Product Specifications What's in the box: As long as they maintain these long lasting and very high standards, I will be a customer. In summary, I like the Focusrite customer facing attitude, and the no fuss quality of their products. Focusrite's on-going customer support and their plugin collective program, clearly shows they want to help customers grow. One final thought, the Focusrite Red 2 EQ, and Red 3 Compressor plugins included with the interface, make the cost of the Scarlett Solo worth every penny. Maybe I sound like a Focusrite snob, but no, if I want ultra transparency then I turn to Grace, and while the Solo preamp does not have the same level of depth as the Grace 101, it adds no hyped color to the sound, rather, it reflects what it hears, with clarity and without harshness. Also, my first ever USB interface was the original MBox which featured Focusrite preamps that also sounded great, certainly better than the grainier sound of my then Digi 02 preamps. I have owned a Focusrite ISA one for about five years and this has and continues to be my go-to preamp for anything acoustic, including vocals. My final reason for choosing Focusrite comes down to personal experience with other Focusrite products. In the meantime I will just put up with the limited number of ins and outs for the sake of quality of sound. In fact, I am now using the Solo for mixing in my studio until, I have the funds to get another, and larger RED box. Now after one week of ownership, and as a result of my experience with the Scarlett Solo during that week, I realize its time to retire my MOTU Traveler. So much for reviews, this Focusrite Solo is clean, full, warm and natural.Ī visit to the Focusrite site and the great examples they give under "Products>Mic Pre Masters" menu helped me center my thinking and realize, the reviews of the Scarlett were skewed. Many reviewers of that product talked about the the red boxes having a thin and harsh sound. I spent a lot of time on-line researching, and was for a time very tempted to go with another interface that boasted burr brown converters and class A preamps.
I have wanted to experiment with recording in other acoustic spaces, and so began my search for a small buss powered interface, One that I could just connect to my mac and record.
I record a lot of acoustic instruments, and needed a new portable interface I could use away from my small home studio. Overall, a great product that I would recommend.įocusrite Scarlett - Clean, warm and complimentary. This last one is an inconvenience if you are running your sound through the Scarlette, because you have to turn down everything to avoid the popping sound. A few things I’m not as a fan of are: the output to monitors is a direct line with two outputs (right/left) that works with a stereo system but would need an adapter to plug into a sound system the headphone jack is a quarter inch so I would need to buy an adapter for any of my eighth inch headphones that I currently own and lastly, it would be amazing if there was a simple mute button for each of the channels since to unplug you have to turn down the monitors completely so as to avoid the loud popping sound that comes with unplugging. Since the product shipped from England, it took a while to get here (maybe a couple of weeks).
I purchased refurbished, so lower price, but still amazing quality so far and I still was able to get all the software that you would get with a new model. Also, what made this purchase doubly great was all the music software (Ableton Live Lite and assorted plug ins) that come with it! I am really liking that software bundle.
The sound is soooo clear and crisp, it is beautiful. So far the Scarlette Solo 2nd Gen has been great! It’s got some good features including green/red lights around the gain to tell if it’s too loud, phantom power for mics, and a direct monitor so you can hear what you sound like through speakers.