Is thunderbolt worth the extra money?

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plav1959

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Wanting to get an AI to start recording myself. Two ins are plenty. Will be running bass, MIDI keyboard, e drums and guitar through it to a MacBook Pro with Logic Pro X. Don't see any need for mics right now, but may in the future. I've been looking at the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 or the Clarett 2Pre. Is the $300 difference in price worth it? Are there any other thunderbolt AIs worth considering?
Thanks in advance,
Paul
 
Hey,
Had a quick google so don't take this as fact but it looks like the main differences, aside from the connectivity, is the preamps and software architecture.
The latter may not mean a lot, or anything, but it may mean longer lasting OS support into the future.

The 2i4 has 'award winning preamps' whereas the Clarett has transformer based 'ISA inspired' preamps.
Focusrite do get a pretty good name for their upper end preamps so, by the sounds of it, the Clarett wants to punch into that turf.

Nothing will beat first hand review, though.

If the question was a simple all-else-equal is thunderbolt worth $300 more than USB, the answer would probably be no although, on a mac, firewire or thunderbolt is the logical choice.
It gets the worst name possible amongst PC users and the best from mac users. There's a reason for that distinction.

When shopping, keep in mind that firewire is directly compatible with thunderbolt.
It's starting to fall out of favour in general but if you can get a cheap compatible firewire interface and the connector adapter, you might save some $$$.
Just a thought.
 
I have a Focusrite Saffire that connects via thunderbolt and it cuts down on latency when recording audio. That's really gonna be the main difference between the two. If you are new to audio interfaces, you wont hear that much of the difference between the preamps of the scarlett and clarett. Both have pretty good preamps.

So its really down to the latency. And if you get the USB interface there are ways in logic that you can cut down on latency so that its not even really noticeable.
 
So you're using the Saffire with a Mac via the firewire to thunderbolt adaptor. Right?
Mine's on a pc with f/w while using the mix software. Zero latency.
 
Yeah I'm using the firewire to thunderbolt adaptor. With the MixControl software I'd get zero latency for tracking vocals and bass direct. But for guitars I like to hear the amp sounds while I'm recording so I prefer to just lower the I/O buffer size in Logic. This gives me virtually zero latency too.
 
Yeah makes sense. If Im not recording an amp, and just doing some scratch guitar tracks I"ll do the same thing in PT. latency is almost non existent.

Cause you know, recording a straight direct guitar sound isn't always inspiring. I hate doing it that way, but at three in the morning cranking up the marshall and throwing a mic on it just isn't realistic.
:D
 
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