![]() With two dogs and half a dozen panthers, this bill adds up big time.Scarlett 3rd Gen 4i4, 8i6, 18i8 and 18i20 = YES I understand getting Christmas presents for your pets is "a thing" now. I am happy to recommend the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 a very good budget audio interface.Īs always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. Overall, I had low expectations going into this review and came out pleased. With a single output though this may be a bit challenging. If you care about headphone monitoring, best get a proper amplifier to pair with it. The only item performing well below expectation is the headphone amplifier. Its DAC and ADC both deliver competent performance with no dark corners. I can see why the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is such a popular audio interface. Test using "jitter" signal (j-test" shows clean but elevated noise level:Ī bit of oddness in THD+N versus frequency: THD+N versus level shows the superiority of the Scarlett 2i2 compared to consumer interfaces: Linearity shows the better noise performance of XLR/mic input: 2 Volts is it.ĭynamic range is good with 2 volts in and near 0 dBFS capture:įrequency response is very flat and nice, albeit stopping early on 192 kHz: Gain was lowered but distortion actually increased! Not sure why.Įither way, you can't use professional levels of 4 volts or more as you can with higher end products. The above required gain settings at minimum so I thought I test the line input using TRS jacks: This is quite good actually, once again landing the 2i2 into the competent bucket: Now we have tons of distortion in addition to low output level.ĭigitizing analog inputs is the main purpose of these interfaces so let's see how we do with a 1 kHz tone at 2 volts using XLR connection (i.e. The situation doesn't improve with 33 ohm load: We are getting power levels that we can get out of a smartphone or a $9 dongle attached to it. Jumping right into the heart of the matter with THD+N versus power into 300 ohm we get: Increase the bandwidth to 90 kHz to capture the noise shaping and that value jumps 650 times higher to 16.3 millivolts (thousands of a volt).įortunately we don't hear ultrasonics and even if we did, this is pretty low level so it is more of a bother for our eyes in measurements than ears. Let's use a simple noise meter and see what we get:Īt default 22.4 kHz I use for the dashboard measurement, the noise level is 25 microvolts (millionth of a volt). But that is misleading because FFT analysis artificially lowers the noise output of the device under test. The levels though seem low rising to "only" -85 dB. This is a feature of many DACs where noise in audible band is pushed into ultrasonics. Let's first perform a wideband spectrum analysis of a 1 kHz tone: Measured distortion+noise goes through the roof, rising to as much as 0.3%! Is the 2i2 this bad? Yes, and no. We hit what is a seemingly major snag with we test at much higher bandwidth of 90 kHz: Multitone shows increasing distortion with frequency:įilter response is more or less one expects from default DAC chip settings: Jitter test shows the same elevated noise level but otherwise clean: Noise level is not competitive with better desktop audiophile DACs though: ![]() SINAD of 102 is enough to place the Scarlett 2i2 in our competent bucket:ĭynamic range is good enough for 17 bits or so: Max output is I think 4.6 volts so this is not a powerhouse like higher end audio interfaces are. ![]() This is pretty good! We actually beat the company spec by good bit. Let's test each subsystem independently starting with DAC: View attachment 41078Note: I spelled Scarlett wrong in all the graphs below.
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