This video was supposed to be part one of a series
I wanted to do on a complete guide
to getting good audio for YouTube videos and streams
and other light video production work,
but believe it or not, today, the day I was gearing up
to start that series, my audio interface,
my faithful, old audio interface
decided to stop working for me today.
So, now we gotta make a different video.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, Donk Squad. I'm Gerald Undone
and today, we're talking audio, but not the audio
that I wanted to talk about. What?
Quick little subscriber update. You may have noticed
that this video came out a little bit later
than they've been coming out on the rest of my schedule
and that's because I've decided to move
from a 6 a.m. release time to an 8 a.m. release time,
Eastern Time and I'm planning on sticking with that
instead of the 6 a.m. one because I've been looking
at my analytics and I think my videos will perform
a little bit better if I release them at 8 a.m. instead.
So, this is gonna be the first video that came out at 8 a.m..
So, this video is about audio interfaces.
I was gonna make a video that was part one of the series,
and I'm still gonna make that video. So, for those of you
that end up liking this video, make sure you subscribe
if you wanna know more about audio stuff.
But this video is gonna be about audio interfaces
which is, in this case, what my mic...
...is connected to. I was using the Focusrite Scarlett Solo,
in my case, the first gen, for the longest time,
and I switched today to a Steinberg UR12.
[calm drum and bass instrumental]
♪
Now, I'll explain why I did that in a minute
and I'll give you my impressions and a bit of a review
of the Steinberg. Now, the video I wanted to make
was gonna be part one of a series
of a complete audio guide, like I was saying
and the audio interface was gonna be part of part one.
Part one was gonna talk about the flow,
the chain of custody of the sound, if you will.
Start from the mouth and when the sound comes out,
let's go through all the steps that we need
and where the importance lies on each part.
And early on in that step was gonna be
a good audio interface, but we're gonna have to jump
around here with the audio interface.
So, why did I switch? The main reason for switching
to the Steinberg from the Scarlett, I said earlier
that it died on me. It didn't die,
but it's killing my computer slowly piece by piece.
The Scarlett, and here's a disclaimer to anybody.
This is step one of my review. If you guys are looking
at what small audio interface should I get?
If you use a Windows-based machine, the Focusrite Scarlett
models are probably not the answer for you.
From what I've seen in the little bit of testing,
it seems like they work fine on Mac
and the drivers are a little bit better for macOS stuff,
but for Windows, I have had a plethora of blue screens.
The main cause of this is driver support,
which is kind of a disappointing aspect to the Scarlett.
They haven't updated the first gen of any of the drivers
in four years and I don't think they're going to.
I think they just decided, "We're gonna make
new hardware and new hardware and we'll just
occasionally release driver updates."
Where the Steinberg devices actually get
firmware updates, so they don't just scrap
all of their previous work when a new one comes out.
They update the firmware so you can keep your gear
up to snuff and the driver updates
are much more frequent and much more current.
My Scarlett Solo last driver was from 2014.
The driver for the Steinberg UR12 was December 2017,
so like two and little bit months ago,
so that's much more current, much more likely
to mesh well with whatever Windows 10 updates
you got cooking and that's key.
That's where your blue screens are coming from.
Your blue screens are always the same.
USB audio driver, USB bug code, Focusrite USB.
There were different types of blue screens
that had to do with the USB audio interface.
These guys, Steinberg, they're the ones that made
the ASIO driver, essentially. They started with Cubase
and the ASIO stuff. So, as soon as I plugged it in,
it automatically had better configuration out of the box,
ready to rock. Windows knew what was going on
with this thing. When I installed my Scarlett
without drivers in Windows, it came up with an asterisk.
It was like, "I don't know what this device is."
So, you know you're gonna get better stability
if right out the gate, Windows is built into it.
Now, the other thing that keeps happening to me
with the Scarlett Solo is that you can change
the sample rate and the bit depth
in the Windows audio panel.
You choose "Playback Devices and Properties" and in there,
you can choose, "I want to run 16-bit, 44.1 kHz".
But, apparently if you run the higher settings,
like if you run 24-bit and 96 kHz, that's when you get
into some blue screens and apparently,
if I were to kept rolling that back, I rolled it back
a little bit, but I guess I didn't roll it back enough
to cut the blue screens out. But, it made me think,
why am I running a device that's $20 CAD more
than the UR-12? They're the same model,
the same amount of inputs/outputs and dials
and everything, but the Focusrite is $20 more
and pretty much every one of their tiers,
it's $20-30 CAD more. Why am I paying more
for the same device, but then I have to handicap it
in order for it to not cause blue screens on my computer?
I tried running the second gen drivers.
There's a second gen version of all these things
and they're supposed to have better drivers.
Didn't work for me. As soon as I installed those drivers,
I'd get random crackling and popping sounds
just listening to music.
[crackling noises]
You just hear it in the background a little bit
and I checked the forums about that
and they said the same thing. "Lower the sample rate."
Well, you can't lower the sample rate
if you're using the second gen drivers
on a first gen device. You're really locked out
of a lot of what you can do and again, why am I lowering
the sample rate to 44.1 kHz? That's old.
Any old tech you have around your house
can do 44.1 kHz. Why are you buying an audio interface
if you're using the same sample rate of some CD player
from 25 years ago? It doesn't make any sense.
Why handicap your device? So, the Steinberg,
as soon as you plug it in, first of all, you cannot change
the bit depth. It's 24-bit always, all the time.
