greetings earthlings today i'm back with a review of a brand new audio interface from arteria
that interface being the arteria mini fuse 2 which costs around 150
but i will also be discussing when you should go for the mini fuse 1
which costs around 100 and if you are interested in either of these interfaces i will throw some
links in the description down below also in the sake of full disclosure i do need to let you know
that arteria sent me both of these interfaces free of charge for the sake of making this
review and finally for this review i have the rode nt1 connected directly to the mini fuse 2
48 volts phantom power is on and my gain is set at around 11 30. i am recording 24 bit 48 kilohertz
and i will not do any kind of post processing but i may have to boost a little bit in post
so check the doobly-doo to see what i didly did and now let's talk about what comes in the box
of course you are going to get the audio interface you'll get an approximately one meter or three
foot usbc to usba cable you'll get a quick start guide a bunch of free software including arteria's
reverb preamp echo and chorus plugins you'll get guitar rig 6le ableton live and a couple of other
plugins and oh heck the fury burneth deep within my soul you get a sticker then as far as the build
quality of this thing i really don't have any complaints about it it feels perfectly sufficient
it does have a plastic face plate as well as a plastic rear plate the entire rest of the
chassis is going to be metal though the dials are all nicely attached with minimal wobble to them
and they are a nice rubberized texture to them the xlr ports have no excessive wobble to them
and in case it matters to you this interface is assembled in china now let's do a walkthrough of
the feature set of the mini fuse 2 on the front you will find two identical channels they are
made up of an xlr combination jack for either xlr or quarter inch cables you have a gain dial with
a light that will function as your meter for that channel and then you'll find an instrument button
which allows you to change the quarter inch input from line level to instrument level then next
to both of the channels you'll find a 48 volts phantom power button to turn on or off phantom
power for both channels simultaneously next to that you'll find a fairly limited output meter
you'll find the output volume control which controls the quarter inch outputs on the rear
of the interface a monitor mix dial to mix between zero latency monitoring and computer playback a
mono button which allows you to change the zero latency monitoring to a mono signal a headphone
volume control and a quarter inch headphone output then on the rear of the interface you'll find a
set of balanced quarter inch line outputs to run to your studio monitors a set of five pin midi ins
and outs a usb a port which allows you to connect a usb midi keyboard or an ilock license key
and you'll find the usbc connection port and the last feature that i want to mention is the mini
fuse 2 has a channel 3 and 4 those are going to be used to implement the loopback functionality so if
you want to capture a computer playback or skype call in your daw it will allow you to do that then
as far as the specs the a to d converter offers 24 bit up to 192 kilohertz we have a gain range for
the mic of 56 decibels a dynamic range for the preamp of 110 dba the preamp also has an ein of
negative 129 dba we do have 48 volts phantom power and now on the screen i'll quickly scroll through
the instrument and line input specs the monitor output specs and the headphone specs in case you
want to go a little bit more in depth there then to touch briefly on the headphone output i found
that it was perfectly capable of driving something even like the hd650s which are pretty difficult to
drive so if you like listening at a reasonable volume and you have 650s or something similar
i don't think you should have any issues and if you want any more in-depth and technical analysis
of the outputs of this interface go check out julian krause's video i will link that in one
of the corners if you want to check that out and now in order to really test out the preamps i've
connected the sm7b directly to the mini fuse i do not have a cloud lifter i do not have a fet head
this is running direct into the mini fuse my gain is set at 100 percent and i am getting
a very healthy level hitting around negative 9 to negative 6 db this is plenty loud enough for
any application pretty much i will be quiet so you can hear the noise floor at this level
and there you go that is a quick sample of the sm7b running directly into the mini fuse
now let's go to a new test that i have never done before i think that's next
now i'm going to connect a 150 ohm resistor to the xlr port to mimic a dynamic microphone i'll
slowly increase the gain and we can see what kind of noise the preamps in this interface generate
then with our sample rate at 48 kilohertz and an io buffer of 64 samples we have a round trip
latency of 9 milliseconds or a four and a half millisecond output jumping up to 128 samples
we have 11 and a half milliseconds round trip or 5.7 milliseconds output and jumping up to
256 samples we have a round-trip latency of around 17 milliseconds and eight and a half
milliseconds output then with our sample rate at 192 kilohertz and the io buffer at 64 samples we
have seven milliseconds round trip or only 3.3 milliseconds output then jumping to 128 samples
7.5 milliseconds round trip or 3.7 milliseconds output and finally jumping up to 256 samples we
have 9 milliseconds round trip or 4.3 milliseconds output now i want to introduce and try a test that
i have not done on any interface reviews i'm going to do a quick spoken word comparison
between the arteria the audient id14 gen 2 and the focusrite scarlett 2i2 3rd gen i'm running
the u87 into a mic splitter and that is sending the audio to all three interfaces simultaneously
so you will be able to hear the exact same take the exact same distance from the mic everything
is identical i've level matched them as close as i can get it in the analog realm but i will
likely have to do a little bit of gain adjustment in post to make sure they're exactly the same
here is the quick audio sample that i will use to switch between all of the audio interfaces so
you can hear the difference in tonality here is the quick audio sample that i will use to switch
between all of the audio interfaces you can hear the difference in tonality here is the quick audio
sample that i will use to switch between all of the audio interfaces you can hear the difference
in tonality and here is a second audio sample so you don't have to hear the exact same phrase
over and over and over again and here is a second audio sample so you don't have to hear the exact
same phrase over and over and over again and here is a second audio sample so you don't have to hear
the exact same phrase over and over and over again okay that was the u87 now we're going to do the
exact same thing with the sm7b now for the sm7b comparison i was able to crank the gain on all
of the interfaces to 100 but in post i will do the level matching to make sure that all of the audio
is exactly the same level this is a sample of me speaking into the sm7b so you can hear all
