.

@Chaos Choir... I'm glad you are finding it helpful. It's also very nice to have the forum to toss this stuff out to in written form. By doing this I'm getting a far better grasp on my purchase than I would have just reading the manual and slapping it in. I hope this isn't considered inappropriate in any way. I will be getting to how it works with X1 soon enough. Just finishing the manual now and then I'll be installing the drivers. May not get to a playback/recording point with X1 until tomorrow though. Cheers!

Device Status Section:

Now this is extremely cool and IMHO quite elegant. Again this is right there on the main GUI so you don't have to hunt around for stuff. It is extremely simple but has many of your important settings and options easily accessible. It also looks pretty. :-)

What's displayed...

Sample Rate: Shows the current sample rate and when clicked provides a menu to select one of the following... 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, or 96kHz. I'm actually a little surprised it doesn't have lower sample rates than those but maybe that's normal and I personally wouldn't use anything below 44.1 anyway. There is also a warning in the manual stating to close your DAW before changing the samplerate so nothing goes screwy on you. Good to know.

Sync Source: Pretty straight forward. It just tells you what sync clock the device is using. Again clicking it will give you a menu. You have the following options... S/PDIF, ADAT or Internal. I myself (and I'm sure most home studio users) would use the 18i6's internal clock.

Sync Status: This just tells you that your sync clock is properly set and working. There is no dropdown for this. Here is the blurb from the manual... "The sync status display shows “Locked” when the Scarlett 18i6 has successfully locked to the specifi ed Sync Source. If “No Lock” is seen, then the unit has been unable to lock to an external S/PDIF or ADAT signal. If this is the case, then please check that digital cables are secure in their input sockets and that the external digital devices have been set up as sync master devices." Pretty straightforward stuff.

USB Driver: Again, very straightforward. No menu dropdown. This just tells you the 18i6 is properly hooked up to your computer and the driver is working properly.


Below all of that is a "Settings" button and it seems all this does is let you adjust your buffer/latency settings. This only works for Windows users (but obviously if you are using X1 you are a Windows user... Mac users are told to adjust buffer/latency within their DAW software). The thing I like about this is the menu that pops up shows all the settings in milliseconds so you can get an idea of what your actual latency will be. Again this is very simple and it's right there. Awesome.

I think this entire Device Status Section is the coolest thing about this software so far. Extremely intuitive and you don't have to hunt around for stuff.

I am still however just gleaning all this from the manual. We'll see exactly how well all this stuff works in reality. If it works as described though I'll be more than pleased.

The last GUI entry in the manual just describes what the main File menu does. It is pretty much the same for Mac and PC and works the same way a usual file menu would. It essentially let's you save and recall your mixer settings as well as provides options to restore to the factory defaults or clear the current settings (not sure what "Clear" would do beyond setting it to factory settings but maybe it resets everything to where you were when you opened the mixer file... I may experiment with that later).

Here is the actual text from the manual on these options as I couldn't really explain it better.

Open - opens a ‘File Open’ window allowing selection of any pre-saved Scarlett MixControl set-ups.

Save - opens a ‘File Save’ window allowing selection of a location into which your Scarlett MixControl set-up can be saved. Subsequent saves overwrite the original file.

Save As - opens a ‘File Save’ window allowing selection of a location into which your Scarlett MixControl set-up can be saved. Use this option if you want to keep your original saved set-up and create a new one with a different name.

Restore Factory Defaults - causes the Scarlett 18i6 to revert to the original default state in which it left the factory.

Clear All Settings - causes the Scarlett 18i6 to reset all mixer and routing settings. This can be used to globally reset all mixer, routing, and monitor settings, allowing creation of a new set-up from scratch.


So that's pretty darned cool too. I'm pretty sure my Layla didn't do THAT kind of recall stuff.

Beepster.....Interested in your review because I have also been thinking of upgrading my interface. But one question... What happens if you are in the middle of a project and change interfaces. Does it effect the workings of the project?

Well... I was gonna post the technical specs but Adobe Reader is giving me a hard time so if you are interested in those they are in the manual and can be found on Focusrite's website (which I posted earlier). Overall the manual is well written compared to a lot of the electronics manuals out there. It has lots of nice graphics and is very concise. I now feel I understand this piece of equipment quite thoroughly just from reading it whereas other device manuals tend to leave me scratching my head. So A+ for the manual. It also seems this device in general is going to be extremely easy to use. It does a lot but I don't feel overwhelmed by endless settings and menus like I do with many other devices. I think I'm gonna take a little break now before setting up my system to download the drivers so I'll be back later. I hope this has been helpful so far and I'm not annoying anyone with my ramblings. Cheers!

@keneds... Hello. Do you mean just swapping out your interface for new one completely or having both devices installed (but not running simultaneously because that supposedly does not work) and switching back and forth? If it is the latter that is EXACTLY what I will be doing tonight or tomorrow. I've been told that you can just switch the driver within X1 to the new device and you don't even have to remove the old interface. I will be describing this as I make my attempt. I am not sure what this will do to my project settings. What I would like to do for now is have both devices installed so I can do a comparison of the mic pres on both the Layla and the Scarlett. You cannot have two different interfaces running at once so what I would do is record a vocal with the Layla, disable the Layla in X1, enable the Scarlett in X1, record a vocal with the Scarlett... then compare. I have a feeling I will run into some troubles with this so we'll just have to wait and see. Cheers!

Yes, I will be abandoning my old interface, as long as I can continue with my current project without screwing up the results I've made so far. 

@keneds... What you should probably do is save a bundle file of the project to test things out on. That way if things screw up you still have the original project unscathed. From what I understand you should be able to just change the interface in the Drivers portion of the settings screen. Make sure your sample rate, bit depth, buffer, etc... settings match up on the new unit and I'd guess everything should be okay. I am however, as the thread title suggests, a beginner so you'd best talk to one of the more knowledgeable guys and gals around here or perhaps send an email to Cakewalk or the manufacturer of your new interface to be sure.

And as I said I will be doing pretty much the exact same thing so I'll be updating this as I go along. Cheers.