Audient iD14 USB Audio Interface with Microphone Preamp, 10 in/4 Out, 48 Volt Phantom Power, Monitor Mix & Panning, 6.3 mm Jack Out, AD/DA Converter

UPDATED REVIEW: Having spent more time with the ID14, and having received several emails from their support group, I have upgraded my review to 5 stars. With the right hardware / software platform, the install was reasonably easy and the resulting sound is clearly superior to anything in the lower price ranges (in fact, I would probably say the value and flexibility exceed Apogee at this lower pride point, and I certainly prefer the preamps and brown-burr A/D to the focusrite/ presonus/m-audio units). I will be the first to admit that having had some time away from my initial horrible experience with the drivers has helped (which I will chalk up in part to the recently released major Microsoft update, and in part to having an iConnect driver on the first 2 machines tried), and seeing that they at least cared enough to write and provide some useful information (albeit a bit limited) has also helped to get beyond the drivers and install to the sounds quality of the device itself. Overall, I am pleased with the investment and use this interface as my main rig for guitar practice. No, I'd never trade it for my UAudio or RME gear, but I honestly couldn't afford those interfaces for this use, and I'm quite satisfied that this was the best decision at this price point. Accordingly, I've upgraded my review to 5-stars. INITIAL REVIEW: I agonized over this review and waited over 2 weeks to write it just to be fair. Let's start with what's good: for the price point the sound quality is good, and probably a notch better than the interfaces in the $150 - $250 price range. It is pretty neutral, with a slight smoothness to the frequency response that reminds me of my Apogee gear. It doesn't have the clarity and punch of RME, or the accuracy of Universal Audio, but neither of those brands have anything in this price range. It is certainly more enjoyable to listen to for mixing, mastering, or just plain listening.Build quality is generally sturdy; however, there is a slight amount of play in the large knob that isn't up to the same standard as the rest of the knobs and jacks. Now for the ok, Latency is higher than other interfaces at the price point or lower, and I find the pre-amps sound a little more dull and boxy than I'd be happy with by themselves. Matters less to me because I have outboard preamps that I use but if you really care about the sound of your recordings, I'd probably save up for a UA Apollo or apogee ensemble if you have a mac, or a used RME fireface with pc/mac as I'm not sure you could live with the sound of these pre-amps or anything cheaper by themselves. Other option is to get a good external pre-amp (and there are some really fine pres in the $300 range now if you check ebay). Now for the bad: support. I left a string of requests for support indicating I was having a lot of trouble with the drivers (see below) and not a single one was answered. NOT ONE! Now for the absolutely horrible: Hands down the worst drivers I've have had to install since the early days of PCs when we had to deal with interrupt conflicts manually. The only way I worked my way through days of agony was to uninstall every driver vaguely close to audio on the machine, use the beta driver, and (worst of all) run as administrator (which is a hacker / malware author's dream come true). I'm still mad at myself for running as administrator and not just returning the device, but that's water under the bridge now. So you you may be wondering why the 4 stars? Because I researched this purchase pretty extensively and founds that most products in this price range or less: have driver issues, sound significantly harsher and are more colored, create more ear fatigue and have a number of other drawbacks (e.g., cheap build quality). I also found that a small difference in a review matters a lot on amazon and I'm concerned that giving this a 3 might adversely impact the product more at this point than would be fair. Hence, the long review to disclose the good, bad and ugly. As for recommendation, if you care about sound quality and plan on listening to the unit for long periods, it's a good choice for the price range. If if it's your only interface and you're a guitar or bass player who wants to play/record into the DI into a DAW, I'm afraid it's not the best choice if you can afford to pay a bit more. The latency is too high to add any effects to the tone while recording, there's a bit more distortion in the DI than I personally prefer it didn't handle high gain humbuckers well and was too colored to capture the chime of single coils on a strat or tele. Most importantly, the high latency for direct use could hurt your recordings and even development as a player. If you have a few interfaces and have reasonable expectations for what you can do with this one, you may find (like I do) that it's a reasonable addition to the studio for playback (and here I will readily confess I enjoy it) low cost practicing, quick practice recording, etc. when you don't want to fire up your main rig. Important edit to this review: As noted below, I went through pure hell getting the drivers to work on the intended machine, and it wasn't much fun on my other machines either; however, I switch it to a different i5 windows 10 workstation this weekend and it actually installed easily and sounds much, much better than it did on the other machines. I don't know if there was an issue with windows, or the non-beta driver, but I'll confess that the unit is performing acceptably on this machine (albeit still with the latency issue noted above). Original note: Finally, I should note the drivers are not entirely stable. I find they typically crash about 1x/day and I have to reboot. With all of this said, these factors all balance against each other and having written this, I stand by the 4 star review, solely based on my experience, use, preferences and what I hoped to get out of it. Hopefully, you'll find something in these notes to be helpful to your purchasing decision. [My apologies for the long review, but I spent a lot of time researching devices, getting this one to work and agonizing over the review. I hope this is of value to someone else working through a similar purchasing decision.]

