Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface Gen 3 Review

[guernseygareth]

I'm looking at picking up a Scarlett second hand to digitise some choice elements of my record collection and don't want to spend large amount. I wondered if I might pick your brains.

I have a Cambridge Dual as my phono stage which Is great. My understanding is I connect the RCA outputs from the Dual to the Scarlett using RCA f to TS male adapter. Then USB out to pc.

I'd need two mono adapters?
Does this give true stereo 24bit results?

If you digitise vinyl with this have you been happy with results or should I look at something else?

Any other advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks.

 

[staticV3]

@guernseygareth here's a better way of connecting an RCA single-ended output to a differential input:

You can substitute 1/4" TRS for XLR.

So basically:
Tip->RCA Signal
Ring->RCA GND
Sleeve->RCA GND

Making sure that R and S are only tied together at the RCA GND.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I'm looking at picking up a Scarlett second hand to digitise some choice elements of my record collection and don't want to spend large amount. I wondered if I might pick your brains.

I have a Cambridge Dual as my phono stage which Is great. My understanding is I connect the RCA outputs from the Dual to the Scarlett using RCA f to TS male adapter. Then USB out to pc.

I'd need two mono adapters?
Does this give true stereo 24bit results?

If you digitise vinyl with this have you been happy with results or should I look at something else?

Any other advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks.

I assume you've seen this. The Cambridge came off well.

Cambridge Audio Duo Phono Stage Review (Updated)

This is an updated review of the Cambridge Audio Duo phono preamplifier. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $349. The Duo has a solid build and is attractive to boot for its price. Back panel shows independent sets of inputs for moving magnet and coil cartridges: I like the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface Gen 3 Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface (DAC/ADC). I was talked into buying it recently. The 2i2 costs US $140 including free Prime shipping so very reasonable for amount of functionality. For a budge device, the Scarlett 2i2 looks pretty good...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Connecting thru adapters should work for you. You would get a 24 bit signal off of it. Now phono is not going to have that kind of low noise, nor will the Focusrite have 24 bit noise levels, but it should be -100 db or so on noise and well below what vinyl and phono will be. Be sure and avoid running the gain too high getting maximum levels too often. Most people tend to do that and you might get clipping. The Focusrite will be quiet enough to have peaks hit a few db below max so nothing gets overloaded/clipped.

 

[teashea]

I'm looking at picking up a Scarlett second hand to digitise some choice elements of my record collection and don't want to spend large amount. I wondered if I might pick your brains.

I have a Cambridge Dual as my phono stage which Is great. My understanding is I connect the RCA outputs from the Dual to the Scarlett using RCA f to TS male adapter. Then USB out to pc.

I'd need two mono adapters?
Does this give true stereo 24bit results?

If you digitise vinyl with this have you been happy with results or should I look at something else?

Any other advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks.

The new fourth generation is much improved.

 

[guernseygareth]

@guernseygareth here's a better way of connecting an RCA single-ended output to a differential input:
View attachment 342088
You can substitute 1/4" TRS for XLR.

So basically:
Tip->RCA Signal
Ring->RCA GND
Sleeve->RCA GND

Making sure that R and S are only tied together at the RCA GND.

Thanks for the comment.
Would there be better for sound?
Do you have recommended cables?

Thanks again static

 

[guernseygareth]

The new fourth generation is much improved.

I'd hope so but more cost again.

 

[staticV3]

Thanks for the comment.
Would there be better for sound?
Do you have recommended cables?

A decreased chance of common-mode noise being captured with the signal.

I do not have recommendations for cables as I usually make my own. It's a very useful skill to have, highly recommended.

 

[Skezza]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting the Focusrite guys at the Guitar Show in Birmingham and trying out their 2i2 4th Gen. Genuinely nice guys who are clearly very motivated by the product which is always nice to see. I checked out the Solo and the 2i2, but it's the 2i2 I'm interested in. They were offering 25% off plus some free extras if I plumped up the money on the day.

I'm still trying to figure out whether the £170 (ish) investment is worth it vs sticking with the Line6 gear I have owned for years, or picking out a cheaper modern alternative like the ESI UX22 which is a 3rd of the price. I've never used a 2i2 3rd Gen so for me, this is my first experience with Focusrite in person, so I would have be jumping straight to 4th.

