Another vote for RME.

My 10 year old RME fireface is still stable as a rock, still has updated drivers thanks to RMEs driver policy, has been through a migration from PC to Mac without problems (PC and Mac drivers both available and equally solid).

So if drivers stability, driver updates for 10+ years, cross platform compitability is up your alley then I think RME is hard to beat.

 

Shite, my silver Babyface has never so much as hiccuped in all the time I have had it. It has always been reliable and driver updates have been continuous. Get a used one and be golden.

 

A few months ago I was in a similar boat you are in :
https://audiosex.pro/threads/looking-for-a-new-audio-midi-interface.29695/

I have received very good advice on this forum and I finally went for a Focusrite Scarlett.
I could have gone with the 6i6 but in the end I ended up with the 18i20.
I most admit I am very satisfied with my choice.

Have a nice day !

 

I haven't gotten one yet, tomorrow is the day. I'm still undecided between the Audient and the Scarlett. I'm leaning towards Scarlett because after a bit of research it seems that Focusrite has slightly better latencies than Audient, and also has multiple line outs which I need for two sets of monitors. I would go for some better second-hand interfaces, but where I live there seems to be almost no second hand market for studio gear, and what little there is is mostly cheap stuff.

 

I went for the 18i20 for the exact same reason. I have 2 sets of speaker + a sub mix + a headphone mix so in the end I use 8 outputs and besides, the price difference was not that big. And to add, if I need to expand in the future, by adding a Scarlett Octo Pre Dynamic I can add 8 more analog outputs and 8 more analog inputs by using the ADAT from the 18i20. So the possibilities are there...

 

Last edited: Feb 18, 2018

Update if anyone is intersted:
I ended up getting Focusrite Scarlett 2i4. While I noticed slightly better sound quality than my old Lexicon Alpha, some of my old projects in Studio One 3 have trouble with playback. These projects are pretty massive, around 120+ vsti tracks with plugins on most of them and Scarlett gets clicks and pops and randomly turns of instruments for a few seconds while my 10 year old alpha didn't have those problems at all. Granted this interface is 32 bit float resolution, can go up to 192kbit etc. It does offer lower sample rates than alpha, but still I don't know why this is happening. Focusrite says this is a problem particularly in Studio One, and I haven't had the chance to test it on another DAW yet. What's weird is that this doesn't seem to happen in all projects, I tried a few, and some of them worked just fine, while others had constant problems. So that's the situation, I'll try to troubleshoot this in the next couple of days and see what to do from there.

 

I had a Lexicon Omega which was just a DAW crasher for me. I was using Sonar. Happened on several different laptops and a desktop. Once I upgraded to a MOTU HD 192, DAW crashes disappeared. I still hook it up for the MIDI ports, but don't run any audio outputs through it. Doesn't crash that way.
It doesn't make sense that the Scarlett would give worse performance than the Lexicon.

 

Hi @petergrey
I had a random glitchy experience at first with my Focusrite.
A kind contributor help me out and sent me this script.
http://www80.zippyshare.com/v/yJp0DkoI/file.html
I ran it and my issue was solved. Read the included readme file to understand what it does.
Let me know if it helped.