This is a review of the Soundcraft Notepad 5 audio interface (ADC, DAC, Mixer, Mic input). It was kindly sent to me by a member and costs US $131 on Amazon.
I really like the form factor and packaging of the unit. Controls feel good and functionality seems great for such a low price.
For DAC testing, I used the Master/Monitor XLR outputs. For ADC, I used the Line In 1/4 jack.
I first started using the Notepad 5 with Windows 10 Class Drivers. While everything worked, clock stability was extremely poor, making the operation useless. So I then downloaded the latest driver and control panel. That got rid of 95% of instability but occasionally, it would lose lock just the same resulting in horrendous distortion/jitter. I had to power cycle the unit to get it stable again.
Note: it seems Soundcraft is owned by Harman. Our company Madrona Digital buys fair bit of product from various Harman groups so keep that in mind as you read my subjective remarks.
Soundcraft Notepad 5 DAC Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard where I adjusted the channel gain/master volume control for nominal 4 volts output:
As you see, there is severe channel output mismatch as far as levels. I played with every knob and could not find a way to modify channel balance. The manual seemed useless as it is for the entire range of products where some of them have balance control which this one lacks. That aside, distortion is quite high and simply not competitive with even consumer DACs let alone professional ones. We are down to some 14 bits of distortion-free range.
Noise performance is nothing to write home about either:
Which you also see reflected in IMD distortion test:
At this point I decided to end the suffering and move on to the ADC portion.
Soundcraft Notepad 5 ADC Measurements
This subsystem seems better designed than the DAC:
We are still shy of 16 bit fidelity and as such, rank pretty low in our stack sort of SINAD:
I swept the input level to see if we are saturating the input and thankfully we are not:
The highest sample rate supported is 48 kHz so I used that to get the widest bandwidth:
As you see, even then we don't have flat response to 20 kHz.
Finally, dynamic range is decent but should be better:
Conclusions
Soundcraft nails the functionality and feel of the device. Alas, the ball is completely dropped with respect to DAC performance. The ADC is better but still nothing to write home about. No wonder the company specifications has no performance metrics. I guess if you only use the Notepad 5 for input, it is passable in that regard. Just use a different DAC as you would be misled by the channel balance. What to do about the clock synchronization lock, I don't know.....
I can't recommend the Soundcraft Notepad 5. Stop buying $5 cups of coffee for a while and save that money to get something better!
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I really like the form factor and packaging of the unit. Controls feel good and functionality seems great for such a low price.
For DAC testing, I used the Master/Monitor XLR outputs. For ADC, I used the Line In 1/4 jack.
I first started using the Notepad 5 with Windows 10 Class Drivers. While everything worked, clock stability was extremely poor, making the operation useless. So I then downloaded the latest driver and control panel. That got rid of 95% of instability but occasionally, it would lose lock just the same resulting in horrendous distortion/jitter. I had to power cycle the unit to get it stable again.
Note: it seems Soundcraft is owned by Harman. Our company Madrona Digital buys fair bit of product from various Harman groups so keep that in mind as you read my subjective remarks.
Soundcraft Notepad 5 DAC Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard where I adjusted the channel gain/master volume control for nominal 4 volts output:
As you see, there is severe channel output mismatch as far as levels. I played with every knob and could not find a way to modify channel balance. The manual seemed useless as it is for the entire range of products where some of them have balance control which this one lacks. That aside, distortion is quite high and simply not competitive with even consumer DACs let alone professional ones. We are down to some 14 bits of distortion-free range.
Noise performance is nothing to write home about either:
Which you also see reflected in IMD distortion test:
At this point I decided to end the suffering and move on to the ADC portion.
Soundcraft Notepad 5 ADC Measurements
This subsystem seems better designed than the DAC:
We are still shy of 16 bit fidelity and as such, rank pretty low in our stack sort of SINAD:
I swept the input level to see if we are saturating the input and thankfully we are not:
The highest sample rate supported is 48 kHz so I used that to get the widest bandwidth:
As you see, even then we don't have flat response to 20 kHz.
Finally, dynamic range is decent but should be better:
Conclusions
Soundcraft nails the functionality and feel of the device. Alas, the ball is completely dropped with respect to DAC performance. The ADC is better but still nothing to write home about. No wonder the company specifications has no performance metrics. I guess if you only use the Notepad 5 for input, it is passable in that regard. Just use a different DAC as you would be misled by the channel balance. What to do about the clock synchronization lock, I don't know.....
I can't recommend the Soundcraft Notepad 5. Stop buying $5 cups of coffee for a while and save that money to get something better!
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