I used to be all about the inputs. Give me all the inputs! I need 8 of them! Because what if I want to record a drumset in my 8x10 room?Then I came to my senses and realized that has happened literally 1 time in the last 10 years.So I decided to off my Focusrite 18i20 and go for something smaller. Something I could just throw in my bag and use without a power adapter instead of some wonky dongle attached to an iPad that kept getting disconnected. I was going to spend some good money on a UA or Apogee interface, but I decided to not be stupid and do some research. Forum post after forum post recommended the iD14. "It's a steal for the money," most of them said.And they were right.I've had this for a month or so now, and it's been great. I plugged in my monitors (some KRK Rokit 5 Gen 1s I bought open-box on a whim from Guitar Center a million years ago) and immediately noticed a difference. The audio was clearer, highs were shining through a bit more. Not dramatically different, mind you, but enough that I noticed a difference.The pres on this are also fantastic - very, very clean, with maybe a slight touch of coloring in a really positive way. I pretty much just plug my guitar direct into it and use Helix Native in Logic. It sounds fantastic. Compared to the Focusrite, the pres in this sound alive and full, whereas the Focusrite felt very sterile and plain.The iD scroll thing? Yeah, it's a neat idea, but it's just a mouse scroll wheel. If it could be remapped to other functions, like, perhaps, a MIDI expression pedal/MIDI CC sweep, that would be significantly more useful. Otherwise, I have my mouse right in front of me - I don't need a separate control for that. I changed it to simply dim the output.Did I mention it's built like a tank? No? Well, it's built like a tank.All that said, there are a few things you should know. Some good, some bad, some depends on what you plan to use it for:1. If you plug a guitar in to the front jack, and plug an XLR into the back, one of them will take over. I think the guitar takes over, but I could be wrong. They share the same input. It would have been really great of Audient to make this a completely separate input channel. It would have allowed you to record an acoustic's direct output, a close mic, and a room mic all at the same time, but, nah bro.2. The software is simple and does what it needs to do, but I miss Focusrite's software, primarily their remote control iPhone app. I can't tell you how many times I've used that app to turn the volume of a channel up or down while being basically restrained by mic cables.3. You can use this powered directly by USB, which is super nice for on-the-go recording, but you cannot use phantom power. That requires the power brick. Not a big deal to me - I'll always have the power brick connected at my desk anyway - but, if you're looking for something on the go to plug in your "it costs more than my car" condenser mic to, this isn't it.4. When the power gets disconnected, your master volume resets. Another reason to not rely on USB bus power.5. Unlike other interfaces, there isn't any real clipping protection when getting into high volumes. Higher S/N ratio, I guess. The MOTU 8Pre that I once had and the Focusrite seemed to both produce a higher output level without clipping. The Audient is a little quieter overall and will clip once you get to higher output levels on the interface. If you like to use your audio interface to throw bedroom raves, you might feel like something's wrong.All that said, I can't recommend this enough for a small studio or bedroom musician. It has phenomenal audio quality and will do everything you need it to do.Oh, did I mention you get some free software too?