What makes Focusrite products unique, is its signature Air mode: a preamp effect designed after Focusrite's ISA circuits. This adds a layer of saturation and high-end sparkle to your recordings. Besides this feature, the Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen is predominantly a no-frills interface, offering you high recording quality at a low cost. Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Build Quality. Right out of the box, I'm particularly impressed by the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2's solid construction. It looks great, and the design of the unit itself is clean and intuitive. The red brushed steel casing is robust and has an excellent weight to it. The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 comes equipped with only two input channels and two line outputs. The two inputs on the 2i2 accept mic, line, and instrument level inputs. This means you can plug in a microphone, guitar, keyboard, or synthesizer in these two inputs. Our pick for the best 2-channel audio interface is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. It has been the best-selling interface for a while now for many good reasons. For those that need the absolute best, it is hard to beat the Universal Audio Apollo Solo Heritage Edition Thunderbolt 3, as it offers superior quality and access to the amazing UA ecosystem. This applies to the Scarlett and Saffire Ranges. The Saffire and Scarlett microphone preamps provide between +10dB and +55dB of gain to the input signal before the analogue to digital converters. The gain required to reach an acceptable signal level will depend on several things including the input source and the type of microphone you're using. The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is dominant in the market for audio interfaces, and one of the best-selling pieces of studio gear of all-time. This is not only due to the great value the 2i2 offers for beginner producers. It's heavily due to its very affordable price (see current price). But, there's plenty of affordable audio interfaces out there. The Bottom Line. The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is a simple stereo input box that's ideal for recording and mixing both music and podcasts. MSRP $169.99. $169.99 at Guitar Center. The buffer size is a sample size given to the CPU to handle the task of playback/recording. A higher buffer size gives more lattency but allows the CPU more time to handle the task. There's no one correct buffer size; you may even find you change the buffer size for what you're doing at the time. The general rule of thumb is increase it if you Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 microphone not working is one of the issues caused by the use of low-quality microphones which means microphone replacement often works wonders. Moreover, you may want to restart PC, secure cables, refresh the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and so on. Read to the end to put Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 to good use. Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Best for desktop warriors Focusrite's Scarlett series has near-legendary status at this point and an eye-wateringly high review ratio on Amazon for a good reason: It does zBGoaP8.