Audio interface recommendation: Audient iD14
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2022 10:09 am
I recently had to replace my Apogee Duet FireWire after ~12 years of solid service (RIP). I did a fair amount of research and asking around, and landed on the Audient iD14. If you're in the market for an interface I think it's a pretty good one. Feels solid, quiet preamps, good AD/DA converters. If you need something that records at resolutions higher than 96kHz you'll need to look elsewhere, but otherwise I'm really happy with it. I considered going with the new Apogee Duet 3 but read a lot of users having problems with it, and it seemed like a dicey proposition for a $650 interface.
One small feature that was a surprise is the JFET transistor they use for the instrument input. It breaks up 'musically' when the signal is high enough, a bit like a tube amp. When I was recording some guitar I tried to push the gain up and I just kept turning the knob and the gain wouldn't go any higher, but the waveform of the recording looked like a block. But it didn't sound like a block - it still sounded like a nicely distorted guitar. I don't know that I would want to do that on a regular basis but I'm interested to experiment with it more.
Check it out if you need a desktop audio interface that's around the $300 mark. I am enjoying it quite a bit so far. (Not sponsored by Audient or anything, just a happy customer.)
One small feature that was a surprise is the JFET transistor they use for the instrument input. It breaks up 'musically' when the signal is high enough, a bit like a tube amp. When I was recording some guitar I tried to push the gain up and I just kept turning the knob and the gain wouldn't go any higher, but the waveform of the recording looked like a block. But it didn't sound like a block - it still sounded like a nicely distorted guitar. I don't know that I would want to do that on a regular basis but I'm interested to experiment with it more.
Check it out if you need a desktop audio interface that's around the $300 mark. I am enjoying it quite a bit so far. (Not sponsored by Audient or anything, just a happy customer.)