Prologue
This interface is not new on the market so there are tons of reviews that approach it from an amateur musician/home studio owner point of view. Some of them made by professional reviewers at
S.O.S. and
musicradar, and some by costumers on sites like
Musician's Friend,
Sweetwater and last but not least -
Amazon (tons more can be found just by running a search on
google). I flipped through all of the positive costumer reviews while researching before finally settling on the
Scarlett 6i6, but really focused on the professional and the negative ones to make sure I'm not missing something crucial to me. I suggest you do the same, and not just regarding the choice of an audio interface that suites you the most cause there are lots of positive costumer reviews and going through all of them might be extremely time consuming. In my review I want to focus on the
6i6 from the "On A Budget" audiophile point of view, since this is how I see myself regarding this hobby. I will touch some aspects of use that concern it's home studio application, though, and try to make the review as fun and informative as possible.
The Arising Need
One day I came home from work to discover that my
Behringer Firepower FCA610 digital audio interface has crapped out on me. It wouldn't be so sad if this day wasn't my birthday. After a bit of sobbing and an up close inspection of the situation (which included taking the unit apart), I found out that a cap that was a part of the flash memory circuit got blown to bits and probably fried the memory in the process. I probably was right since the unit wasn't recognized by the PC and all the LEDs on the front panel were lit. Replacing the cap and trying to re-flash it yielded no results either. I purchased the unit new from Amazon and had it in my possession for year and a half before it was rendered useless so I could probably use the 3 year warranty that
Behringer provides but since Israel doesn't have any official retailers that offer that kind of service, the unit had to be shipped for service abroad. Than I suddenly remembered - "I don't even like this interface!!!" It was a bad pairing for almost all of the headphones in my collection. It made almost all of them sound thin and fatiguing and I would have picked the sound coming out of my Fiio E10 over the
FCA610 any day. So maybe I should use this as an excuse to replace it with something else that I would be content with? - It is my birthday after all.
Lessons Of The Past
Don't get me wrong. It wasn't all bad with the
FCA610. It was packed with features that no other interface has for the price, and I was extremely excited when I got it since it was my first serious interface ever, but like with anything made to be "Jack of all trades" - it was a master in none. In fact, it had only one problem that I can describe as a very serious one - all of its analog line outs were very noisy. When the speakers were on and no sound was playing, they were putting out an audible low frequency hum, like a static interference. At first I thought it was a ground loop and tried to connect the speakers to a different wall socket - but it didn't help. I even tried to connect them through power conditioners with the same negative result. The headphone volume knobs were wired in series with the master volume - when the master volume knob is turned counter clockwise all the way, there is no signal in any of the analog outputs, including headphone outs. Extremely annoying when I just want to listen through headphones without the need to stand up and reach the back of my
Behringer Truth B1031A monitors to turn the power completely off. The driver was very basic and presented no routing capabilities. All the routing had to be made via a DAW. All the analog outputs were arranged in pairs, to accommodate the need for multiple stereo setups (for connecting a couple of different pairs of monitors for mastering purposes). But the weirdest thing was that some of the pairs could not put out a 24bit/96kHz signal through them. When I come to think of it, the only true virtue this interface had was its construction. I mean - this thing was built like a tank. Once I threw it against a concrete wall (talking about some major anger management issues) and the
FCA610 didn't even had a scratch on it. The wall, on the other hand, had a huge mark in the plaster.
Decisions, Decisions
The next five days following my birthday I would come back from work, lock myself in the study, sitting for hours and hours in front of the computer screen - researching and searching. First, I had to decide what I really want from my next interface.
I must say that I have a huge amount of appreciation for Behringer even though it's a brand that's considered by others to have major QC issues. I used tons of their equipment - some was better, some worse. I even had other gear made by Behringer failing on me in the past, but it was so cheap that nothing ever came close to it in the price range in built quality and functionality. Some of its equipment was reverse engineered from other brands but was selling for a fraction of the cost. If I wanted to get something that functions the same but sounds better, I had to pay at least twice and it wouldn't sound twice as good. So, for non critical situations - any
Behringer product will do. And if it gets busted in the process, I won't be crying over it much (if any). So, at first, I thought of replacing the
FCA610 with a different
Behringer model. All of their interfaces were well within my budget, which was 250USD. The only model I considered was the
FCA1616. The main reason for that was the presence of two headphone outputs, each with its own individual volume knob. What can I say? - The ability to connect two pairs of headphones for instant A/B comparison without the need for any additional equipment spoiled me. It had a Firewire connection and had two mic preamps with 48v phantom power and combination sockets, doubling as Hi-Z instrument inputs. The downside of this unit was its size - a 1U rack mountable panel. As I didn't want to shift from the convenient form factor that the
FCA610 possesses, I had to move on with my search. I went through all the brands listed at the bottom of this
article but none of them fit my needs. Until I came across
tc electronic and
Focusrite.
