Savin' up 700 Benny's for one of these Bad Boys!!! Just so you know, Audient makes the BEST audio interfaces for the price. No.....REALLY.

https://audient.com/products/audio-interfaces/id44/overview/

 

Last edited: Feb 14, 2018

Not the best but they are not bad.
No 19" rack casing? A no go for me for a big i/o interface.

 

What do you think is better for the price? These are for the typical home studios not Sunset Sound, Bro.

 

Which typical home studio needs 20 in and 24 outs? rme or motu eats this alive. Especially with such a lot of i\o drivers are important. Even my old focuserite had a lot better drivers than the id22 I tested. Even the bad t.c konnekt drivers years back, performed better than the id 22 drivers.

But I don't want to bash audient here. The audient interfaces sound quite good. But again 19" is must have with a big i/o. A lot of cables are annoying if you can not screw down the interface.

 

Audient has terrible latency for the price. Even a 50 dollar Behringer has better latency.

I recommend a Zoom UAC-8 if you need that many inputs/outputs, UAC-2 if you're ok with less. It has latency almost as good as RME but for way less money.

 

I have the id22 since 2014, it's a great interface, very clean and detailed sound, more than appogee duet. This one seems to be the next step but i don't need more channels.

 

Pretty much all of them that are recording live drums. I use anywhere from about 6 to 14 mics on a drum kit alone depending on the size of the kit, the room, the ability of the drummer, and the genre of music. RME? I guess you missed the part where I said "best for the PRICE". I doubt MOTU's mic preamps and converters are on the same level as Audient's. When comparing things, you gotta be specific. You can't compare the iD44 to "RME" or "MOTU" as those are BRANDS and not MODELS. WHICH RME AI is even close to 700 dollars other than the Babyface Pro which is 50 bucks more but with no inserts, no "quick" switches on the unit(phantom power, HPF, -10dB pad, etc.), less mic preamps and i/o? Naw, the iD44 is a better deal.

 

How is the latency that these guys are bashing so hard and what platform and OS are you using? Maybe they don't know that the SOFTWARE(iD Mixer) has to be running along with your DAW in order to monitor directly and get the low latency.

 

I am a little confused about the gain of the mic pre. There are numerous places in the description that say that the pres provide 60dB of gain, and then this: "Flexible topology - design optimised gain range between 0 - 70db gain" What gives?

 

So you're recommending Behringer and Zoom over Audient now? HaHa!! Ok. Please remind me about all of the years of experience these two brands have with recording consoles(mic preamps, conversion, etc.) again? I thought Zoom was bought out by an energy drink last year. LOL!

 

Hmmm. Where did you see that last part? I wouldn't worry too much about it though because either 60dB OR 70dB should be enough gain on the mic pres.

 

I own an ID14: from what I know it has the same pres as ID44 and the quality is awesome. The gain of 60db is hardware, The 10db plus comes from ID software.
I confirm: Audient's latency is not superlow, RME and MOTU are better (see chart)




full article on audio interface comparison here:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mus...erface-low-latency-performance-data-base.html

 

I record live drums. Not as much as I did before sd3. Cause now I use my roland td 50k to record most of my drums . I never needed 20/24 for my acustic drums. Seems you do some serious drum recordings for a home studio. Never ever needed more than 16 ins. In a quite pro equiped rehearsal room/live room of former comercial studio.

But you are right you can not get a better interface for your 20/24 drum recordings...

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 13, 2018

Honestly, this is the typical "I want great drivers, great hardware, and a great price (Pick two)" scenario.

- The Zoom UAC-2 has great latency but the headphone amp is terrible and the preamps are nowhere as good as the Audient ID series. Oh, and I'm not counting the JFET instrument DI input here, which rocks.

- The Audient ID series are ridiculous for their price but it's true their driver sucks. Some people may prefer to give up a little bit latency in order to have better audio quality (If you mix and produce more than tracking, for example). HOWEVER, after switching from a Nvidia to an AMD card I can track at the lowest latency settings with my Audient ID22 just fine (see "Graphic cards do matter for audio production" thread).

- They have promised a new driver overhaul for the whole series, with better latency figures. We'll see if that is true! This new release kinda hurts as my ID22 is only a year old, but then again I don't really need that many channels. The ON/OFF switch is the feature I miss the most, lol.

 

Last edited: Feb 13, 2018

From your previous post it doesn't seem like you understand what latency is. Having iD mixer open has nothing to do with the latency performance of the Audient.

These are the latency results of a lot of current audio interfaces, the lower the number at each specific buffer size, the less LAG you will have when recording: http://kailuamusicschool.com/tech/round-trip-latency-roundup/

You can also find more latency tests on the gearslutz page someone linked earlier.

