Thunderbolt Interfaces

[Dood]

Anyone been using a Thunderbolt Audio Interface for any amount of time and would like to comment on performance?

I'm thinking about trying one with my Apple products. Any advice or useful information would be received appreciatively!

[Skol303]

I have a FireWire interface that I recently tested with a Thubderbolt to FireWire adaptor (just to check whether it's compatible) and it worked great - in that there was no noticeable difference whatsoever.

Being a massive geek... I've been following the Thunderbolt debate elsewhere and the consensus seems to be that Thunderbolt is generally sh*t hot for audio work - and tends to be featuring on the higher end interfaces.

Long-term use of Thunderbolt is uncertain. USB3 is the popular choice, but 'on paper' it's not as good and those in the know are suggesting that Thunderbolt has many years in it yet - and may even become more popular as more people start using super high definition monitors.

Not sure that helps, but that's what I know!

Edited July 5, 2016 by Skol303

[VTypeV4]

I usually run my MOTU 828x with it's USB connection however, it does get used occasionally with a friends' Mac book with Logic via ThunderBolt. It seems to work without drama and can only remember one occasion where we had to restart Logic although that may well have been a software blip and nothing to do with the MOTU or ThunderBolt connection.

I'm not entirely convinced it really runs any better / different / worse compared to my USB / PC / Pro Tools rather than his TB / Mac / Logic but it's nice to have both options.

[Sibob]

Thunderbolt has plenty of life left in it, Thunderbolt 3 will eventually be widely adopted over USB-C, and will be backwards compatible (as Thunderbolt 1 is with 2). So the worst case scenario in the medium term is needing a connection hub with Thunderbolt connections for computers which only have USB-C ports (*cough Apple *cough*).

People get hung up on 'speed' and bandwidth, these things are important, but usually not too important for the kinds of recording projects we might undertake, we're mostly bothered about achievable latency and, really, USB 2.0 is more than capable for the relatively small projects (lets say 16 analogue channels simultaneously) we might undertake. If you are someone who presides over orchestra recording (a LOT of channels) or track with a lot of plugins/processing happening, you're the exception .

Si
Focusrite Technical Support

[Dood]

Great reading, all input welcomed, thank you!

I don't necessarily need millions of inputs but latency is something I want to keep down. Whilst my current interface is fine, I'm starting to get glitches in my recording which I need to find the source. I will be doing all the usual stuff anyway, but it has also got me thinking about upgrading my interface to include some functionality that I currently don't have.

[Sibob]

I should say that although USB2 is fine for most people (this does depend on computer spec and session size, don't expect much from your £250 Lenovo), you will be able to achieve lower latency via Thunderbolt.
This is helpful because you can then raise your buffer size, achieving a similar round trip, but not putting as much strain on the CPU, meaning less glitchy audio.

Si
Focusrite Technical Support

[funkle]

I use my Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 with a pretty well spec'd X99 board PC; hooking it up to the Thunderbolt connector card I installed in my PC via an Apple Firewire to Thunderbolt connector.

Works great on Windows 7 x64, latency of 1.6 ms roundtrip in Reaper. I can use my plugins in realtime on the bass input. Sweet.

It doesn't work at all in Windows 10. Focusrite say there's an issue with the motherboard chipset and Windows 10 implementation of Firewire. Windows 10 uninstalled...(https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207546925?id=1184)

(PC spec -

[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Fractal R4 case[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Asus X99-A motherboard[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]i7 5820K stably overclocked to 4.0GHz [/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Thermalright Archon IB E EX2 Cooler[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Samsung 850 Pro 1 TB OS and Samples drive[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]WD Black 1 TB Recording Drive[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]16GB Corsair CMK16GX4M4A2666C16 Vengeance LPX (4x 4GB) 2666MHz RAM[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]NVIDIA GTX 970 (overkill...but I game, too)[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Asus ThunderboltEx II Card -> Apple Firewire to Thunderbolt Adapter -> [/font][url="https://www.gearslutz.com/board/focusrite/saffire-pro-24-g1422/"]Focusrite Saffire Pro 24[/url][font=verdana, geneva, lucida,] Interface[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]EVGA [/font][url="https://www.gearslutz.com/board/novation/supernova-g12745/"]Supernova[/url][font=verdana, geneva, lucida,] 750 G2 Gold PSU [/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Dell U2414H monitor[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Win7 x64[/font]
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Reaper, Waves Gold, NI Komplete 10, [/font][url="https://www.gearslutz.com/board/avid-technology/sibelius-75-g3585/"]Sibelius 7.5[/url])

