This is a good overall take.
Once again the tl;dr boils down to: for new buyers, just get the SSL2 or the MOTU; also consider the Volt and id4. if on a budget, check out the M-Audio or the Zooms. If money is no object, get the RME 
If you own a Focusrite, should you sell it? No of course not, it’s fine, just not fully standing up to the other options he shows in the same price range.
Julian Krause is the go to guy for broad info.
I use an Audient Evo. 
Nothing wrong with either of them if you are happy! The Evo’s gimmick and selling point is its single knob interface and if that works for you then stay with it! He was calling out why it doesn’t work for him and he would rule it out. I happen to have a similar preference there but if what you have is working for you then stay with it.
Also: there are cons to all of these of course. None are perfect. I loved my SSL2, but having the I/O on the back drove me crazy in my setup. Now I use a mixer, and the interface in it is pretty good spec-wise, and I love the ergonomic use in my setup (
mixers for their top-mounted I/O); however, being a mixer, it only has USB outputs for the master mixdown and also it’s USB2 so the latency is not good.
I really liked my Zoom U24 for its mixer-style I/O and excellent control and output choices, but it was limited in sampling rate and had noisy preamps along with also being USB2.
And so it goes. If you want more perfect interfaces, you have to get up in the pro tier. And then the problem is the price
And even then it’s not black and white. The RME Babyface Pro in the first vid is one such example as a more entry level pro tier interface; it’s around $1000, but even despite its many other advantages its mic preamps have a higher noise floor than the SSL2 and MOTU.
I’m debating picking up that little Yamaha mixer that I linked you a while back. It’s got enough mixer bells and whistles for my basement, plus it’s got a USB-C out to my Mac. The Audient will be my backup (I like redundancy). The auto gain was the feature I bought it for and tbh I think it makes a better first time need a DAI than even the Scarlett’s because of that.
I have the Moto M4 and while it is absolutely great, I miss the routing feature.
The Focusrite 8i6 seems to have that and is very cheap nowadays…
I would personally much prefer the monitor blend and monitor volume knob on the MOTU hardware to doing it in the Focusrite software but YMMV
I got the M4 for exactly that reason (and the very low latency plus the cool display).
But you might remember that I have the need to enable mono on all channels from an old post. This can be done with routing easily. I found a way using KoodASIO now, but it was kind of a struggle to get to that solution…
Why was this again?
Cause I wanted to play the background song PLUS bass guitar from ToneLib Jam to my headphones and listen only one sided (so I can still have a “clever conversation” with my gf while playing).
In ToneLib Jam I cannot switch the overall output to mono.
Now I use KoordASIO and set the output to mono in Windows. Works great!
IIRC the MOTU can do this for its inputs; it has a stereo mode which will send Input 1 to the left output, and Input 2 to the right output. Check the manual.
You mean this, right?
“Engage the MON (monitor) button to enable hardware
(direct) monitoring, which routes the channel’s input
signal directly to the outputs and pans the mono signal
evenly across both outputs (1-2). A blue box appears
around the input channel number in the LCD to indicate
that hardware monitoring is engage. Press and hold the
MON button to engage stereo monitoring for both inputs.
In this mode, Input 1 is routed to Output 1 and Input 2 is
routed to Output 2, allowing you to monitor in stereo while
recording in stereo.”
I did that … but it does NOT enable mono audio for the background track that I stream to the Motu M4 from ToneLib Jam via ASIO (neither Motu ASIO nor KoordASIO).
As I said, it works with the KoordASIO method I described - but I would appreciate a way with Motu ASIO and the M4 directly (like you suggested), as the KoordASIO has one big disadvantage: it’s a WASAPI wrapper and therefore it has all kinds of side effects (audio from other apps is also routed through KoordASIO and I need to remember setting volume trough windows etc.)
Did you check if you can just pan the Tonelib output in tonelib, or can windows pan it?
Windows cannot influence “normal” ASIO. That is why I use KoordASIO for now, as I can influence the underlying WASAPI (ie switching to mono).
Panning is just left/right balance, right? At least in case of the background audio track? Just tested this with a left/right sweep test audio track - it does not merge the stereo background to mono…
Depends on the panning. When you tried it, what happened?
It just panned to one side and the audio of the other side muted . The behaviour was just like volume balance.
Remember: this is for the audio background track. The bass track of me playing works as expected.
Again, no biggy, as I have a solution. Just don’t like workarounds if there is a better/direct solution.
And of course the real selling point of the SSL, the giant knob that goes to 11.
Always useful to be able to go one louder.
