Hello, everyone. I hope you are all having a great day.

It seems many people are curious about this line of interfaces and rightly so. They are a great price and seem to offer a lot. After being assured by other users here and contacting Focusrite that this would work with my set up I went for it. I'm going to spend the next few days reading the manual, installing the unit and testing it out. I finally have some time so tonight I have opened the box and figured I'd start my thread right now (I actually opened the box when it arrived but I only did a preliminary examination of the equipment). This way it's kind of a real time account of what I'm doing and how I am doing it. Just so you all know I am indeed very much a beginner to X1 and although I've done some digital recording in the past with decent results I still consider myself a beginner to digital recording (this will likely become apparent as the thread goes on if it isn't already... lulz). Essentially this is not intended as pro advice. Just an account of installing my new toy.

The Packaging:

Yup. It's a box. Nice secure box built to ship well. Glossy on the outside with all the usual stuff. Big ole pic of the 18i6 on the front, some feature stuff and general fanfare. It has a "Pro Tools 9 Ready" sticker and an "Ableton Live Lite 8" blurb that looks like a sticker but it's actually printed right on the box. The back has specs and descriptions, blah blah blah. I'm getting bored looking at the box...

Opens the box: OMG IT'S A HEAD!!!

Just kidding.

First thing is there is a nice little Xeroxed note from Focusrite saying if you have any problems to contact them and then it provides their phone numbers in the US and internationally as well as their website's answer base URL. It also has a note saying to be sure that you download the most current drivers from Focusrite. It is a nice personal touch on their part and their support is great (from personal experience) but that is there for a reason. People have had troubles with their drivers (I'm assuming it was the whole move to 64 bit that tripped things up) but they have updated their drivers and supposedly they work fine now. Essentially they are saying "DO NOT INSTALL THE DRIVERS FROM THE CD! Get the current stuff and if there is an issue contact us."

That, to me, instills some confidence. Obviously (or to some perhaps not so obviously) you should always get the latest drivers for anything you install on your computer but they remind you as soon as you open the box. Very nice.

Enough on that... under the note there is a formed eggshell type carton thingy. Pull it up and there's my 18i6 wrapped in a foamy bag, then wrapped in a plastic bag and to that a ziploc with bunch of CDs and other printed gack is taped on top.

What's in the baggie?:

"A Pocket Guide to the Full Range"... just a fold out ad for a bunch of other Focusrite products.

*tosses it aside*

Registration card with the 18i6's s/n...

*hangs onto that*

Scarlett USB 2.0 Range Resources CD Version - 1.1 (I will not install any of that unless necessary. Instead I will grab the latest versions from the Focusrite website).

Wait... there is ANOTHER baggie within the baggie!

This is the Ableton stuff.

Okay, so there is a sticker that looks exactly like the printed Ableton blurb on the front of the box. Meh.

*tosses it aside*

There is a card with a registration number for Ableton Live Lite. Not sure if I have to download it but I'm not intending to play with Ableton just yet.

*hangs onto that*

Novation Bass Station Authorization Card...

Another registration code with some instructions. I've never heard of this program but I'll check it out at some point.

*hangs onto that*

Optical Disc (not sure if it's a CD or DVD so I'll just call it an optical disc) that is labeled "Xcite + Pack Software and Samples". I think this is probably just extra content for Ableton and perhaps some of the fancy Focusrite software plugins. Stuff I'd probably snag from their websites as opposed to installing from a disc though unless I absolutely needed to.


So that was kind of boring but I just wanted to be thorough. Now I'm gonna yank out the actual interface for a proper visual inspection.

I'll be back in a bit.

I can't say I do things the way you do. LOL I aways rip it out of the box and stick it in or or attach it or plug it in or install it or ....... Than when nothing works I start reading.

Hello, John. Yup. I've learned the hard way over the years to read every darned thing that comes with the box and then scour the internet for anything I'm missing. I find the extra effort saves a lot of headaches especially considering electronics hate me for some reason. This is however from most reports a very easily installable device. I'm hoping those reports hold true. :-)

bass station is based on the real unit.. so keep / use that. they gave away their other synth when I bought one of their controllers.. quite a nice one , does arps n stuff. 

Did you get a cd of RX2 loops ? some of their stuff has it.  I have 4 novation/focusrite things IRC.
 
as for ableton , they are tied in with focusrite a bit.. I've got 3 licenses for "lite" hehe.. but at the moment here they are doing a decent deal if you upgrade 33% off if you have lite already, only for 3 days though!!.. I'm *REALLY* tempted , partly because of warp and a few more bits .. and yer I own sonar, cubase and reason already... if I could take certain bits out of each I'd be happy.. but I digress.

