this little interface is a premium entry-level audio interface it's also great for the traveling
musician and in this video i'm going to do a quick overview of the audient id4 mk2
and then i'm going to do some vocal and guitar tests connected directly to it i'm zane
welcome to audio tech tv where it's my goal to help you conquer the tech so you can
unleash your creative beast and if you want any further info on the audient id4 mkii i've
linked to it down in the description so you can check out the latest pricing but at the
time of recording this it's going for 199 over on sweetwater so at a first glance the audient id4 mk2
may look like just another entry-level audio interface but it's actually packed full of some
interesting features and you get a great little bundle of software with it which i'll get into
in just a bit in the box you get the interface and the cable so not a whole lot going on in there
now let's look at some of the things that you can see on the exterior like all the connection
options that you get with this and then we'll discuss the details that you don't see so you
have two channels on the back of the interface it's your microphone and line input combo jack
and the mic preamp in this is the same mic preamp that you'll get in a pro audient recording console
it's also the same as what i have in my id44 which i absolutely love and this is not a cheap mic
preamp it's very clean with a lot of headroom and up to 58 decibels of gain also on the back
of the interface you have your 48 volt phantom power switch so you can use your condenser mics
you have your outputs for your monitors or your speakers and then you have your usbc jack
and this is used to power the interface and also to connect it to your computer
on the front of the interface you have the instrument input which is actually
a jfet instrument input and it's designed to replicate the input stage of a classic valve
amplifier so this gives your instrument a very nice foundation to start with in a little bit of
analog character so there's no need for a di box here also on the front here you'll notice that
there's two headphone jacks you have your quarter inch jack and a 3.5 millimeter jack so if you're
on the go and you only have some earbuds to work with there's no need for an adapter or anything
the id4 mkii has you covered also this is a very powerful headphone output it can power my dt770
250 ohm headphones no problem and apparently it can go up to 600 ohms so that's very impressive
for an audio interface of this size now on the top it may look fairly simple but there are some cool
hidden features that i'm going to get into in just a little bit but first you have your gain knobs
for your mic input and your instrument input right here then you have a cool monitor mix control
and this allows you to dial in the amount of the direct sound and computer sound that you hear
so if you want to hear your direct sound but you want to blend it a little bit with your daw
you can customize how much of it you want it's not just a button that turns the direct monitor on and
off now you have what they call a volume encoder over here and this controls the output volume to
the speakers and also to the headphones and also there's a cool feature with this if you push it
in it actually drops the level by 15 decibels and this can be great for instantly turning down
the volume without dropping it all the way or turning it off like say if your mom wife
kids or band mates start yelling at you just push that in and you can hear them and you
can also keep listening to your mix now another cool feature that they added is this mute speaker
button right here and this allows you to mute just the speakers but you'll still be able to hear
through your headphones now this is an extremely helpful feature if you're recording anything
with a microphone with other audio interfaces you have to turn down your speakers or turn them off
and then you turn them back on when you need them not with the id4 you just push this button right
here now over here you have the id button which is a unique audience feature and when it's pushed
in you can use the volume encoder as a scroll wheel to control settings in your daw or various
plugins that are compatible so you can use this when automating various settings and controls on
your tracks and it will give you a more hands-on feel now a cool hidden feature is if you push
both of these buttons at the same time the mute speaker button and the id button and now you can
access the monitor pan feature which allows you to monitor input 1 on one side and input 2 on the
other so if you're a singer songwriter type that records your guitar and your vocals at the same
time you're going to find this very useful so when you're in monitor pan mode and you turn the volume
encoder clockwise that's to the right it will pan input 1 to the left and input 2 to the right
if you turn the volume encoder counterclockwise or to the left it will pan input 1 to the right side
and input 2 to the left side also on top you have your led meters up here and you have your
led for your 48 volt phantom power to let you know that it's turned on you really don't want
to plug in anything or unplug anything when the 48 volt phantom power's on so this lets you know
when it's on and when it's off and then you have a usb light here and that lets you know
that your connection to your computer is good on your computer you install the audient id software
and you can take even more control over your audio interface with this if you need to so
far i haven't really needed to do that with this one but on my id44 it's been a very useful tool
and it is something that you might need with your recordings and another cool thing with
the audient id4 mkii is that it's ios compatible you can connect this to your iphone or your ipad
as long as you have the usb camera adapter and it's going to work incredibly now on
the inside of this unit you have the mic preamp which i talked about already but you also have
top of the line ada converters which are very important to the overall quality of your audio
as this is what's really going to affect the quality of the audio that you record
