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Wirecutter reviews USB audio interfaces

tktran303

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I'm tempted to get a Scarlett to use as a DAC and occasionally for recording, but am held back by the fact that I once wrote an email to Audient to ask about using one of their components as a DAC in a stereo system, and they said they didn't recommend it - without saying why.

You are looking for a 2 channel D/A convertor for consumer use. You know, to consume audio material. The consumer also has demands like user friendliness, from a desktop or living room point of view. So a remote control, display and selectable inputs, volume control and mute on/off.

The Pro-sound market is very different. From their point of view, it is for content creation. It’s excellence is in with AD conversion and microphone preamps...
 

L5730

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...
The Pro-sound market is very different. From their point of view, it is for content creation. It’s excellence is in with AD conversion and microphone preamps...

Well, yeah the main main focus that "Pro" AD/DA devices point to is for recording, with playback being less of a concern, as long as it's 'good enough'. However, it has been widely stated that Audient's devices do have a good sounding DAC section.

If a Pro AD/DA device works well for long periods of time without overheating (I've read this might be an issue with Audient), without needing a reboot due to sync issues and just plain works, why can it not be used for consumer use, like playback only? One possible reason that it might not be such a good idea is if the device has balanced outputs only and the stereo equipment (amplifier) has only unbalanced connections. There is a chance of not hooking it up correctly, and some balanced outputs aren't tolerant to strange balanced/unbalanced wiring schemes.

But as long as hook up is done properly, I'd not think there should be any issue with using a "Pro" AD/DA interface as a DAC for consumer stereo use. Saying that, I think that there are extremely good quality, great sounding low cost DAC options which could be left in place for the purpose of consumer audio playback, freeing up an AD/DA device for separate use.
 

pozz

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Far too many issues with drivers (or, for me a lack of feature set) from Focusrite, Audient, Motu, Presonus, NI, M-Audio, Akai etc.
Drivers represent a whole lot of work for little appreciable sales gain. And if youre using an old but functional model, support is limited at best. Makes far more sense to release drivers as open-source. There are enough people with enough technical expertise that the issues can be worked out in collaboration with the manufacturer.
 

L5730

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Drivers represent a whole lot of work for little appreciable sales gain. And if youre using an old but functional model, support is limited at best. Makes far more sense to release drivers as open-source. There are enough people with enough technical expertise that the issues can be worked out in collaboration with the manufacturer.

This was an ongoing argument with M-Audio and the old PCI Delta series of interfaces. Many people were crying out for these to be open sourced, but I think it was too far of a stretch for the companies involved to agree to it. They probably couldn't be bothered to pay for a lawyer team to draft and check a contract to open source the code.

A lot of work to make drivers, and then a lot more when Microsoft decide to update again and screw the driver stability up. Never ending battle, right there!
 

pozz

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M-Audio is exactly who I had in mind.
 
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