COMPARISON - Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 [VS] Neve, API, Great River, Lynx Aurora

With the ever-increasing quality and affordability of studio gear, I wanted to do a video to compare "High-End" gear to this new more affordable interface from the popular Focusrite brand. The difference between these setups really surprised me in ways that I didn't expect at all!

In this video, I will split a drum take to both my typical outboard lunchbox gear (listed below), and to a brand new Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 (4th Gen). I utilize the ADAT A/D conversion of the Focusrite in this test, and compare it to my typical A/D Aurora Lynx (n) converter, so that both the preamps AND the AD conversion are compared. No outboard EQ or Compression was used.

I first compared the audio results with randomized coded file names so that I was doing a blind test along with you! Stick around till the end of the video to watch that :)


My outboard was used as follows: (Each ran through Aurora Lynx (n) converter)
Kick - API 512c
KickOut - Hairball Audio Lola
Snare - API 512c
SnrBtm - Neve 511
OH L - Neve 511
OH R - Neve 511
HiHat - Neve 511
Room - Great River MP-500NV


The Mics used were:
Kick - Sennheiser e 602 II
KickOut - *Custom (ford speaker)
Snare - SM57
SnrBtm - Neumann KM 184
OH L - SM81
OH R - SM81
HiHat - Neumann KM 184
Room - Royer R-121

Audio track during unboxing segment by Morgantown West Virginia band:
Two Moons - Numero Primo