and the audio that you hear and the audient id series is well known for having top of the line
ada converters and they've actually improved them in the id4 mk2 so that takes this little guy to
the next level another thing that you can't see right away by looking at this audio interface
is the latency that it's capable of getting and so far i've had some ultra low latency with this
thing i'm extremely happy with it now i've already done a video on how to connect this to an ipad for
recording plus i have a whole series coming out about using the audient id4 mk2 and an ipad for
music production so if you're interested in that be sure to subscribe to the channel and
hey why not give this video a thumbs up while you're at it but right now let's check out some of
the bundled software that you get with the audient id4 mkii first off you get an incredible daw
steinberg cubase le it is a limited version of cubase but it's not heavily limited like some
other oem daws are you can have up to 16 audio tracks and 24 midi tracks in a project which is
very usable and then another thing that separates this is you don't get all of the same instruments
and effects that come in the higher versions of cubase but that's fine as you can bring in
your own plugins and this is a great entry into one of the best daws that's available right now
also bundled with this is the steinberg retro log 2 instrument which is a great analog synth
emulation and if you are interested in making music on your ipad or on your phone you also
get cubases le so already you have everything that you need to start making music but you
also get over two gigabytes of samples from loop masters you get the geforce melotron synth plugin
you get two notes torpedo wall of sound which is an incredible guitar cab sim plugin i use it all
the time i love it you get three classic synths in the waldorf edition 2 collection and you get
3 free courses from produce like a pro not a bad collection of goodies included with this interface
it seems like i've covered so much for a usb audio interface of this size so now i'm going to check
out what it sounds like with recording and i'm going to record some electric guitar connected
directly to the instrument input and the electric guitar i'm going to be using is my
gretch just in case you are wondering and that's going to be connected directly to here and i'm
actually going to record it into my laptop so what i'm going to do first is test out the raw
audio so we can hear what it sounds like just raw and then i'm going to add amplitube custom shop
to it and we can hear what it sounds like through a guitar amp sim and other than
adding the guitar amp sim i'm not going to do any other editing to the audio
all right so now i'm going to plug in a microphone and record an acoustic guitar and the microphone
i'm using is the shure sm57 and again this is the raw audio i'm not editing it at all
all right so now i'm going to test out the audient id4 mkii on recording vocals and
i'm not the greatest singer so don't judge it on the quality of the singing but just check out the
quality of the recording that this is capable of and the microphone that i'm using for this
is the shure sm7b and as you might know the sm7b is known for needing a lot of gain which is why
i'm using it in this situation i want to see what it's like when we have to crank the gain
on the mic preamp and we can see how clean this mic preamp really is this is a mellow vocal test
i have the gain cranked up pretty much to a hundred percent this is a mellow vocal test
singing into the audient id4 let's get crazy and sing a little louder now
this is definitely a lot louder than before i don't know what to sing about in this test
but this is a vocal test for the audient id4 alright so now i'm going to look at some of the
positives and the negatives of the audient id4 mk2 and i'm going to start with the negatives because
there really aren't that many and the first one is you only get the one mic input so you
do know that when you're purchasing this so that might not really be a negative because
it is something you know when you're going into it and then the second negative is similar to
the first one you only get the one line input so if you wanted to connect a stereo device
like a mixer or maybe a keyboard to this you're not really going to be able to do it but again
you know that when you're purchasing this so is it really a negative and the next negative might
be more of a positive it's the fact that this is a usb-c device and not everybody's going to have usb-c
on their computers at the moment however it is going to provide this thing with a lot of power so
again is that really a negative not really you can buy an adapter to connect this to a regular usb
3 port all right so now a review of the positives and first you have that really nice mic preamp in
this the next positive is the ada converters and that's what really separates this from other audio
interfaces in its class is the top of the line converters that are in this thing another positive
is it's got a small form factor but it packs a lot of features into this small little chassis
the next positive is the di input it actually adds a little touch of analog character to it
and you don't need to purchase an additional di to record your instruments next is the headphone
output and you get two headphone outputs with this and the power that they're able to put out
can power up to 600 ohm headphones which is really nice the next positive is that this is
ios compatible so you can plug this into your phone or your ipad and create a nice little music
production setup that's very simple and i can keep going on with positives on this thing but
the final positive that i'm going to mention right now is that mute speaker button it
makes it so convenient for recording with a microphone and listening through your headphones
but not having to turn off your speakers now if you want to check out my audient id4 mkii ipad
music production videos click up here or click down here to see what youtube recommends if you
like this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this
thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon