Audient iD22: first impressions

I've just got myself a new audio interface, an Audient iD22, and I'm very pleased with it so far. I've been using a Line6 UX2 since 2007 and recently I had been wondering if maybe it's holding me back. Now I'm sure. The iD22 definitely feels like a significant step up. I chose this model on features. One of the main features that attracted me was the send/return, as I am intending to add some outboard gear and I don't have a mixer.

Getting it up and running was quick and painless. I had already downloaded and installed the drivers in advance a few days earlier. A prompt to update the firmware provided a choice of online or offline installation. Too easy.

I haven't done any recording with it yet. We're moving house in a few days and most of my gear was already packed away before the new interface arrived. So far I've just spent some time playing back various Sonar projects, stopping to do bits of editing here and there. I became instantly mesmerised as soon as I started listening. The sound is so smooth and detailed. Subjectively, the word "clean" kept coming to mind. It also brought to my attention a lot of things in my projects that need fixing. Some of these things I had probably noticed before but didn't think at the time that they were so bad, but now they are unacceptable. This is exactly what I want from a monitoring system.

I have seen some particular criticisms of the iD22 expressed repeatedly in reviews and forums. My comments on these issues are as follows.

Bright sounding?
Some people say that this device overemphasises the higher frequencies. I'm not sure whether that's true and I didn't really notice any imbalance in the overall sound, but the top end sounds very smooth and silky and perhaps draws attention to itself as a result. Inconclusive.

All the sockets are on the back
Some people have complained that it's inconvenient not having the headphone and DI sockets easily accessible on the front. I don't particularly find this a problem. Seriously, how many times per hour do you swap headphones and guitars. However the headphone socket is located below the USB and power sockets, which is a bit awkward.

Mostly jack sockets rather than XLRs
I agree that XLRs would have been preferable on the send, return and maybe the main outs. The unit would need to be a bit larger to accommodate this but that would not bother me. Maybe some users would want this unit for portable use and prefer it to be as small as possible.

Only one headphone amp
Yes, I would have prefered two myself.

No power switch
This won't be a problem for me, as I will be running it from a power conditioner and switching it on & off from there. But I can see that it could be annoying otherwise, i.e. having to remove and reinsert the power connector every time.

Driver stability?
This interface was originally developed for Mac only. Windows drivers were released much later and some PC users have complained about driver issues. I have experienced one crash myself so far but it's hard to know whether it was caused by the drivers. At the time I had both Sonar and Audacity open, so maybe sharing audio drivers between different programs causes problems. I will need to test this out.

Obviously there are a lot more aspects of this device to explore, but that will have to wait. Right now it's packed away and I won't see it for a while.

i'm weighing the id22 against the rme babyface.
 
i've also looked at the celesonic 20x20, but truth is, i rarely ever need that many channels, 
it almost makes sense to me, to focus on two quality preamps, and deal with finding a mixer to add in IF i need to...
 
the rme goes to 192, the id22 only 96....
but that's no deal breaker...
 
xlr outs on the rme, only trs on the id22.....
 
gotta have midi in/out, rme has breakout cable for it, none on audient....
 
 
 
 

Kev999
Bright sounding?
Some people say that this device overemphasises the higher frequencies. I'm not sure whether that's true and I didn't really notice any imbalance in the overall sound, but the top end sounds very smooth and silky and perhaps draws attention to itself as a result. Inconclusive.

I think these kinds of comments are to be expected when going from a device with "okay specs" to one that outperforms the first by a good leap -- especially when it comes to the converters.  IMO, that "brightness" is simply the high frequencies and harmonics you weren't hearing before.

FOLLOW-UP: RECORDING GUITAR

I eventually got round to recording some electric guitar. The iD22 has only one instrument input, but that's not a problem. With my previous interface (Line6 UX2) I always used the built-in fx via the GearBox software. The iD22 does not offer an equivalent, so I was concerned whether the absence of this facility might be a serious hindrence. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the dry signal actually sounded good on it's own, i.e. smooth and warm. This was never the case with the UX2 where a guitar with no effects added always sounded raw and edgy. Anyway I routed the signal through an outboard compressor/gate using the Id22's send and return and succeeded in achieving the sound that I looking for.

One thing I do miss about the TonePort/GearBox is the built in tuner. I couldn't find any way of using an onboard tuner. I tried adding one to track's fx rack in the Sonar project but it wouldn't respond to the signal. I don't get why.

Stability
I sometimes like to keep a very short section repeating over and over while I tweak settings. With my old Line6 interface, looping a short section would always eventually result in a crash. No such crashes with the Audient. Presumably due to better drivers.