I was familiar with
tc electronic mainly from their guitar multi-effects, which were always considered great, but I never heard any opinions about their audio interfaces. tc electronic's only interface that could fit my needs was the
Impact Twin, so I looked up some reviews about it. Though it was a bit pricier than 250USD, it could be bought used for much less. What drew me to the
Impact Twin at first was its ability to work with 24bit/192kHz signal but the more I read about its functionality - the more I was turned off by it. The
Impact Twin has some on-board DSP capabilities such as compressor and reverb but they are applicable only at sample rates lower than 88.2kHz. At 176.4kHz and above the mixer and all the routing capabilities are rendered useless. The headphone outs had no physical volume knobs to them so the volume could be adjusted only within its software. In addition to that inconvenience, one of the headphone outs mutes the monitor the moment a plug is inserted. What makes the
Impact Twin even less appealing to me is the aesthetics of its design. With its rubberized plastic chassis, it looks more like a piece of a military equipment than something meant to be used in a home studio setup. Making things look ugly doesn't make them look more professional.
After forming a negative opinion about the
Impact Twin I moved on with my search. Sifting through interfaces manufactured by
Focusrite my eyes fell on the
Saffire Pro 24 DSP. It had everything I wanted and much more. It incorporated Focusrite's VRM technology that enabled the user to listen to the signal present in the headphone outs with a speaker emulation and choose the positioning of the listener in the virtual space. It had two headphone outs with individual volume knobs, two microphone preamps and it had Firewire connectivity. This interface was also a little over my budget, but I could let it slide since I could break it into a couple of payments in a physical store located in the city I live in. Before I decided on the
Pro 24 DSP, I noticed that it's out of stock in every internet store, and so does the
Impact Twin. It couldn't have been a coincidence and looked very strange to me. I decided to consult my friend. He plays guitar and has a small home recording studio too, besides being a full time hardware engineer. He told me that Firewire is an aging interface (
Pro 24 DSP introduced in 2009 and
Impact Twin in 2011) and all the equipment based on it will sooner than later be discontinued and support for it dropped. All the computers being manufactured today come with either USB 3.0 or a Thunderbolt ports. USB 3.0 has a back compatibility with older USB protocols, so older USB based devices aren't going anywhere for the time being. Occupied by the thought of having a great piece of hardware, without the software to back it up led me towards considering a USB audio interface.
Final Destination
Since none of the brands, except
Focusrite, offered anything compelling in the USB audio interface front, I begun looking into their Scarlett line. Only three of them featured two headphone outs. The first,
Scarlett 18i20 was way too big and a bit over my budget. The second,
Scarlett 18i8, was also too expensive for having two additional mic preamps that I wasn't sure I needed. I was left with the
Scarlett 6i6 which I was sure had everything I needed and nothing more. It was right within my means. In fact, I got it for exactly 250USD including S&H to Israel (almost half the price for what it's being sold locally). It had the two headphone outs I wanted, each with individual volume knob. Two microphone preamps with combination sockets and phantom power. Its design was attractive enough for it to become a part of my computer workstation that is located so close to the entrance to my apartment that it is probably the first thing that people see when they come in. In fact, it looks elegant enough to be considered a Hi-Fi piece of gear rather than a semi pro device.
Build Quality
Due to the fact that some of the control over the interface is done via its driver, it allows the front panel look simple and sleek with no more than the most crucial controls on it, such as volume, gain, phantom power button and some indication LEDs. It's the complete opposite of the Behringer's design of the
FCA610, that has more buttons and knobs on its front panel than a mixing board and lights up brighter than a Christmas tree. I especially love the green halos around the gain knobs that go red when the input goes into clipping. The gain knobs have no play to them when rocked and so does the monitor knob. The headphone volume knobs rock a bit but not excessively. All the knobs turn very smoothly and no crackling noise has been detected by me at any level from speakers or headphones while turning them when no music was playing. The gain knobs are made of rubberized plastic and are pleasant to the touch while rest of the knobs are silver colored. The large volume knob is very comfortable to dial in the exact amount of volume needed. The chassis itself look like a brushed aluminum milled out of a single block, anodized in dark red with a "Focusrite" logo silk screened in black on top of the interface. All of the sockets provide a very tight fit for the plugs, XLR as much as TRS, and prevent them from rocking and being removed by accident. The combo sockets on the front panel are manufactured by Amphenol, which ensures quality. Overall, it can be seen that
Focusrite invested in quality components and materials when manufacturing the
Scarlett 6i6.
