I forgot to spec a PCI port on my latest motherboard, so I have been without my Audiophile 24/96 for months. I will be composing some music for my new software company in the next while, so I finally had to go hunt down a solution to this problem.
I came up with the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 after spending a few hours researching my options. It was reported working as far back as 2012, and nothing since then gave me pause. I like their attitude toward Linux, which seems to be, in a nutshell, "We don't support Linux, but if anybody is writing a driver for Linux, here are some technical details for you." http://us.focusrite.com/usb-audio-interfaces/scarlett-2i2 I haven't done any real work with the interface yet, but my first impressions are really positive. I plugged it in, and it worked. Specifically, here's how I rigged it up: onboard audio -> Behringer Eurorack UB1002 mixer -> 2i2 -> external amp I left pulseaudio running on the ac97 on my motherboard and configured JACK to use "Scarlett 2i2 USB." I recorded a mixture of some Youtube video (pulseaudio -> ac97 -> Behringer mixer -> 2i2) with one of the Rosegarden sample files that uses DSSI synth plugins (rosegarden -> jackd -> 2i2) and everything worked. I have fiddling to do to optimize the setup and get the levels right and so forth, but this was highly encouraging. The audio quality is crisp, clean, and noise free. I would probably want one of the variants with more inputs if I didn't have the mixer, and some of those variants were NOT reported as working. The 2i2 was, and it does. USB audio interfaces appear to be a very evil thing in modern times. They used to work well in the USB 1.0 days, but most current offerings are USB 2.0, and most of those are not class compliant. I poked around for a few hours researching this that and the other before settling on the choice I did make. It appears to be one of a very limited number of available options, and this one is now tested and approved by yours truly. (Next up, a review of the Korg Triton Taktile 49. My old controller keyboard is so obscure googling it just shows all the places I've talked about it over the years. It's built like a tank, and should be repairable, but I just want something new after 20 years. It has a MIDI OUT, but input comes from USB only. I have no clue if I will be able to access the built-in sounds from Linux, and will report back once the keyboard arrives.) -- D. Michael McIntyre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Monitor Your Dynamic Infrastructure at Any Scale With Datadog! Get real-time metrics from all of your servers, apps and tools in one place. SourceForge users - Click here to start your Free Trial of Datadog now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=241902991&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
