Is one of my favorite audio companies. I’ve owned quite a bit of their gear over the years.

1. How To Setup Your Scarlett/clarett/saffire Interface In Cubase For Mac Download
2. How To Setup Your Scarlett/clarett/saffire Interface In Cubase For Mac Windows 10

From the Liquid Channel to the ISA Two, I’ve always been a fan of what their ‘higher end’ gear does to my mic closet. With the release of the 8pre series, I was very excited to see what level of preamp they would package with their new flagship interface. I tested it out for a few weeks and here’s what I found. The Design The Clarett series is bold in its design. The bright red metallic chassis is reminiscent of their Red product line, and it definitely looks boutique. The knobs are all metal, and incredibly sturdy.

This may seem like a small thing, but when you are dealing with something as sensitive as microphone input headroom (of which the Clarett 8pre has plenty) I prefer to have knobs with plenty of resistance to allow for truly subtle adjustments. The 8pre did not disappoint in this regard. It truly feels like you have precise control over the entire 119 dB of dynamic range. Focusrite Control. The design of the companion software is simplistic. You don’t have to really even read the manual to understand it.

Routing options are clearly laid out, and the ability to activate the AIR setting on the mic preamps is easy to get to. Setting up a custom monitor mix was easy to do and worked like a charm. The Sound The Clarett 8pre is incredibly quiet. You can really crank up the gain and saturate your audio signal without having to worry about noise. I immediately threw my most difficult microphone at it the legendary (and massively gain hungry) Electro Voice RE20.

This mic needs quite a lot of gain, and it can make audio interfaces that are a bit noisy sound downright terrible when you have to turn it up to eleven. I was absolutely blown away by the lack of any noise at all; even at the highest gain settings. I’m happy to say the Clarett passed this test with flying colors. In fact, I was absolutely blown away by the lack of any noise at all; even at the highest gain settings. You can confidently turn the 8pre up to its loudest level without worrying about unwanted sonic artifacts. I was curious to hear the results of the AIR setting. Basically, the AIR setting allows you to emulate the sound of a much more expensive preamp inside of the Clarett.

Enabling it uses modeling to make the preamp on the 8pre sound like a classic Focusrite ISA preamp. As luck would have it, I own an ISA Two, so I was able to make a direct comparison for you! Here’s the Clarett with an EV RE-20 mic plugged directly into input 1 with no modeling enabled. The AIR setting uses modeling to make the preamp on the 8pre sound like a classic Focusrite ISA preamp. It’s not exact, and it can’t really be an exact science as the ISA pre has an incredibly complex gain stage.

However, I can say that in this quick test I definitely liked what enabling AIR did to my voice over sound. There’s a clarity there that doesn’t come at a sacrifice to the low end. It sounds cleaner, more detailed, and yet still powerful. I could probably have come up with something similar by putting in some time with EQ, but as a working studio engineer I’m all about ANY tool that is there to save me time.

Without Delay The low latency monitoring aspect of the Clarett 8pre is another flagship feature. I hooked it up to Logic and turned off the hardware monitoring. At a low enough buffer size, I was absolutely able to record and monitor through my DAW without noticeable delay.

Of course, much of this is dependent on your computer and your own personal recording setup. At a buffer of 1024 and with a plugin which isn’t truly optimized you’re going to have latency and there’s no way around it.

I tested it out at a buffer of 128 (which is reasonable for tracking) and with Bias from PositiveGrid (an awesome guitar amp simulator) and was able to track with no trouble at all. I didn’t notice any delay and it definitely felt like I was using a hardware unit to generate my effects. This means you can leave software monitoring on and have your actual 3rd-party effect chain in the monitoring mix while you record. It can be terribly convenient and save you time while tracking, so this is a welcome feature of the Clarett and its super fast Thunderbolt interface.

Assorted Other Features There were quite a few more little things that I appreciated about the workflow of using the Clarett. Hardware dim and mute buttons that are easily accessible make using the Clarett that much easier. All of the inputs are XLR/1/4” combo which makes it easy to connect any piece of gear you might want to hook up. There is ADAT optical and S/PDIF available for digital expansion.