The Zoom UAC-2 has a round trip latency of 5.468ms at 64 buffer size, 44.1kHz sample rate. The Audient id22 has 8.29ms. A $80 Behriner UMC204HD has around 7ms.

Note that the Zoom can go to lower buffer sizes than 64 to achieve even lower latency (if you have a CPU that can handle it) while the Audient's LOWEST buffer size is 64.

Audient is a terrible choice if you want to have minimal latency when recording. They do not excel at anything when it comes to audio interfaces.

I'm not gonna do the research for you but if you look around a bit you will see that the preamps and converters in the Zoom are very good, as good as the Audient ones.

The Zoom interfaces are currently the best buy when it comes to low latency performance. You have to spend way more to reach RME or a Presonus Quantum if you want lower latency than what the Zoom can offer.

 

Me either, I said "around 6 to 14 depending on the size of the kit, the room, the ability of the drummer, and the genre of music." Please try to keep up, TW. I'm not trying to just argue with you over a piece of gear, but I created this post to give and receive helpful feedback about what I consider to be a great product at an excellent price. Let's not scratch each other's eyes out and if I offended you, I apologize. After looking back at the comments, I'll admit I got a TINY bit snarky after you came out shooting the unit down with NO positive feedback. You don't like ANYTHING about it? That's cool, Bro.

Here's a setup I'd use for an advanced drummer playing some Speed Metal without the double kick in a well-treated, medium to large room. Typically, the more mics you use(to a point, of course) the easier mixing is gonna be. Though I do like the challenge of selecting the proper mic, its placement and so forth, I've really been digging AD2 a lot lately though I haven't tried SS4 yet.

1 Kick (inside or beater side)
2 Kick (outside)
3 Snare (top)
4 Snare (bottom)
5 Hi Hat
6 Rack Tom 1
7 Rack Tom 2
8 Floor Tom
9 OH Left
10 OH Right
11 Room Left
12 Room Right

 

are there differences between TB connection of Zoom TAC-2 and USB3 of Zoom UAC-2? I mean, talking of latency and drivers.

and, is TB3 connection of the UA Arrow the best choice for latency, now?

 

Actually, I'm quite informed about latency, audio AND midi. Let's see if I can help YOU out. But first let me be more clear about how latency has affected me in the past. I've been using software to make music since 1992 with Opcode's Vision. In those days, computers were so slow that unless you had some card(I had Digidesign's Audiomedia III) your computer WASN'T doing any audio, just triggering midi sound modules/keyboards. There was very little midi latency because midi interfaces were handling that instead of going thru the computer's USB controller. As computers and digital audio evolved, new challenges arose. Today when I hear people talking about occasional pops and clicks, I almost want to laugh in their faces because they have no idea....HaHa. I haven't had ANY pops and clicks since 2012 when I built my first computer and I put an i7 2600K in it. The only time I experience latency nowadays is if I'm trying to overdub some backgrd vox WITHOUT the software mixer and "zero" latency mode on. Let me explain that. Typically when you record with your AI, the sound goes out of your voice into the mic to the mic preamp to the A/D converter and then to your DAW to possibly get processed(reverb, delay, etc.) and on to the D/A converter to the monitors and THEN you hear it AGAIN a split second after you heard it come out of your mouth. THIS is what most people are referring to when they talk about latency. But MOST AI's come with a software mixer that offers a low or "zero" latency mode. This enables you to hear(discreetly monitor) the mic signal BEFORE it goes into the computer and comes back out which gives you a very low, albeit not "zero" latency.

So everybody please stop crying about latency and either activate your software mixer's "zero" latency mode, or get a small mixer like this to do discreet monitor mixing. If you need help with EITHER of those two things, feel free to hit me up but there are just too many other things to be concerned with in an audio interface like AUDIO QUALITY. And ANYBODY picking a Zoom ANYTHING over an Audient ANYTHING is clearly NOT concerned with audio quality.

 

Last edited: Feb 14, 2018

I don't have any varied experience with interfaces to speak of - I've had a couple mixers, a dedicated preamp, and two budget interfaces, one of which is an iD4. The Audient is superior to my old Mackie Blackjack in a number of ways, and I'm quite happy with it. I can consistently record on the lowest latency settings with no crackles or dropouts in Cubase 9.5, even with loads of plugins in the project. I've set it to minimum latency and 64 samples with project that are 3/4 complete and probably 50+ tracks and had no problems. So whatever is bad about the Audient drivers, I can live with it tbh. I'm not much for interface snobbery though. It has an XLR slot, a decent preamp and two headphone amps. That's pretty much all I ask of it

 

This is a really old chart by now.