Sadly, I was really disappointing and underwhelmed although I'm not sure if the guys on the stand were setup to fail (explained next parapgraph). On a dry signal, I couldn't really hear a massive difference sonically to the interface that I use now and that was using their Scarlett headphones which are £100 on top. It sounded fine. I really wanted this thing to blow me off my feet though, but it just sounded like a decent interface to me. Nothing spectacular. Air mode... not seeing anything there to shout home about. Despite me calling the Auto Gain function a fad (in another thread), I actually think that's a pretty good idea. Take's all of the guesswork out setting your gain up and it definitely works well. I noticed a little bit of latency that I didn't expect (more than I experience on my Toneport). I asked the chap who thought it might be the buffer settings or the VST... Kind of feels like something they should have had figured out before demoing it to the public though.

All that said I don't think their demo setup helped whatsoever. They had three of the very cheapest and poorly setup Fender Squier's you can buy, all running through a single amplifier VST with no effects in the chain and none installed that you could use. It sounded drier than a 2 year old rice cake when the VST was on. With a bit of tweaking (rolling almost all of the treble off) I was able to get something that sound just OK but you've got exhibitors littered with guitars that were £1000< to demo their kit, all kinds of cool effects pedals and amplifiers, Neural DSP literally the stand across, and the Focusrite guys were there with one of the most budget guitars you can buy and a single Marshall amp sim....

So I still remain undecided on the Focusrite. Perhaps I need to use one for a few days or something... I will happily buy one, if it's going to give me a marked improvement over my current interface, but I've just not seen that it will yet.

 

[staticV3]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting the Focusrite guys at the Guitar Show in Birmingham and trying out their 2i2 4th Gen. Genuinely nice guys who are clearly very motivated by the product which is always nice to see.

I'd have loved to ask them how they could possibly have signed off on a 50Ω headphone output impedance.

In 2024, this boggles my mind.

 

[restorer-john]

I'd have loved to ask them how they could possibly have signed off on a headphone output with 50Ω output impedance.

In 2024, this genuinely boggles my mind.

 

[Skezza]

I'd have loved to ask them how they could possibly have signed off on a 50Ω headphone output impedance.

In 2024, this boggles my mind.

Is that on the interface itself or the Scarlett headphones?

What's the impact of a 50ohm impedance? I'm used to 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 lol.

 

[staticV3]

Is that on the interface itself or the Scarlett headphones?

The interface.

What's the impact of a 50ohm impedance? I'm used to 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 lol.

Depending on the headphone, you can get erratic frequency response changes and very low volume.

For frequency response, multi driver IEMs are the worst case scenario. Some IEMs will see a ±10dB frequency response change just due to the Zo:


For volume, worst case would be the DCA Aeon/Stealth/Expanse. With the Aeon RT Closed for example, 96% of the output power will be wasted as heat and will never reach the headphone.

You can look up damping factor and impedance bridging to learn more.

 

[teashea]

I'd have loved to ask them how they could possibly have signed off on a 50Ω headphone output impedance.

In 2024, this boggles my mind.

The interface.


Depending on the headphone, you can get erratic frequency response changes and very low volume.

For frequency response, multi driver IEMs are the worst case scenario. Some IEMs will see a ±10dB frequency response change just due to the Zo:
View attachment 353966

For volume, worst case would be the DCA Aeon/Stealth/Expanse. With the Aeon RT Closed for example, 96% of the output power will be wasted as heat and will never reach the headphone.

You can look up damping factor and impedance bridging to learn more.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting the Focusrite guys at the Guitar Show in Birmingham and trying out their 2i2 4th Gen. Genuinely nice guys who are clearly very motivated by the product which is always nice to see. I checked out the Solo and the 2i2, but it's the 2i2 I'm interested in. They were offering 25% off plus some free extras if I plumped up the money on the day.

I'm still trying to figure out whether the £170 (ish) investment is worth it vs sticking with the Line6 gear I have owned for years, or picking out a cheaper modern alternative like the ESI UX22 which is a 3rd of the price. I've never used a 2i2 3rd Gen so for me, this is my first experience with Focusrite in person, so I would have be jumping straight to 4th.

Sadly, I was really disappointing and underwhelmed although I'm not sure if the guys on the stand were setup to fail (explained next parapgraph). On a dry signal, I couldn't really hear a massive difference sonically to the interface that I use now and that was using their Scarlett headphones which are £100 on top. It sounded fine. I really wanted this thing to blow me off my feet though, but it just sounded like a decent interface to me. Nothing spectacular. Air mode... not seeing anything there to shout home about. Despite me calling the Auto Gain function a fad (in another thread), I actually think that's a pretty good idea. Take's all of the guesswork out setting your gain up and it definitely works well. I noticed a little bit of latency that I didn't expect (more than I experience on my Toneport). I asked the chap who thought it might be the buffer settings or the VST... Kind of feels like something they should have had figured out before demoing it to the public though.