Installation and Use
Installing the interface was very easy and went without a hitch. Registering on Focusrite's website, downloading and installing the driver (MixControl), connecting the interface to USB port on my PC and to the power supply wall wart adapter and I was all set to go. When I turned the
6i6 on, it was immediately recognized buy the MixControl software, which updated its firmware to the newest version. The MixControl itself was easy enough to get used to and offers a lot of routing possibilities. It's good that Focusrite invested in making this
instructional video. A cool feature of
6i6's ASIO driver is the ability to play audio from two separate software sources at the same time, without giving an exclusive access to any of them. It comes in very handy when you just want to pause a track in foobar2000, watch something on YouTube, and than resume playing the track in foobar2000 from the exact same spot you paused the track at. The
FCA610's driver was giving every application an exclusive access to the hardware, so one application must be stopped completely, in order to pass the access to the second application. Very annoying indeed.
The first ,and not that major, quirk that the drivers have is that Windows does not recognize this as a 24bit device but the FAQ on Focusrite's website addresses this issue with a statement that says that even though Windows does not recognize the
6i6 as a 24bit device, it still functions as one. I reaffirmed Focusrite's claim by playing a 24bit/96kHz track through foobar2000 without any issues. The second issue, and a more disturbing one, was that foobar2000 would stop playing music and the interface was making one soft clicking sound and goes quiet if two tracks with different bit depth and sample rate were played one after the other. I guess it happens due to the need of the interface to re-sync the internal clock for the bit depth and sample rate of the new track. It would have worked fine if all the tracks in my library were the same quality, but it's not. So, I had to find some kind of a workaround. I installed a resampler plugin into foobar2000 that up-samples everything to 24bit/96kHz in real time. Not so elegant, but gets the job done.
Sound Quality
Probably the most important part of every audio review. So how does the
Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 sounds? - In one word - "Amazing". Its preamps and outputs are dead silent when and remain quiet even when the gain and volume are all the way up with no music playing. I can't really comment on its sound through my
Truth B1031A studio monitors since they sounded good to me with the
FCA610 too. With headphones it's a whole different story altogether. Though I could not find any specs of the headphone amps in the
6i6, they were powerful enough to drive my 150ohm
Superlux HD660 and
HD330 and my DIY orthos based on 32ohm SFI drivers and the volume knob never passed the 12 o'clock mark. The
6i6 was a great pairing for anything I could throw at it, except for the most sibilant headphones. But it definitely made them sound more tolerable and less aggressive. The
6i6 is very detailed and transparent, as pro audio equipment should be, but it does not sound thin and fatiguing like the
FCA610, but rather thick and full bodied. Pro audio interfaces use ASIO drivers that allow software a faster access to the interface and thus provide shorter latency than WDM drivers. Sometimes, settings that provide lower latency can result in dropouts (audible clicks and pops), since the interface can't process the audio signal in the time needed for it to pass from input to output. In opposite to the
FCA610, no dropouts were detected buy me throughout the entire four months using the
6i6.
Conclusion
Based on my experience with the
Scarlett 6i6 I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to any amateur musician/audiophile on a budget. Rather than doing the balancing act with a couple of single purpose budget-fi rigs connected to one PC, I would suggest just buying the
6i6 and be done with it. With its elegant design, sturdy built and great sound quality I can't think of any interface from the audiophile or the pro audio world competing with its functionality. Like the Phonitor - a piece of pro audio equipment that found its following within the audiophile ranks, so can the
6i6 and maybe many others.
Epilogue
I think that writing a good review is a form of art - just like writing a play or a novel. It takes a lot of effort, talent and inspiration, and I must say that the
Scarlett 6i6 was hell of an inspiration for me. More than being a great pairing for the rest of my equipment, it's a great fulfillment for my requirements from a piece of audio gear. I have the
6i6 in my possession for four months now, and I know I made the right choice by picking it over the rest of my options cause now I see that the
Saffire PRO 24 DSP was the first of the Focusrite's Saffire lineup to be discontinued. Though the VRM was a neat concept, its effect can still be achieved by other means, such as convolvers and impulse response plugins. The
Impact Twin, on the other hand, is still there on the
tc electronic website. At least for the time being...