You can change the sample rate, all the way up to 192 kHz,
instead of 96 as the maximum,
so you've got greater sample rate if you need to mess
with your buffer and things like that,
which means you have a greater buffer sampling
that you can use and another thing that I kind of
liked about it, but maybe it's a bit of an OCD thing
is that you're locked out of the Windows control panel.
So, when you go to "Properties", "Audio Devices"
and you go to your "Recording Devices,"
you choose the properties on that and you can change,
you drop down that drop down window,
you change your sample rate and stuff in there,
you can't do that with the Steinberg.
You have to use their control panel for the ASIO driver
and then you set it there and it's set across all platforms
and that's that, so when you open up Premiere Pro
and you look at your audio hardware in there, boom.
It's there, set, all your stuff is right and you can adjust it
in there if you need to. If you want to decrease
your latency, you can set it in there, but it just seems
to know what's going on and everything is all integrated
and that to me just smells like stability and more care
and more care for the customer as well
because I don't like the idea of buying a product
and the company decides in six months,
"We're not gonna support that anymore.
We're on to bigger things." Creative used to do this
with their sound cards all the time. It's one of the things
that annoyed the crap out of me.
If there was a new version of Windows that came out,
your sound card was just dead for two years
because it was going to take Creative a really long time
to get the drivers for the new version of Windows,
but they should be ahead of the game
because Windows lets you know when they're going
to make new software and obviously,
because of the way market share works,
a lot of people are going to install and have
the new version of Windows, so if you're not willing
to get on the driver train when a new version
of Windows comes out, then put that on the box.
Put it right on the box. We're not going to bother
messing with drivers, so don't buy us and at least
let the customer have that decision
rather than just having hardware collecting dust
because they decided to update the drivers.
That is one of the most infuriating things ever
and Steinberg seems to be all over the driver game,
so I give them points there. And it's cheaper.
Cheaper for more capabilities and better driver
and customer-level stuff like that.
Now, for those of you that know the Scarlett line,
you're probably yelling at me. "Yeah, but what about
the preamps? Talk about the preamps."
I will say that the Focusrite Scarlett series
has probably the best preamps for the money
like in their class. The sub $500 price point.
Those are the best preamps you can get
and you kind of have to do some heavy duty listening
to compare the preamps,
but I went to a couple of my standbys in both music
and I did some audio stuff and I would say
the Steinberg, to the average Joe,
especially if you're putting this stuff on YouTube
or whatever, not going to notice the difference.
To me, I feel a little bit of thinness in certain spots.
I'm going to go and say 90-95% as good
as the Scarlett ones, so you could say,
"Well, that's worth the extra $20" and I'd say yeah, maybe.
Cosmetically too, the Scarlett looks cool.
It's red, I like the dials on it.
Another thing that the Scarlett has going for it
is the position of the phantom power.
On the front, you just press the phantom power button
and it lights up and lets you know when it's on.
On the Steinberg, you gotta reach around the back
and it's like a switch. I like the feeling of the switch,
it's kind of funny. It's like clonky when you click it in,
but you kind of have to feel for it, but I feel like
I already know where it is now and I've only flipped it
a few times, so it's probably something to get used to
right away and it still gives you a peak warning
and everything with a light. The Scarlett just had a bit
more... finishing details that seemed
to be well thought out. So, the Scarlett has nice finishing,
nice cosmetics and a little bit better preamps.
The biggest problem is that if you're computer
is blue screening, it doesn't really matter how good
the preamps are because your workflow just stops.
The Steinberg hasn't had that problem yet
and I get the feeling that it won't
because the drivers are recent. They're the guys
who know ASIO drivers and it seems to be
well integrated with Windows, so short of maybe RME
as a company, this is probably you're go to
Windows-based interface. I think the Scarlett's
probably your better answer for Mac and value wise,
I still think the Scarlett's great. I think the Steinberg
might be better value if it comes in a little bit cheaper
and does everything, but the Scarlett's great value
as long as it works and that's a chief part of this review
and comparison is that it doesn't work all the time
for Windows and there's too much finagling,
changing sample rates, handicapping the sample rate
for it to work and because blue screens like this
are usually intermittent, you never know
if you've actually fixed the problem until you get
more blue screens and corruption.
What I want in an audio interface,
what I'm looking for is something that gives me
nice, clean signals, good amplification, good inputs
and outputs that I need and doesn't crash.
I just want clean, stable performance and for Windows,
I think Steinberg is the answer for that.
So, I'm going to stop this video here. This will be
sort of like the preamble to part one
of the audio series, The next video that I'm going
to do on this is going to be the whole chain,
so starting from your voice, in the microphone,
down the cable, into the interface, where it goes
from there, how to capture it, what to do with it
and then from then on, with other parts,
we're gonna talk about how to process the sound,
how to package the sound, that kind of stuff,
but the next video is going to be the overall chain
with the interface being a part of it
and I'll be able to reference this video and say,
"If you saw in the previous video, I'm not using
the Steinberg and go check that video out
if you want to know why." So, please subscribe
if you're interested in seeing the rest of the audio stuff
that I'm going to do. My videos come out Tuesdays,
Thursdays and Sunday, so Sunday will be the next part,
part one of the series, so if you're interested in audio,
I really suggest that you check back on Sunday
and then watch that series because I think it'll be
really helpful to you guys if you want to step up
your audio game and we're gonna go over
the whole thing from the ground up.
As usual, if you found this video useful or entertaining,
make sure you drop it a like and if you did not find it
useful or entertaining, go ahead and hit
the dislike button twice and I think that's that.
Alright... I'm done.
♪