the focusrite scarlett series audio interfaces are probably the best selling interfaces out
there they have great mic preamps converters and features for home studio musicians in this video
we're looking at the focusrite scarlett solo studio bundle which includes a microphone xlr
cable the audio interface and headphones plus it includes a decent software bundle so you get
everything to start recording just add your own creativity now it goes for $229 and is it
the best home studio bundle for you well i'm going to go over the features of the audio interface and
this bundle we'll do some audio quality tests and we'll look at the included software plus
i'll also give you the cons that i found with this bundle so you can make the decision for yourself
i'm Zane welcome to audio tech tv i've included a link down in the description in case you want
any more information on this bundle and just to be clear this was sent to me from Sweetwater to do
another video which will be coming out soon and i just wanted to be clear about that but this video
is not sponsored so why am i making this video if it's not sponsored and i don't have to well
that's because as soon as you pick up this box you kind of feel inspired to create i just love
the idea that it has everything in there to start making music i just have to add my own creativity
you get the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd gen which has that air button on it and this emulates the
focusrite's excellent ISA preamp you also get this condenser microphone called the CM25 mk3
and we're going to test that out in just a bit you get a nice three meter mic
cable included with it and a pair of closed back headphones plus you get that excellent
plugin bundle and it keeps on giving i'll go over what i mean by that in just a little bit
now a quick overview of the focusrite scarlett solo 3rd gen audio interface you have your
one mic preamp here and this mic preamp is that third gen which is capable of having that
air enabled the air button right here you enable that and it can make your voice brighter which
is a nice touch you have 48 volt phantom power which you can enable so you can use your condenser
microphones like the one that's included with this bundle you have an instrument input or can
be switched to a line input and this can be great for plugging in your electric guitars bass guitars
or maybe you want to plug in a line level effect or a mixer something like that you can do that
with this interface you have separate gain controls for each input and you have your main
monitor and this controls the output level for the speakers that would be connected at the back plus
you also have a direct monitor button and when you enable that you hear the audio that's going
directly into the audio interface not what's coming back out from the computers and then
under that you have your headphone input now on the back of the audio interface it's pretty simple
you have your right and left speaker outputs you have usbc and that provides power plus connects to
your computer and you also have a kensington lock on there as well if you need that now for such a
small audio interface it actually packs a lot of performance in there it can record at 24 bit
up to 192 kilohertz which is very high quality now i'm just going to get this all connected and we'll
do some audio tests with the included microphone now when you first plug this into your computer
it's going to install a generic audio driver but you really should go over to Focusrite's website
register it and download the Focusrite control software as this is going to give you the azio
driver if you're on a windows computer and also give you more control of your interface
all right so i have everything connected and what you're hearing is the raw audio of the
cm25 mkiii microphone connected directly to the Focusrite solo audio interface i haven't
done any editing to this audio it's the raw audio this is what it sounds like now let's just test
out the plosives a little bit because you see i don't have the pop filter in front of this so
pizza pizza now let's put the pop filter in front of it
pizza pizza pizza and i have the direct monitoring on right now so i can hear it and i could tell
that there was a big difference now here's what this microphone sounds like when you're right up
on it and i'm being fairly quiet because i can tell it's fairly loud when i'm right on it for
a podcast microphone this would be great but you do need that pop filter in front of it and you
can see from far back a little bit it's still a decent quality i would just probably turn the
gain up a little bit let's do that now so there i crank the gain a little bit sounds very nice
just being back a little bit from the microphone now speaking of levels when you're setting the
levels on your Focusrite Scarlett Solo you'll notice that there's a ring around the gain knob
and it goes from green to an orange to a red and you can change those colors in that
focusrite control software if you really wanted to now ideally you want it to be in the green
but also the green can range from lower in the green and higher so what i typically do is i'll
sing as loud or play as loud as i'm going to be playing while recording and that's the loudest you
want to go the loudest that you're possibly going to be going and keep doing that adjust the gain
until it gets into the orange and then dial it back until it no longer gets into the orange
or maybe it just hits the orange slightly every now and then but it's mainly green all the time
and that's what you want so now i just want to connect my guitar and we'll hear what it
sounds like recording guitar directly into the audio interface alright so this is Ableton Live
Lite it comes with the Focusrite Scarlet Solo bundle and i have a guitar amp sim loaded up
onto the track where i'm recording the guitar to so this is what it sounds like with the guitar
amp sim and it's just the built-in amp sim that comes with Ableton Live Lite nothing too fancy
so that's with the guitar amp sim i'm just going
to disable it now and we'll hear it without the amp sim
so you can hear it's pretty dry without the amp sim and that goes for any audio
interface i just wanted to show what it sounded like just going directly into it
but i'm going to enable that guitar amp sim again and we'll give that a listen
now let's look at some of the software that comes bundled with the Focusrite Scarlett Solo Studio
you get Pro Tools First with the Focusrite creative pack and this is decent music production
software to get you started pro tools first does have some limitations compared to the full version
but it definitely gets you started off with the same great software that has recorded thousands of
hit songs you also get Ableton Live Lite which is another great piece of music production software
this one is very popular with beat makers and other electronic music makers but it can be
used for rock and any other type of music as well again the lite version here has some limitations
but it does include some great effects and sounds with it you also get to choose an instrument from
XLN audio they have a few that you can choose from and they're great piano plugins you get
the Focusrite Red plugin suite that features a great EQ and compressor you get the Softube Time
and Tone bundle which features some very nice plugins and if all of this isn't enough for you
you're going to be in the plugin collective and this is on Focusrite's website so you have
to register and be on there with this but the collective gives you free plugins every month
so you've got to log back in every month i think that's when it switches up like once a month
and they change up what plugins you get free and these are some great plugins that
you get in there one time i got bias FX 2 lite which is an absolutely great guitar
amp sim so check back often once you register your scarlet solo all right now let's look at the pros
of the Focusrite Scarlett Solo bundle and first off with the audio interface you get a very nice
mic preamp built into it with that air setting to brighten up your vocals a bit also the instrument
input sounds great and you have that line input if you want to connect external processors effects
mixers whatever it is you want to connect there this has the capabilities of doing that another
pro is this is a very portable bundle if you want to take this on the go with you it's very small
the microphone is a little slim the headphones pack up real nice and the audio interface
itself is nice and slim and the only cables that you need to bring along are the included XLR
an instrument cable if you want to play an instrument in there and the USB cable now
another pro is these headphones are actually pretty comfortable and they sound really nice
too i would compare these to headphones that cost in the 40 to 60 dollar range so they're not
cheap headphones these actually sound quite nice and another pro is if you don't want to spend the
time to research budget microphones and budget headphones to go along with your audio interface
this packages everything nicely with you you get a budget price microphone that does sound decent
you get these headphones which are comfortable they sound nice when listening through them
and you also get that bundled software with it and into that Focusrite plugin collective so you
continue to get plugins free forever now let's look at the cons and there really isn't a whole
lot there one of the cons is there's no individual headphone volume so the master monitor control
controls the volume for the speakers that are connected to it and the headphones so if you had
speakers connected and you wanted to turn those down but still hear through your headphones then
you would have to disconnect them turn them off or if they have volume control on them
you would have to turn the volume control on the speakers down now check out some excellent
free music recording software to go with this by clicking the video right here and if you
liked 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