[Sibob]

Hi Funkle,

It's unlikely that you're seeing any latency benefits from connecting your Saffire to a Thunderbolt card via an adapter, as it will simply be creating a Firewire bus for the Saffire to work over.
Remember that the Saffire is still only using the Firewire 400 protocol, you would need a Thunderbolt interface to see the true latency benefits of your Thunderbolt card. That said, if you're experiencing 1.6m/s roundtrip with this setup, that's pretty bloody spectacular

Yes, we saw quite a few problems with people who updated to Windows 10 and found that their older Firewire 400 chipsets causing connectivity problems with a number of brands Firewire interfaces. This seems to have been resolved somewhat by people upgrading their Firewire cards to later Firewire 800 chipsets (we specifically recommend the TI XIO2213B chipset).

Si
Focusrite Technical Support

[funkle]

I didn't know you were Focusrite technical support. Nice.

I went round the houses with various Firewire cards - the SIIG one that is meant to work properly, etc. Still got them somewhere. Couldn't get them to work with the Saffire Pro using the Asus X99-A board, so I ended up buying the Asus Thunderbolt expansion card as a final resort, and bridging it with the Firwire/Thunderbolt adapter. I guess the Asus X99-A board just doesn't like Firewire cards much.

I didn't realise it wouldn't give a true indication of the capability of Thunderbolt - my apologies. I look forward one day to getting a true Thunderbolt interface, but I guess I won't need it for low latency!

Windows 10 looked great, and I was sorry I couldn't leave it on my system. But I just cannot faff around again with FW cards and suchlike when what I have already works.

[Musashimonkey]

I use a Focurite Clarett 2pre direct through thunderbolt into my iMac. Super connection, fantastic performance. 😊 (Thanks Sibob).

[Dood]

I think the obvious choice has been made then! Time to choose which model to go for!

[Dood]

Just dropping a post in here to let everyone know how this all panned out. I must thank our very own Sibob for being absolutely ace and I now have a Focusrite Clarett 2Pre sat in my set up here. Genuinely took about ten minutes (would have been less if I had checked all my settings first) to be stunned at the quality of this interface. Thunderbolt is the way forward. I have NEVER seen such low latency figures on my kit (complete trip). No clicks, no drop outs, just superb tone.

Very pleased indeed, it's a nice piece of kit that is about to make my life so much easier. Kinda wish I had it before I started recording this album!

Doood

[Musashimonkey]

Cool, really glad you like it, a definite +1 for Sibob and a +1 for the Clarett 2 Pre; incredible (both of them!).

The latency is so low, and the sound is so good I use it for all my home headphone practice now! Thanks Sibob. 😊

[Dood]

[quote name='Musashimonkey' timestamp='1469744257' post='3100855']
Cool, really glad you like it, a definite +1 for Sibob and a +1 for the Clarett 2 Pre; incredible (both of them!).

The latency is so low, and the sound is so good I use it for all my home headphone practice now! Thanks Sibob. ��
[/quote]

Yes! It has been a joy to use! My upgraded IEMs also arrived yesterday. I spent the whole evening last night learning songs for a gig using the two together. Great sound. The lack of latency is just mind boggling. I know Focusrite wouldn't make things up, but to max out my machine and the interfaces to not even break a sweat is a superb when dealing with 48+ tracks of audio and recording at the same time.

Thank you Sibob. Very pleased - Love the Focusrite Control, especially saving routings for fast access control. Nice!

Edited July 29, 2016 by dood

[project_c]

I've just upgraded my 2012 iMac to El Capitan (from OS10.7.5 - been holding off for years because that OS worked well) and found that USB is now completely broken. What have Apple done with this OS?? Devices are not showing up, there are occasional crashes when using apps that are looking for those devices, I have to restart my Motu USB interface every time I wake the machine up, I have to unplug and plug my scanner back in every time I want to use it - it's a disaster.

The OS itself is nice, and my graphics stuff seems to be working without problems, but looking around online, the USB issues - USB audio issues specifically - are commonplace.

So with that in mind, I have decided to give up on USB for audio and I bought a Focusrite Clarett 2Pre today. I have not even opened the box yet, but before I do, if anyone knows of any issues with El Capitan and this interface, please let me know. I'll get round to getting it all set up tomorrow, I'll report back on how it is.

First observation - I had to pay an extra £50 for a thunderbolt cable to actually connect this to my mac. For a <£400 interface, this is taking the p!ss a little bit, but I'm willing to live with it if it works as well as reviews suggest.