All that said I don't think their demo setup helped whatsoever. They had three of the very cheapest and poorly setup Fender Squier's you can buy, all running through a single amplifier VST with no effects in the chain and none installed that you could use. It sounded drier than a 2 year old rice cake when the VST was on. With a bit of tweaking (rolling almost all of the treble off) I was able to get something that sound just OK but you've got exhibitors littered with guitars that were £1000< to demo their kit, all kinds of cool effects pedals and amplifiers, Neural DSP literally the stand across, and the Focusrite guys were there with one of the most budget guitars you can buy and a single Marshall amp sim....

So I still remain undecided on the Focusrite. Perhaps I need to use one for a few days or something... I will happily buy one, if it's going to give me a marked improvement over my current interface, but I've just not seen that it will yet.

The 4th gen are very good ----- compared to the inferior ones they used to produce. See the YT review by Julian Krause - who is the top expert on audio interfaces.

 

[Skezza]

The 4th gen are very good ----- compared to the inferior ones they used to produce. See the YT review by Julian Krause - who is the top expert on audio interfaces.

I've not suggested they aren't very good. They clearly are an excellent product.

The question I'm trying to work out is, are they £170 better than [INSERT INTERFACE HERE]. i.e. If you already own a good interface, would the Focusrite be a worthy upgrade at £170. It's easy for those who own one already to say yes, but from everything I've seen and now experienced, I think the reality is a lot greyer than that. Furthermore, you've got several competing interfaces that are significantly less. The Focusrite's are big money in my opinion.

 

[teashea]

I've not suggested they aren't very good. They clearly are an excellent product.

The question I'm trying to work out is, are they £170 better than [INSERT INTERFACE HERE]. i.e. If you already own a good interface, would the Focusrite be a worthy upgrade at £170. It's easy for those who own one already to say yes, but from everything I've seen and now experienced, I think the reality is a lot greyer than that. Furthermore, you've got several competing interfaces that are significantly less. The Focusrite's are big money in my opinion.

It depends on what audio interface you have now and how critical your needs are for excellent audio. In general if you interface is more than about six years old, a new interface would make a difference. New converter chips are much better than previous ones.

The best guide is to look at the charts in Julian Krause's YT videos. He has tested about 30 interfaces and there is a big difference among them. However, beyond a certain level of excellence, any improvements are not audible.

There would be no point in buying a new interface if you do not get a good one.

 

[AnalogSteph]

The question I'm trying to work out is, are they £170 better than [INSERT INTERFACE HERE]. i.e. If you already own a good interface, would the Focusrite be a worthy upgrade at £170.

Depends on how good your current interface is, obviously. You seem to come from a very guitarcentric kind of deal... in this case the things that matter may not be so much the classic converters, dynamic range etc. but rather analog input impedance and features tailored towards this specific use case. (Note that having active pickups would make interface selection a good bit less critical. Passive ones are fussy about everything including the cable.)

In general, upgrading in the same price class is rarely worth it... you would only do that if you had to replace your old interface for some reason anyway. There are still people rocking 15-year-old EMU 0404 USBs for measurements, as until quite recently they remained hard to beat for a USB deal. (I would also have no qualms recording with a 1212M, 1616M or 1820M quality-wise. You only replace gear in that class because your new computer can no longer use it.) The market for audio interface converter chips is not as dynamic as one might think, and some classics like the CS4272 codec have been around for 20 years now while still seeing widespread use, with better measurements compared to days past as analog circuitry and design has evolved. A good ADC from those days is still a good ADC today. I'd use an AK5394A any day of the week!

It's easy for those who own one already to say yes, but from everything I've seen and now experienced, I think the reality is a lot greyer than that. Furthermore, you've got several competing interfaces that are significantly less. The Focusrite's are big money in my opinion.

For a 2x2 interface with digitally-controlled input amplifiers and relatively fancy converters, the 4th gen 2i2 is not terribly expensive. (If you were to order the CS5381 ADCs from a distributor, they'd cost you £21.72 a pop for a reel of 4000, and up to 30 in smaller quantities. Just the ADC.) It is pretty much a MOTU M2 competitor and priced accordingly... I'd call this low-midrange. (They're still on +/-5 V supplies internally. If you want more, you'd have to go with the Clarett line.) I would still prefer the 4i4, which gives you a super clean line input and a better headphone amp on top.