Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 doesn't behave

[RPaul]

Got my new 2i2 last night, and so far couldn't get it to work.
Two computers: one 2.5 gHz quad core 6 gb RAM, one i7 2 gHz 8 gb RAM (laptop). Both Win 7. I've got the latest 2i2 driver from Focusrite, latest ASIO 4 All and Ableton Live 9. On direct monitoring, I get nice clear sound on both channels. So the unit works, and the instrument, cables, headphones and my ears are fine. The problems are the same on both computers.

The problems start with routing the sound through the PC.
First, I only get sound in one ear only. The unit's input one sends the signal into the left channel, input two to the right. I bet it's a matter of a simple setting somewhere, but where?!

More importantly, the latency is massive, AND, whatever I do with the buffer size, it doesn't seem to make any (desired) effect.
So, if in Ableton I go to Preferences - Audio, choose ASIO for driver type and ASIO4ALL v2 for audio device, I get the 'Hardware Setup' button, which lets me into the ASIO4All control panel. I highlight Scarlett 2i2 USB and move the slider. I can change it between 2048 samples down to 64 samples; the 'buffer size' value goes up or down in the settings window in Live correspondingly, and the latency figures change between 46.4 ms (times two - in and out) and 1.45 (!!!) in/out. Fantastic. Under 3 ms latency. Unfortunately, it doesn't make ANY difference to the ear. There's a perceptible gap, and changing setting doesn't do anything to it. I assume that the 60 times difference as per latency [i]numbers[/i] should be noticeable?

When the fan kicks in on the laptop and I know that the CPU is working hard, the sound goes all massively distorted, as could be expected with low buffer size, but no matter what settings I change, how big or small the buffer is, it remains distorted. So yet again, buffer size has no effect.

Righty-ho, that's not it. If instead of ASIO4All in 'Audio Device' I choose Focusrite USB 2.0 Audio Driver option, the control window changes, as could be expected, to Focusrite's own, with one slider - Buffer Length, in milliseconds. Moving it left or right gives different latency figures, never low enough, but most importantly, if I move it too far left (3 ms or less), the sound disappears altogether. Just silence. Moving the slider back to the right doesn't fix it, I am having to pull the USB plug out. Doing it a couple of times crashes the PC to the blue screen of death.

So there you go. I know that 2i2 is a good device that - judging by reviews - can give very low latencies. Both my PCs are reasonably fast and otherwise problem-free, and in any case there's two of them. The combination should produce an acceptable result, but so far it's been anything but. I have a feeling I am missing something terribly trivial, but I've followed all instruction manuals and a few threads on various forums, yet I'm none the wiser. Why does the buffer size have no effect on latency? I mean, c'mon, I can deliberately increase latency to 300 ms, that's a bit more than a hundred times than the lowest figure that Live shows me, why there's no difference?
The only thing I could think of could be that there's an additional source of latency somewhere. Should I have switched something else off? The problem is not Live - I've got the same with Audacity and without any DAWs.

Erm, help?

Paul

[Grangur]

Hi Paul, welcome the BC.

Try posting this in the recording section. You may get more of the right sort of guys reading it.

Cheers

Rich

[Andytre]

my mate had a similar problem with his scarlett 6i6, turned out it was because the main hard drive for the computer was just full off crap (in this case the desktop was full of music and videos ect) once that had all been moved to external hard drive it solved the latency issue, only reason i thought about it is because the same thing happened to my pro tools HD rig, im not sure if this will help your latency issues as this happened on Mac but you never know! also alot of issues such as routing can be solved in focusrites (rather annoying) scarlett control which iv seen can cause endless trivial problems, which should be simple to fix but focusrite hide out of plain sight!

hope you get it working man, from what iv heard from the scarlett 6i6 there fantastic little interfaces especially for USB!