I use a saffire 6 usb here, on this laptop and it does what it needs to, although not I'm so impressed with the novation controllers build quality (same company) and how they deal with other sequencers better. 

I always get the updated drivers off the website as 90% of the time the ones on the cd / dvd with it are a few versions older :)

Right on, Fog. I'm actually quite interested in what Ableton Live does but I want to get my head wrapped around X1 first as it will be my main DAW. I like these lite editions that come with stuff so I can check out who's doing what. I'm looking at keyboard controllers and I have a motivation to get something by M-Audio so I can score a lite version of Pro Tools as well. I'm a very curious fellow. Anyway... just typing something up about the actual box right now. Cheers.

So now I have the box in my hands...

The box (general):

It is, as promised, a steel box. The case is well machined and held together by screws. I kind of like that because it's good to know if I ever wanted to I could crack it open. That is obviously not something I would ever do though... because that would be dumb. I can see on the bottom where the board has been mounted to the box as well. All this basically means to me this is easily serciceable by Focusrite so if something happened after the warranty expired it might be cheaper to fix as opposed to a sealed box (which many are these days). But that's not important. It's just a well built box.

The front panel however seems to be made of plastic which is finished to look like brushed steel. No biggie but it's something that stood out to me. It does feel like quality plastic but it would likely crack if abused.

Front Panel:

Multi ins... These supposedly have the nice Focusrite pres. I was looking for quality pres because I did not want to have to use my old Mackie mixer anymore and everyone says the Focusrite stuff is great. I can't comment on their sound yet but there they are. Two multi ins.

Beside that are gain knobs for each of the pres and a 48v phantom power button beneath them as well as three LEDs. Two for the inputs (not sure if they change color for clipping or anything yet) and one for the phantom power.

Beside those is an LCD display for 8 inputs and below that individual LCDs for Power, USB and LKD (I don't know what LKD is yet). The screen is covered with a little pull away screen protector. Everything looks pretty solid.

Beside that is a Monitor knob which is GREAT. I thought I was going to have to buy a separate unit to control my monitor level but it is built right in. Awesome.

Beside that is the Headphone level knob and the headphone jack.

All the knobs are made of plastic but feel reasonably solid and move freely (but not too loose).


Back Panel:

There are two solid feeling SPDIF connectors for out/in.

Beside that the power supply jack (yes this unit uses a power supply. 12V DC 1A).

Beside that two DIN MIDI connections (in and out). This was important to me because I want to use an old MIDI keyboard as a controller at some point so I needed these connections.

Beside that is the main USB connector (that connects to the computer). It's a standard square style USB connection you'd find on a printer.

Beside that is the optical input which you can do all sorts of neat stuff with but to me it's most appealing feature is I can get an expansion device and add a full extra 8 mic pres to the unit (perhaps more). It has a little plastic plug protecting it.

Beside that there are eight female 1/4" connections. They all feel quite solid and seem to be steel coated in plastic of some sort. The first two are monitor outputs and the remaining six are line level analog inputs (I wanted those in case I need to record a full drum kit or a band. I would just use my mixer to input to these in that situation if I did not have access to an optical expansion unit).


Aside from that there isn't much else to say about the box. On top it has a nice graphic of the 18i6/Focusrite logos and on the bottom a serial number and the usual electronic compliance code stuff.

So that's the unit.

More to come...

Beepster I just took a look at the  Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 that you have and I am impressed. I think you are going to really like it.  I hope you have dual monitors though. LOL

Okay... so this is where things get a little obnoxious.

Underneath my nice interface is a standard USB cable (square type on one end to connect to the unit and a flat type to connect to the computer). It has filter on it. It is of medium quality. I'll probably replace it at some point though. This is pretty standard however so no complaints on the included USB cable.

Beside that is a box containing the power adapter. This power adapter is a little... uh... whack.

First off it is made of pretty crappy feeling plastic and seems to be mostly hollow. Second it has interchangeable plugs for European/US and one of the old phone type jacks (which I think are for older European outlets). I guess that's kind of cool but it came with the big ole European plug preattached. Removing it the crappy plastic build of the adapter becomes even more apparent. I could see that breaking rather easily if I was swapping things out often. Also the cable for the adapter is quite thin and I'm going to have to take some extra precautions to protect it from getting munched.

Another thing to note is it does NOT have a proper ground pin. I'm not sure how important this is for these types of devices but it concerns me a little as far as extra noise being introduced to the system.

So yeah... the adapter sucks.

Now I'm off to find the manual and drivers.

@John... I do indeed have dual monitors (which have actually caused me some grief but I won't go into it just yet as that issue is still being looked at), and I do think I'm going to like this unit very much... despite the cruddy adapter. Hope I'm not boring you guys. Cheers.

You may like this review on the forum under gear. Here.