three interfaces and see if there's a difference this is a sample of me speaking into the sm7b
so you can hear all three interfaces and see if there's a difference this is a sample of
me speaking into the sm7b so you can hear all three interfaces and see if there's a difference
and here is a second sample on the sm7b so you do not lose your mind and here is a second sample
on the sm7b so you do not lose your mind and here is a second sample on the sm7b so you do
not lose your mind now we're going to be seeing how this interface handles di because i will be
running an electric guitar an electric bass and an acoustic guitar with a pickup directly
into the instrument input on channel 2. i'll be playing the electric guitar and electric bass
raw then i will turn on guitar rig 6le which is the amp sim that came for free with the interface
then i'll play the acoustic guitar raw and then i'll play a full mix using just di instruments
oh
okay it's now just because we can this is not illustrative of anything but i wanted to turn
on all of the arterial plug-ins it wants on a microphone so i have the pre-1973 functioning
as some coloration to the precede don't just have the completely flat sound and i am distorting that
quite a bit then i'm running into the chorus then into the delay and finally into the plate reverb
and that's how you get this really great and it's it's a very fascinating sound not illustrative but
it's fun i think that's what it sounds like in my headphones i'm an idiot now let's do a quick
walkthrough of the mini fuse control center first things first in the upper left hand corner you
have a hamburger menu this allows you to resize the window read the manual for your interface
or learn about the software that you are running then you have your individual mini fuse id number
in the upper right hand corner it indicates what sample rate you're running at i'm currently at 48
kilohertz you can also click on this gear icon and it tells you the firmware you're running and if
you are running the current firmware then you have both of your analog inputs input one and input two
i'm not going to mess with input one because i'm using it but you can see you have great granular
meters and you got a little clipping indicator there which is awesome you also are able to turn
on or off 48 volts phantom power here and you are able to change the quarter inch input from
instrument to line level which is nice if you need to do that and that is pretty much all there is to
this software pretty straightforward okay as far as interfaces go i think at 100 and 150 dollars
these are perfect examples of what you should be expecting and first up in terms of pros i'm always
thrilled to see a mix dial which allows you to mix between zero latency monitoring and computer
playback i'm also really happy to see loopback functionality because that makes capturing your
computer's audio a lot easier or if you have a guest for a podcast calling in over skype
you can capture that in your daw much easier now also i love the addition of a usb hub that
is incredibly useful if you have an eye lock key or if you have one of those usb midi controllers
makes it a lot more convenient to connect it and the provided software is really useful the stuff
that i really enjoyed was the arteria software keyboard there is tons of synths in there that i
really enjoyed messing around with and the guitar le6 i think that's what it's called the guitar rig
6le that's what it's called it's really nice to be getting an amp simulator with an audio interface
then as far as cons i'm really not a fan of the metering for the inputs on the interface
i understand you can get much more granular and high resolution metering in the software i just
prefer to have it available at a quick glance as opposed to needing to have the software open
all the time and secondly this is probably very rare but i would prefer to have individual phantom
power buttons for each channel at this price point i doubt there are many people using a condenser
and a ribbon microphone that would be damaged by 48 volts but i would like to have that ability to
turn on or off phantom power for each individual channel and to wrap up would i recommend the mini
fuse 2 or in some cases the mini fuse one yes i would but before i talk about that i want to
add a disclaimer or discuss something it seems that at this price point pretty much all if not
all audio interfaces are more than sufficient for the majority of people they all perform extremely
well they have low noise and a really nice feature set so when you're looking at audio interfaces in
this price range it really seems to come down to one or two features that differentiates them
and that's going to be the determining factor for you the focusrite for instance that has the
air circuit the ssl that has the 4k circuit the motu has an on off button and a killer meter the
arteria has the midi io and it has that usb hub it really seems like it's coming down to
one or two little features that is really going to push you over the edge in one direction and as
i've already alluded to i think that feature for the mini fuse one and two is the usb hub and the
really nice suite of software that comes with it so if that seems like something that is going to
work for you then absolutely i would recommend it because at this price point the audio performance
of these interfaces is pretty much as good as it's going to get you may be able to find a one two
three db improvement in certain specs but you're not going to be getting an exponential improvement
as you move to higher end gear but who would i recommend the mini fuse one for first thing i'll
say is if you're a musician get the mini fuse 2 that additional input is going to come in handy
you may think you just need one microphone but down the road you may want to connect a guitar
you may want to get a second microphone and do a stereo xy having that additional input will be
invaluable for you but on the other hand if you are 100 certain that you will only ever need one
microphone or one instrument input at a time that is where the mini fuse one would come into play
maybe if you're a streamer and you just have one vocal microphone you could save
50 bucks and you wouldn't be getting the midi io which would be unnecessary for you
but you will still be getting that really nice usb hub so if you're that person who is
100 sure that you only need that one microphone input or one line or instrument input at a time
i would recommend the minifuse one over the mini fuse two so you could save a couple of bucks all
right that's gonna wrap up for today but i want to hear from you because we had a new test in today's
video that is a very rare thing nowadays so let me know what you thought of that additional test the
comparison of the different audio interfaces my mic splitter only has three outputs so i can't do
10 interfaces at a time but i think three gives you some good context especially compared to
some popular options but i want to hear from you was that useful a waste of time and did you hear
a difference other than that if you found this video fun interesting or helpful go to give me
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so until next time thank you so much for watching thank you so much for listening i will