[Dood]

[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1470781961' post='3108505']
I've just upgraded my 2012 iMac to El Capitan (from OS10.7.5 - been holding off for years because that OS worked well) and found that USB is now completely broken. What have Apple done with this OS?? Devices are not showing up, there are occasional crashes when using apps that are looking for those devices, I have to restart my Motu USB interface every time I wake the machine up, I have to unplug and plug my scanner back in every time I want to use it - it's a disaster.

The OS itself is nice, and my graphics stuff seems to be working without problems, but looking around online, the USB issues - USB audio issues specifically - are commonplace.

So with that in mind, I have decided to give up on USB for audio and I bought a Focusrite Clarett 2Pre today. I have not even opened the box yet, but before I do, if anyone knows of any issues with El Capitan and this interface, please let me know. I'll get round to getting it all set up tomorrow, I'll report back on how it is.

First observation - I had to pay an extra £50 for a thunderbolt cable to actually connect this to my mac. For a <£400 interface, this is taking the p!ss a little bit, but I'm willing to live with it if it works as well as reviews suggest.
[/quote]

Sorry to hear of your IT woes! I have a 2011 iMac and I'm afraid that El Cap is working perfectly. I'm not sure why we are getting different results? Very odd and I hope it's fixable for you.

I have the 2Pre too and other than making sure I had the right things selected in the control centre, it has been flawless! I'm yet to max it out - the thing hasn't broken a sweat yet! You'll love it.. Oh and the lack of latency is mind boggling!!!! I'm running plugins all the time for the shear hell of it! Loads of em!

Blimey! £50? Did you buy a really long cable? Mine was only about £25.

It's a great interface, I love the features and it's going to definitely be on the next album I record.

[project_c]

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1470787492' post='3108526']


Sorry to hear of your IT woes! I have a 2011 iMac and I'm afraid that El Cap is working perfectly. I'm not sure why we are getting different results? Very odd and I hope it's fixable for you.

I have the 2Pre too and other than making sure I had the right things selected in the control centre, it has been flawless! I'm yet to max it out - the thing hasn't broken a sweat yet! You'll love it.. Oh and the lack of latency is mind boggling!!!! I'm running plugins all the time for the shear hell of it! Loads of em!

Blimey! £50? Did you buy a really long cable? Mine was only about £25.

It's a great interface, I love the features and it's going to definitely be on the next album I record.
[/quote]

Yeah, the shop I bought it from gave me a v good price on the unit after some haggling, but then shafted me on the cable, they only had 1/2m or 2m in stock supposedly, so I was forced into buying the long one.

Re the USB issues - are you using any USB peripherals on a regular basis? I have a scanner, printer, the Motu Microbook and a Wacom Cintiq (via thunderbolt) in there all the time. The Wacom works fine, the others drop out for no reason. Maybe the issue is down to my mac rather than the OS, but I'm reading lots of horror stories online. I've done an SMC reset, no change, might do a PRAM reset to see what that does, but other than that I'm lost..

[Dood]

[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1470814133' post='3108565']
{snip}
Re the USB issues - are you using any USB peripherals on a regular basis? I have a scanner, printer, the Motu Microbook and a Wacom Cintiq (via thunderbolt) in there all the time. The Wacom works fine, the others drop out for no reason. Maybe the issue is down to my mac rather than the OS, but I'm reading lots of horror stories online. I've done an SMC reset, no change, might do a PRAM reset to see what that does, but other than that I'm lost..
[/quote]

I'd been running some kit that didn't use an external power supply. The USB Interface I replaced, a USB MIDI controller, My mobile was often plugged in, an external 2.5" HDD and sometimes a hub to connect devices such as pedals or USB sticks. I then purchased a powered hub which didn't get much use which had two drives running as RAID set up by the Mac. Always on, in that case. The only time I had any problems was actually caused by one of the fans not running properly. Diagnosed the problem with a fan speed app, replaced and everything has been fine since. Really sorry I can't offer up any issues to compare!

I'm intrigued as having not had any problems, I am totally unaware of the horror stories. Best I go see what's occurring!

My Mac is a quad core i5 and I've maxed it out with available memory as well as a SSD for the system. I say this as these upgrades may effect the situation?

