It’s never been easier to record your guitar at home and with the quality of the modern guitar audio interface, never cheaper either. If you want to start recording or just need an upgrade to your existing setup, then you can grab yourself a cheeky $20 reduction on the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th gen - one of my favorite audio interfaces in the Cyber Monday guitar deals.
I’ve reviewed a huge amount of audio interfaces over the past year, so I’ve got a great overview of what’s available for the modern musician. The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen stood out to me because of its great sound, but also the huge amount of features it has that make it really user-friendly.
One of my favorite features on the Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen is the auto-gain function, which makes it really easy to switch between guitars with different pickup types. Rather than adjust the gain yourself, you can simply hit the button and play for a few seconds, and the Scarlett automatically adjusts your gain to the correct amount for signal strength with enough headroom for mixing and mastering.
There’s also a really great feature called clip-safe which prevents you from recording a signal that’s too hot. If you go over the threshold the interface automatically detects it stops your signal from clipping, potentially saving your recording from some horrible artifacts and unwanted distortion. Although it’s less likely to happen with a guitar recording, it’ll definitely help out if you’re jumping onto vocals or drums.
Finally, I have to shout out the Focusrite Control App which gives complete control of the interface without having to reach for the physical controls. You can control all of the functionality like auto-gain, clip-safe, and the extra modes to color your signal as well as using the loopback functionality. When paired with a phone app you can even use hands-free control in and around your studio.
