Yes, it looks nice, but I will never trust or buy NI stuff again after the Kore failure...
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
What do you think is the best audio interface?
- Thread starter bassbrother666
- Start date
Yes, it looks nice, but I will never trust or buy NI stuff again after the Kore failure...
Good to hear. The concept really is promising and flexible, but IMHO the Behringer products have been hit-and-miss historically. Seems better after the Midas merger.
Behringer's upper tier (+400 USD) gear is amazing. ofc, their cheapest stuff is prone to disasters, but in their price range, xr18 is higher end. not like xr32 but, still more expensive then most of their gear. Focusrite clarett line is amazing but that thing is really expensive. if you plan to use it just for recording bass/guitar/vocals at home, just get scarlet solo and you're done.
I recorded with a friends Tascam US16-something interface a few years ago and it wasn't bad at all for the price. The 20x20 they showed now at NAMM also looked quite impressive, but in that environment it was impossible to draw any conclusions on the mic pres. Anyway, I don't think it is correct to say they are on their way out of this market.
The importance of continued support really cannot be emphasized enough. My old M-Audio device stopped working when I upgraded to OSX El-Capitan. Looking for a replacement I was pretty shocked at how many brands had nothing but excuses, evasion and rudeness when googling things like "[brand name] El Capitan", "[brand name] Windows 10" or "[brand name] USB3". Looking for companies that clearly explained and fixed issues swiftly for a wide range of their products (including the older ones) became my number one priority quite quickly.
There is no point poring over the specs and dropping a sizeable chunk of cash on one that gives fractionally better performance if it stops working in a few years, or worse doesn't even work when you first get it out the box because your OS is too modern (I found quite a few of these when I looked).
Regarding Thunderbolt versus USB3.1:
While the latest incarnation of USB may offer greater bandwidth, USB interfaces still have significantly higher latency. For most musicians, having enough bandwidth to run 500 simultaneous tracks is not nearly as important as having the lowest possible monitoring latency during recording, which is where Thunderbolt is superior. Microsoft recently announced Thunderbolt support for Windows 10, so we should be seeing more interfaces on PCs in the near future....
While the latest incarnation of USB may offer greater bandwidth, USB interfaces still have significantly higher latency. For most musicians, having enough bandwidth to run 500 simultaneous tracks is not nearly as important as having the lowest possible monitoring latency during recording, which is where Thunderbolt is superior. Microsoft recently announced Thunderbolt support for Windows 10, so we should be seeing more interfaces on PCs in the near future....
I started with a Lynx L22 PCI interface. Great...and great support from Lynx. When I upgraded years ago, I went with Yamaha's i88x. Among the other inputs, it had two great mic pres. But it's FireWire, and I'm ready to upgrade again. I think I'm going to go with Antelope Audio's Orion Studio. It has 4 combo jacks on the front and this is important to me. Not many other manufacturers are doing front panel plug and play anymore, it seems.
