I was just doing this research for my self this past week.
I would choose the scarlette, the 3rd gen has some new AIR tech and pre's that is supposed to be very pleasing.

 

Just wanted to drop in and note that if the Audio interface has ADAT, you don't have to worry too much about the number of inputs.
You can get a Behringer ADA8200, it will give you an extra 8 ins/outs for 150 euros. I got one of these it's fantastic

 

"Yup" as the one gay cowboy said to the other. I need at least 5 line inputs plus one spare line input, and two instrument inputs for guitar and bass.

 

"Yup" as the one gay cowboy said to the other. I need at least 5 line inputs plus one spare line input, and two instrument inputs for guitar and bass," said Jeff.

Here are some gay Cowboy cheerleaders so you can have a total of 14 inputs. I don't think that any have ADAT connections though for future expandability.

 

Just throwing this out there - you may also want to look at the Audient ASP800. At $800 new it seems like a pretty good compromise. I'm pretty sure two of its preamps have some kind of fancy saturation on them too, which is pretty cool.

I always felt a little weird about Focusrite Scarlet line. Like it just doesn't seem wise to buy the cheapest thing available. Somewhere, corners were cut. I have a little cheapo Audient interface (iD4) and the thing is fantastic for the price

 

I recently bought a Behringer UMC1820(Midas pre-amps), it's been out quite a few years already but for now, it covers my needs and from what I gathered reading several user reviews it's not a bad interface at all.

 

Yes, you are right, that's what I meant. I can't comment on the audible aspect(although I must say I haven't yet found something to complain about as far as musical quality goes), but the monetary one is rather clear.

 

Man, i have a brand new UMC-1820 right now in the studio. It is for a drummer who's pc i am building as we speak. I can report that with an adequate machine (this pc is a 6core i5 9600K, 32gb ram, Samsung970EvoPlus) this interface can record 8 ch of 24bit/44.1khz @ 2ms.
Soundwise of course, do not expect the quality of a Midas pre as you knew it in the past but it isn't garbage either. I'd say about the same as the previous gen Scarletts and the rest of cheapo interfaces but this one's got 8 hybrid mic pres and 10 outs,2 headphones, midi i/o, adat and spdif i/o for 200 euros. If one's looking for a cheap solution you can't beat those feats even if this interface goes bad after a few years lol.

 

I would always go for RME, it pays. I have a digiface here, that thing is 20 (!) years old. Twenty (!). It's PCI and sits upon a PCI>PCIe riser card. Still get's driver updates and works like a charm. Then I use some some AIOs, these are native PCIe and totally rock. I dumped a lot of audio interfaces over the decades. Just because companies decided not to support them any more, not because they were bad or damaged. But not one RME Interface, they all work fine. From Windows XP x86 to Win10 x64.
All the interfaces I had to dump over time were bought because they were cheaper than RME, and good enough for the job. I sure dumped thousends of bucks.
I have some steinberg interfaces here though, as they all are still in production, it's hard to say for how long yamaha is going to support them after EoL. So right now besides RME Steinberg is the only company that didn't diappoint me by ditching support.
And these are cheap, and there is an interface for every need in the UR series.
So have a look at these, but go for rme, even if you have to wait seveal months to raise the money. You'll thank me in 20 years.

 

2ms is what the company built driver tells the daw. He could tell your daw that the interface does time travel, resulting in -2ms latency and your daw would gladly accept the value and display it for your delight.
I would encourage to measure yourself.

I would recommend reading this for every interface shopping:
http://dawbench.com/audio-int-lowlatency2.htm

The graph show is a rating, its not latency in ms.

 

Last edited: Oct 31, 2019

You reckon that i report driver settings but hey, here it's a studio with a mini tech lab mate, since we 're also building comps. When i'm talking latency i mean RTL 2 ms. In fact it was a 2.2 ms, with nothing else playing though, from in to output. The driver was actually set to ~1 ms @ 64 samples. We 're talking about a drummer recording 8 mics. And if you are any familiar with this, you 'll know that drummers, especially good ones, are extremely sensitive to latency.
As for dawbench, they haven't had an update since '17, the forum is inactive and while his data may still be relevant for some, both daws and cards/drivers have newer versions.
Cheers

 

You aren't implying that a drummer is a musician's best friend, are you ?
Jokes aside, his budget couldn't fit the comp and a high end 8 mic inputs interface. And since he is an accomplished pro drummer but noob in comps, he has all the time to evaluate his setup and once he gets to grips with recording himself, i guess then he can upgrade to a much better sounding interface.

 

uad scarlett johansen

 

but with focusmite and pesonus you have always this 50 50 gamble with monday devices it seems...
but their $$$$$$$ ultra gear is always great fo sho...