The Scarlett 4th Gen range
I’ve been waiting quite some time to replace my firewire saffire pro, and this may be that time.
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not sure that latency is better than your firewire one !
I will say, the thing that I like that I am seeing in some newer interfaces, this new Scarlett lineup included, is a better/more powerful headphone amp. I’ve had a couple interfaces that I liked, and that sounded good, but had a hard time powering my 6XX’s.
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It’s nice that some of the smaller interfaces have ADAT, I think that may have been a change from the previous gen.
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That’s something that has also piqued my interest. The fact that both the 18i16 and 16i16 now have the additional 8 adat outs. It has definitely meant that I can now consider the smaller interfaces and pair them with something like a Behringer ada82000.
In regards to replacing my firewire interface. Unfortunately my saffire pro isn’t supported on apple silicon, so it’s days are numbered anyway.
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I believe you can still use your Saffire Pro like an ADAT expander with a new interface. Basically use a computer that can still communicate with the Saffire to setup forwarding between the Saffire ADAT and analog ports, and I believe it should retain the settings when disconnected from a computer and operating in standalone mode.
It’s disappointing that there is no MIDI control for the internal mixer or for the input gain at least.
Yeah good point. Although my ADAT ports are playing up a little on me in my current Saffire Pro 40 + ADA 8000 combo, but I can definitely try that as the Saffire Pro converters are probably better than the behringer equivalent?
curious about the auto gain features
I’m getting the 18i20 because of Focusrite’s premium(*) Linux support for this 4th gen. It should arrive this week.
(*) Premium compared to the average industry standard, which is to hope for USB compliance at most – see Linux support for Scarlett 4th Gen 16i16, 18i16, and 18i20 on LinuxMusicians.
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I gave 16i16 4th gen a try but I’m sending it back because the volume control is defective. It randomly increases and decreases the volume every 5-20 minutes and the scaling is very high, >3Db each tick most of the time, but not always. Support didn’t respond to my question but gave me a copy pasta of their initial screening questions. I’m sending this junk back to the store since I trust them to refund me but I have my doubts that focusrite will fix it quickly enough, or at all. I don’t have any other experience with focusrite but I’d rather err on the side of caution and look elsewhere after this experience. It really surprised me so I’m curious, do you guys think I’m having a one-off negative moment?
You just got a defective unit. My clarett 8pre lasted 10 years before I tossed it. The only reason why I tossed it was I had a UFX II on the way and was out of rack space. If you don’t like focusrite you can also try Motu. They make solid interfaces.
Hopefully it is a defective unit but I will return it rather than risk a lengthy support process. I used to have a motu 828 and a 8M and both were terrible in their own way. the 828 has capacitors that overheat the components on the circuit board and the heat kills the display after a few years. The 8M was unfinished to the point that you could only use the software to control the volume of the channels and nothing worked on PC. I learned not to trust motu but I don’t have a particular bias against focusrite, yet.
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