Curiously, there is only a single word clock out. It seems Focusrite is very confident that you will want the Clarett to be your clock master as having it be a slave via incoming word clock isn’t an option. For 95% of the world, this isn’t really going to be an issue. It’s quite likely that the Clarett is going to have more accurate sample timing that nearly anything you plug into it and you will indeed want it to be the master device in your A/D chain. The Focusrite Clarett 8pre totally won me over with its sonic clarity. Conclusion I am a big fan of this interface. I’ll be completely honest and admit that reviewing yet another thunderbolt audio interface sounded tedious to me at first, but the Focusrite Clarett 8pre totally won me over with its sonic clarity.

The preamps are able to be precisely controlled, and the noise floor is just nonexistent! At under $1000 USD, this interface is a great buy.

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Expert Presenters Location: Anaheim, CA USA Venue: Anaheim Hilton Hotel More info at the. I've been researching interfaces for about 6 months in anticipation of recording an album and finally settled on the Focusrite Clarett 4Pre because it meant I could have enough inputs for recording my guitar setup at home, which was the biggest concern. Went to the music store yesterday and the salesguy completely talked me out of it (strange right?). His argument was that I was paying simply for the Thunderbolt connectivity and that it would be comparable quality to the Scarlett range, which was cheaper because of the USB connectivity. What does think of this?

I was after the highest quality I could afford, around $1000 CAD and was convinced Clarett would offer quality around the same as an Apogee Duet and UA Apollo, but now I'm considering recording guitars in a studio (better result than I'd get at home anyways, even with all the money I've spent on creating a good recording space), and just recording the rest of the album (vocals, synth, bass, everything except drums), at home on either the Apogee Duet or UA Apollo since I can make do with two inputs for that stuff. Do we pay a premium just for the faster Thunderbolt connection on the Clarett range and the preamps/ conversion are not actually up to par with a Duet or Apollo?

You'd need to apogee duet 2, not the original version since it is no longer support by apogee. It won't work on the next mac os update, or at least the maestro software won't. USB 2.0 and 3.0 are basically the same for audio. The only difference between them is throughput, which doesn't matter in the slightest for audio. You can run 100+ channels with usb2. Latency between them is gonna be pretty well the same.

Decide what kind of i/o you need, then find the interface with the best conversion and drivers that you can. Don't obsess over how it connects. I'd sell a kidney and buy Lavry or Antelope;) That being said. Converter technology has got really good these days, even for lower end ones. If you are only doing one in/out conversion you are probably not going to tell much difference unless you have a kick ass treated room and really expensive monitors (or are a bat). Have a check of the 5 in/out passes in the shootout compared to first pass. That really amplifies the differences of the converters (and backs up my Lavry and Antelope love).

We also have a good range of pres in the Preamps shootout players, so check them as well to give you an idea of differences between cheap and expensive options. After doing some more research, I'm leaning more towards an Apogee Duet because if I bought (or rented) some different pres, people online are saying the higher quality converter in the Apogee would get me the most out of another pre. My only known downside with the Duet is that it is USB 2.0 whereas the Clarett is Thunderbolt. How would you consider these differences between 2.0 and Thunderbolt? I think if the Duet was 3.0 it would be a no brainer for me. A huge part of this album is layering vocal tracks, do you think latency would be an issue with vocal layering?

Definitely don't need the effects since I treat my DAW kind of like a tape machine and just use my guitar effects and Space Echo for the guitar sound and I'm going to be getting someone else to mix. Thanks for the input! It was weird because the dude wasn't actually trying to upsell me to UA gear, but tried to sell me on the ZOOM USB 3.0 8 input interface or a Steinberg UR242, which he claimed would have the same sound quality as the Clarett but were cheaper simply because of USB connection instead of Thunderbolt. The dude gave me weird vibes on something I had confidence in buying, so I walked away, but I could always go back and deal with someone else. Would you say the Apogee Duet would be a step up in terms of AD conversion and preamps then? I think a easy medium between everything would be to look at the Saffire range. If it's inputs you need, they are all expandable by ADAT, and they are FireWire (Thunderbolt compatible via an adaptor).

