If you're a home musician, you probably have experimented in making recordings of yourself. There's a whole cottage industry centered around making audio accessories for Mac and PC that are easy to use but powerful enough to make some impressive results. With the release of Garageband 8 years ago, and it's more recent release for iOS, Apple is tapping in to the creative musician in all of us with a platform that's fun for experimentation and learning. And manufactures are responding with gear that is flexible to use both on your computer and your iPad as well.
Focusrite established themselves as a manufacturer of high-end professional audio equipment including consoles and preamps. Over time, they began offering some of that tech to the project-studio market and now offer a full line of computer audio interfaces based on their 25 years of experience that are aimed at consumers and professionals alike. With the recently released iTrack Solo, Focusrite combines some powerful features and great sounding tech into an interface that any one who's creative can use just about anywhere.
The iTrack Solo is an adequately sized box that is cleanly designed giving you simple access to inputs, gain and volume for its two channels. Channel one features a mic input with phantom power while channel two has a 1/4 inch input for instruments. Depending on the software, both inputs can be recorded simultaneously and the iTrack Solo offers zero latency monitoring, something not always found in iOS-enabled hardware. The device can be bus-powered off of a USB port, but on the iPad, it needs to be plugged in to the wall to power up.
So how does it sound? I used the iTrack Solo both in Apple Logic on the Mac and Garageband on my second-generation iPad. Starting with Logic, I recorded some tracks using an acoustic guitar and vocal mic. The mic input was great, my first experience with Focusrite's legendary preamps. There was plenty of gain and headroom using both a Shure KSM32 and a Rode NT1 with an impressive amount of detail in the voice and acoustic guitar. The guitar input had plenty of gain as well. Adjusting each input was made easy with a dedicated gain knob which features a unique halo light that surrounds the knob, and indicates signal level while lighting up green, orange and red. A switch enabled zero-latency monitoring with a large monitor knob which turns up the front-facing headphone jack or rear line output. Using Logic, everything sounded great and operation was so simple, it was easy to focus on the music and not the hardware or software.
Things were not as transparent when it came to Garageband on the iPad, though I fault Garageband more than Focusrite here. Garageband doesn't support recording to multiple tracks, but it does recognize the iTrack Solo as a multi-input device. If you want to record via the mic input, you need to create a new mic track in Garageband and select the 'Left' input. If you want to record via the guitar input, create a new mic track and select recording from the 'Right' input. The amount of menus and mis-taps I go through every time I try something on Garageband for iPad is still maddening, causing manufacturers to make compromises to enable compatibility.
Once I got used to how to use Garageband with the iTrack Solo, focusing on the music got easier. Much easier than I've ever experienced in the app or with any other hardware, actually. Most notably, the inclusion of zero-latency monitoring, which Focusrite labels Direct Monitor here, means that you hear your input through headphones in real time along with the tracks you've already recorded. If you want to run the input through effects within Garageband, and hear those effects as you record them, you'll need to disable the direct monitoring else you'll hear a duplicate signal as Garageband processes the sound.
I recorded the same song as I did in Logic, using the mic input for vocals and the 1/4 inch input for the acoustic guitar. Making a guitar loop, I added the vocals on top and started playing with software instruments and drum loops, tapping out a great bass line and adding a backing orchestra. Unlike my previous experience using Garageband on the iPad, my recorded parts sounded as full and rich as the software counterparts making blending them much easier. I think that has to do equally with being able to use the same studio microphones I use for my other recordings as well as having zero-latency monitoring.
Overall, I'd say Focusrite's first entry into devices for the iPad is great. The inputs sound clear and the hardware is simple and rewarding to operate. Once I overcome how Garageband handles external hardware, I never had as much fun working with Garageband on the iPad as I did here. With the ability to hook up to your computer as well, there's a lot of value to be had with the iTrack Solo. But as far as a purchasing recommendation goes, that's a little harder to narrow down. If you're looking for a more flexible device for using with the iPad, it's hard to go wrong here. But if you're more likely to be working on your computer instead, you might be better served by some of Focusrite's other USB interfaces such as their Scarlett series which offer more inputs and outputs for the same price.
Wired: Clean hardware design with a simple interface. Great sounding preamps and inputs. Innovative halo gain indicator makes it easy to see input levels at a glance. Direct Monitor makes for a more natural recording process on Garageband for iPad.
Tired: Device cannot be bus-powered by the iPad alone needing external power to work. Once plugged in, the device cannot also charge the iPad.
Focusrite iTrack Solo ($159 Retail)
All images from Focusrite.
