[Ardour-Users] Experience Focusrite Scarlett 18i20

Robin Gareus robin at gareus.org
Sun Aug 20 15:48:38 PDT 2017


On 08/20/2017 08:57 PM, Tim wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm suggesting to purchase the Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 for use with ardour.
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with this interface on Linux distributions and in ardour? What about latencies?

Latency and reliability is dominated by your system's USB chipset and
system-setup not the device itself.

On the ALSA side of things, the audio+midi interface works and for
mixer-control all Scarlett device (6i6, 8i6, 18i8, 20i20) of the 1st
generation are supported since Linux 3.19, see [1] for USB IDs.

As Ralf has mentioned his 2ndGen 18i20 is not yet supported: it has a
different USB ID, and it's unknown if it's compatible with the existing
kernel driver.

As for the device itself (here 18i6), I'm not too fuzzed. The rubber
knobs don't hold the level (wander a few dB) and the preamps are
mediocre. Personally I very much prefer a PreSounus 1818VSL which is in
the same price-range.

> And what about Focusrite's MixControl? Is there any appropriate control tool under Linux to set routings?

The scarlett mixer supported by alsa, the vanilla linux driver does not
expose the signal-level meters, but all controls are available.

There are at least two dedicated GUIs

  http://breizhme.net/alsajson/mixers/ajg#/
  https://github.com/x42/scarlett-mixer

last but not least:
 https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15810
 https://focusritedevelopmentteam.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/linux-and-focusrite-novation-products/

Cheers!
robin

[1]
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/sound/usb/mixer_scarlett.c#n919




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