[project_c]

Hmm interesting! Mine is a 27inch 3.4Ghz Intel i7 iMac with 16GB RAM, primarily used for graphics and animation work, strangely also had fan issues to begin with but that got fixed under apple care - other than that it's been in constant use since 2012 with no issues, so I never felt the need to upgrade. El Capitan hasn't slowed it down, I havent fully tested all apps yet but so far it all works fine apart from the USB thing. It's not a total failure but re-inserting devices every time is a pain!

There's a thread on the Apple discussions forum with lots of people reporting trouble [url="https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7262138?tstart=0"]here[/url], and an attempted fix which is WAY beyond my understanding [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/306777-guide-usb-fix-el-capitan-1011/"]here[/url]. Apparently "[color=#000000][font=Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif][size=3]10.11 has a new mechanism to constraint the USB ports to your SMBIOS". [/size][/font][/color]

[project_c]

Well, I have installed the Focusrite, and first impressions are not good at all. There is no sound coming from this thing, even though it's synced and shows sound going to the outputs.

[Sibob]

[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1470959080' post='3109698']
Well, I have installed the Focusrite, and first impressions are not good at all. There is no sound coming from this thing, even though it's synced and shows sound going to the outputs.
[/quote]

Hi bud,

That's unusual, i'll drop you a PM now and we'll sort it.

Si // Focusrite Technical Support

[project_c]

Thanks Si, that's very kind - I think I've sorted it - last night I was getting no sound at all from the outputs or headphone out when playing stuff from Logic or any other source on my mac, until I plugged a bass in to the instrument input (perhaps I should have done this first), at which point the 'sync' light went red, and the clock source went back from 'Internal' to 'ADAT' - no idea why - but I set it back to 'Internal', and at that point it synced and started working as expected. I've saved a snapshot of the current setup, I'm keeping an eye on it today and seeing if anything strange happens but so far so good, output sounding good through headphones and I'm having a big practice and recording session this afternoon so I will be putting the instrument input and bundled comp & eq through their paces, I'll report back on it tonight.

[Sibob]

Ok great, yes anything you need, give me a PM

Si // Focusrite Technical Support

[project_c]

So I've spent a good few hours playing through this box now, here are some thoughts.

Sound:
The sound quality really is excellent, there is more clarity and definition than I'm used to with my Motu MicroBook (which also sounds really good). Latency was never a real issue with the Motu, I used to play through Logic and listen to the output through headphones and it was fine, but on the Clarett 2Pre latency is pretty much non-existent. The 'Air' setting on the instrument input is surprisingly audible on bass, it's like a very subtle exciter, but with no harshness or colouration. It has the added bonus of making dead strings sound new, which is nice - I love the tone of dead strings but they can sound muddy, and the 'Air' setting gave my dusty old tapewounds a nice lift. I'm not sure if I'll use it all the time, but it's nice to have it there.

Software:
Setup, registration and installation is easy, the Focusrite Control is straightforward, but for some reason a couple of times the Clock Source set itself back to ADAT, even though I had it set to Internal, which I think was the reason I was getting no audio last night. Not sure if this is due to something I'm doing wrong or if it's a bug in the software, but it's not difficult to fix. I'll see what happens over the next few days, maybe I'll figure it out.

The bundled EQ and Compressor plugins are very nice, totally useable for bass, the compressor especially is great and gives you the option to blend the compressed signal with the original. I normally use a Seymour Duncan Studio Bass compressor, this plug-in is a nice alternative to that, and also to Logic's own compressor plugin. I've only used the EQ for subtle bumps and cuts, nothing drastic but it seems musical and versatile. I've not downloaded the Softube plugins yet, looking forward to trying those later this weekend.

Build quality:
Can't complain about this, it's pretty amazing. Solid, chunky, red and made of steel. I've set the big Monitor knob to control the output to everything, feels great in use. Got loads of stuff to learn and record over the next week so I'm going to carry on putting this thing to work, should hopefully be fun.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1471046001' post='3110265']
Software:
Setup, registration and installation is easy, the Focusrite Control is straightforward, but for some reason a couple of times the Clock Source set itself back to ADAT, even though I had it set to Internal, which I think was the reason I was getting no audio last night. Not sure if this is due to something I'm doing wrong or if it's a bug in the software, but it's not difficult to fix. I'll see what happens over the next few days, maybe I'll figure it out.
[/quote]

The unwanted clock switching bug is something that has been present in the Focusrite software for some time now. I had it when I bought my Saffire Pro 24 interface 6 years ago. IIRC it arises from a conflict between the Focusrite control panel with either your DAW settings and/or those in the Audio MIDI setup application. Make sure that you have selected the same clock setting in all 3 locations and it should remain stable in the Focusrite Control.