm7b running directly into mic preamp 1 no fedad no cloudlifter my input gain is set at about 3:00 and I'm peing between -9 and -6b so I have plenty of gain on tap I'll go ahead and shut up so you can hear the noise floor at this gain setting but I want to see how much gain we actually have on tap so I'll go ahead and increase my gain all the way up to 100% speaking at a reasonable volume at a distance of 2 to 3 in away I am able to Peak around minus1 DB if I get excited at all I can exceed Z dbfs or hit zero dbfs and clip and distort this microphone so this thing has plenty of gain even for the sm7b without a fedad or a cloudlifter now I want to include a quick demo of the air circuit in the 2i2 4th gen what you're hearing right now is the 7B without the air circuit engaged now I have engaged the first air circuit mode which is called presence mode this boosts about 4db starting at 100 HZ going all the way up to about 7 khz and then it's High shelf above that again here is how the 7B sounds without the air circuit engaged and now this is the presence mode this is the first air circuit that's available again here is a pallet cleanser with the air circuit turned off and now I have turned on the second air circuit which they call presence and drive this boosts below 300 htz by about 2 and a half DB we get a 1 and a half DB cut around 500 H Hertz and then we get a 6db high shelf ranging from 1 khz all the way up to about 10 khz so this has a much more exaggerated impact on the sound of the recording again here is how the 7B sounds without the air circuit and this is the presence and drive air circuit engaged just for good measure here is the presence air circuit and now this is the presence and drive air circuit again this is the presence air circuit and now I am back on the presence and drive air circuit much brighter and a little bit scooped in the mids and a bit basier as well of course I have to include a comparison of the 2i2 third gen against the new 2i2 fourth gen so I have the 7B running through a mic Splitter on the third gen I have my gain set ever so slightly below 100% on the fourth gen I have my gain set at about 415 and I think that may be a bit hot but I will be switching back and forth between them so you can hear if there was any kind of difference in tone in the neutral mode now I have the air circuit turned on on the third gen we only have the one option there and on the fourth gen I have the air mode set to the presence boost only I'll be switching back and forth between them so you can hear the difference in this mode let me go ahead and go to the second air mode here now I have the presence boost and drive engag on the fourth gen I'll switch back and forth a couple of times between the third gen and the fourth gen fourth gen so you can hear the difference in sound between the air mode circuits and now I'm going to replace the microphone with a 150 Ohm resistor so we can hear if there was any kind of difference in the noise floor between the 2i2 third gen and the 2i2 4th gen now I'm going to replace the microphone with a 150 Ohm resistor and slowly increase the gain so we can hear what kind of noise is introduced by the preamps on this interface now I want to include a quick demonstration of how the 2i2 fourth gen handles a line level input so I have the 7B running through the warm audio w73 3 EQ my gain is set at 65 DB I have a little bit of EQ going on my output stage is set at 0 DB and on my meters I'm peing around -12 to-4 DB so it is a little bit hot but I'm driving it kind of a lot in the analog realm I could roll back the preamp to plus 60 DB and now on my meters I'm peaking between -8 and - 12db a much more reasonable recording level so it seems as though the 2i2 fourth gen has no issue handling a line level signal really well in order to demonstrate how the auto gain function works I have a tone generator connected to input to you're not going to hear this because it would be incredibly annoying it is set to Output at minus 50 dbv once I hit Auto gain it is going to capture that input level for a couple of seconds so it know knows how loud The Sound Source is going to be it says perform like you're recording and once it is run down it will say Auto gain in progress Auto gain successful and now it sets the gain appropriately and the reason that I used a tone generator is I wanted that consistent level so we can see what it's actually shooting for so because of this we can see that it sets your gain so your peaking around minus8 DB which I think is absolutely perfect for recording recing so good job there and now you know what it's setting your gain for now I want to demonstrate the clip save feature which I thought was going to be some kind of compression or limiting I was way far off all it does is turn down your gain if you hit zero dbfs I have turned on the clip safe button and I have also increased my gain go ahead and keep your eye on the gain for input one if I get a little bit closer look at how it turns it down then as I move off the mic microphone the gain does not turn back up so it essentially just turns down your gain if you get too loud it doesn't do any kind of compression doesn't do any kind of limiting it just turns down your gain if you get too loud that's it now I'm going to demo the DI instrument inputs with an electric guitar an electric bass and an acoustic guitar with the raw signal and then with an amp Sim and then in a full mix [Music] m m [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] I have to admit that every couple of years when Focus right puts out the next generation of their Scarlet series of interfaces it never seems to be a groundbreaking Revolution but it does seem to be an iterative update which offers some nice quality of life upgrades and the fourth generation of the Scarlet is no different and first up as far as Pros is the amount of gain on this preamp you have more than enough gain to drive the sm7b to the point of clipping you also have great line level instrument and mic level inputs the addition of the second air circuit gives you a bit more versatility which I know a lot of people will appreciate also all of the features on this device are controllable and accessible via the physical buttons on the interface short of the direct monitor mixing also it offers loop back functionality so you can capture your systemwide audio in your dah and the control 2 software is such a massive upgrade over what was available for the third gen where you only had the ability to turn on or off air and select if you wanted to input a line signal this is a huge upgrade but then as far as cons I dislike the fact that you can't control phantom power for Channel separately I also am not the biggest fan of the control on the interface where you have to select what channel you're adjusting and then you press the buttons but I do understand it's somewhat of a necessity because on a device this small there's not enough real estate to give each channel five of those buttons I'm just not the biggest fan of that control system and now we get to my wish list I wish this had an onoff button I wish the mixing allowed you to create mixes for your headphones the direct monitoring as well as the studio monitors and I also wish there was a way to quickly mute the studio monitors Maybe by pressing that button in case you don't want to hear sound out of the speakers and to wrap up what I recommend the Focus right 2i2 4th gen both yes and no I want to start by saying that around this price point there are so many insanely good interfaces you have the ssl2 you have the audient ID series you have Focus rights vaster 2 if you're a podcaster arteria mini fuse M2 M2 universal audio volt series there are so many good interfaces and it really comes down to what your specific use cases are and what feature set you want So if this is right for you comes down to the feature set so let's start with a yes why I would recommend this thing and first up is the usability I find this incredibly easy to use and Incredibly intuitive I was able to get it up and running in just a couple of minutes also the feature set isn't the most robust but I think for the vast majority of people it will fulfill your needs and I also find the Scarlet series to be pretty high quality and fairly robust I am still using an 18i 22nd gen which is 6 or 7 years old and it's still working perfectly so if you are looking for a new interface in this budget if this meets your need s if it has the feature set that you want then I think this is a nice offering amongst all of the other incredible offerings around this price point but then we get to why I wouldn't recommend this interface and number one if you have the last generation of the Scarlet series you don't need to upgrade the performance benefit the new features aren't groundbreaking enough to justify spending another $200 secondly if you have another fully functioning audio inter interface I don't think you should make a lateral move to this interface unless of course those new features are necessary for your production and lastly if you don't care about the air circuit if you don't care about the auto gain function and if you don't care about the clip sa function and you aren't going to use them don't buy this interface save your money or invest in a different interface that has features that you do actually want all right that is it bye-bye whoo whoo Boop

Channel: Podcastage

Views: 70,115

Keywords: podcastage, podcast, bandrew, scott, microphone, review, audio, sound, test, demo

Id: AjGD6KPWVBA

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023