Adjusting Latency

No mention of buffer sizes, just a menu option "Set Latency" in the mixer software. It provides a choice of 6 discrete settings:
Minimum, Low, Standard, Relaxed, Safe, Extra Safe
On my system, these equate to values:
1.8ms, 3.3ms, 6.2ms, 12.3ms, 24.3ms, 48.3ms.

I like this. It's easy to switch back and forth whenever necessary.
 
EDIT
I have found that the lowest setting won't work in large projects, i.e. the audio engine stops. The next one up works fine though.

I have an Audient ASP 880. Similarly, I find the gain to be a little less than some of my other devices turned up to full. That said, it is totally sufficient for digital recording and the range of values available is more appropriate.

I like this aspect.

gswitz
I'll bet you can do the same with the id22 that I do with my UCX.

Plug the ADAT out into the ADAT in. Now you can send channels and apply FX and mix together for parallel FX processing in real time.

 
I'll look into that.

But I believe that I can do parallel processing anyway without involving the digital ins or outs.

On the other hand, your idea seems good, as it would enable parallel processing of a stereo signal. With the limited analog ins & outs I can only do it for a mono signal.

Ah... well, if you are going through Sonar, you can do anything you like. :-)
 
For me, I have EQ, Compression, Reverb and Delay all within the RME UCX. I can do parallel EQ (effectively a way to expand or compress the eq settings with faders, changing them all to be more or less grave together moving a fader), or parallel compression on any track or stereo track. I can also stack EQs. 
 
The RME EQ has 3 bands or nodes that you can use as peak or shelf or high cut. Every eq has an additional low cut. you can copy settings between channels. you can reset any given EQ or compressor. You can save favorites and bring them up in different channels or on different nights.
 
You can save an entire mix, but re-using it would require you to plug in all the instruments the same way next time.
 
Anyway, the beauty here is that all this work has really 0 latency. No latency that a human could notice. It would be measured in samples. 
 

"RME UCX Manual"
How much Zero is Zero? From a technical view there is no zero. Even the analog pass-through is subject to phase errors, equalling a delay between input and output. However, delays below certain values can subjectively be claimed to be a zero-latency. This applies to analog routing and mixing, and in our opinion also to RME's Zero Latency Monitoring. The term describes the digital path of the audio data from the input of the interface to its output. The digital receiver of the Fireface UCX can't operate un-buffered, and together with TotalMix and the output via the transmitter, it causes a typical delay of 3 samples. At 44.1 kHz this equals about 68 µs (0.000068 s), at 192 kHz only 15 µs. The delay is valid for ADAT and SPDIF in the same way.

MORE FOLLOW-UP:

Power Adapter
One thing that has been criticised about the iD22 is the tiny power adapter. The manual specifies >1.5A and yet the one that they have supplied is only 1.25A. Some users on Gearslutz consider it to be underpowered and recommend replacing it with a more substantial one. I may consider doing this eventually. (What puts me off replacing it is my recent experience with other replacement power adapters, where the measured voltage was nearly 10% higher than it was supposed to be).

Phantom Power problem
The first few times I tried using a condenser mic, the iD22's phantom power was apparently not working. I never got to the bottom of this, but a few weeks later I tested it again and it was working perfectly and there has been no problem with it ever since. Weird!

Saving presets issue
Some aspects of the software GUI are not really up to standard. When you save a preset, you don't see a standard dialog box showing the presets folder with existing previous saves. And if you save a file with a filename that already exists it fails to save but gives no indication that it hasn't saved. I reported the problem. They replied saying that they were intending to correct this, but there have been no updates for nearly a year.

Patronising
I reported a minor error in the manual. The reply was a bit patronising, implying that I did not understand the terminology. I persisted and the next reply was "Apologies about that, it does appear to be a mistake". All good now.

Normally I hate it when people use forums for their personal blogs. But in this case I believe that this ongoing review might be helpful to potential iD22 users.

Thanks for the update Kev!

Shouldn't you lock on the adat signals? I suppose your other devices have to lock to the Audient and not the other way around.

Btw, i have a patch bay and love it. Much easier than crawling around on the floor all the time.

gswitz
...Btw, i have a patch bay and love it. Much easier than crawling around on the floor all the time.

 
Yes, me too. But why mention it here?

gswitz
You don't need to connect the clock when using adat light pipe. The sync data is part of the data passed in the adat connection. So your devices will lock together, but your id22 is probably locking to your asp800.

 
Using the ASP800's inputs for recording is no problem. Neither is using the Aphex 141B DAC for exporting. Using them both together, without the ability to sync their respective DAC and ADC, is the problem. I get clicks in the audio when I do outboard processing, going out through the 141B and back in via the ASP800. The only way to avoid clicks is to bypass the 800's ADC.