The 480 Pro comes with 8 inputs plus 8 Inputs (DSP) for 0 latency when using outboard effects. The Saffire 480 Pro will run you $500-$700 depending on your region. Also comes with Their Red plugin suite. The Compressor plugin is fantastic and sounds amazing!!! Tons of gain, super clean pres. This was Focusrite's Premium range before the clarett. I think the only concern with inputs is that I think I could get away with two, but was only looking at four inputs if I was recording guitars at home.

If I decide to do guitars in the studio, I feel the smart decision would be to invest in a two channel interface, so I'm trying to decide what the best bang for my buck would be if there's such a premium on Thunderbolt products since they're newer, the price may not actually reflect the quality of preamps and converters in the Apogee Duet for example. I hope my thinking makes sense? I have a Clarett and a 1st gen Scarlett. The difference is night and day between the two. Off the top of my head:.

Latency is ridiculously low on the Clarett. The 2nd gen Scarlett goes down to 2.5ms which is enough for most people, but the Clarett goes even lower.

The preamps on the Clarett make the 1st gen Scarlett sound cheap. Like depressingly cheap. Granted I'm only comparing with the 1st gen as I haven't tested the 2nd gen yet. Freeing up ports.

A huge reason I went for the Clarett is because my MacBook Pro only has 2 USB3 ports. I usually have a USB3 external hard disk with sample libraries hooked up, so that takes up one port on its own – leaving me to buy a USB hub for my mouse, cooling pad, and license stick.

We'll, you can get away with just one Preamp, record di and reamp a bunch of times through different Mics, Position etc. That being said, pretty much any 4 Track Interface in the 500$ Range is, from a technical standpoint, to produce recordings that hold up to anything produced pre-2000. If you need ultra low latency, maybe Thunderbolt is for you, but personally i record on 5-8ms on my Roland and I'm perfectly happy with that. My recommendation is record DIs at home and take them to a Studio with a bunch of Amps and a cool space to reamp. That cuts down on expensive Studio time as well. Probably getting stoned for this comment.

But that's my 2ct. I feel like you should have trusted yourself. I have the claret 8 and it's rad. I love the thunderbolt low latency recording. I considered adding protools to my set up so I downloaded a trial.

How To Setup Your Scarlett/clarett/saffire Interface In Cubase For Mac Download

Doesn't matter what hardware you have protools gave me the same problems I was having in 2005. I used to swear by pro tools but never again. The claret sounded pretty good and for the money I feel like I got the best I could afford for a new Thunderbolt pre. A. certain halka visual studio for mac. If I had a couple extra grand to throw around, yeah. I wouldn't have bought the Focusrite. But for the money I feel the do good on the return. Aside from my tangent PT rant, I hope my opinion helps.

How To Setup Your Scarlett/clarett/saffire Interface In Cubase For Mac Windows 10

Thanks for your opinion, it does help. I loved Protools when I used it in school, but have always used Logic (previously 9, now X) at home; it's cheaper and gives me way less problems. I think the issue I'm having trouble with in deciding on an interface is latency vs conversion vs preamp. When I recorded an EP years ago at home, I used an Mbox 2 mini (obviously not a high end piece of gear). I never found any problems with latency even though it was USB 2.0, but I did notice the preamps and conversion sucked, so that's what I've been looking for in a new interface. Perhaps I should be looking more at latency?

It's worth noting we're recording on an old Macbook Pro, I'm not sure if they would have trouble at all handling the Thunderbolt speeds, but I would be surprised to learn that I could encounter problems with USB 3.0 given that my recording setup is one instrument at a time, done at home with lots of takes. If you only needed two channels in an interface (if I end up recording guitars in a studio), what would be the interface you would buy? A Duet, Apollo, Clarett, or something low budget, like a Scarlett but with an external preamp? Thanks very much for your input.