WasabiNoise – Making Music and Youtube videos

I upgraded my audio interface from a Focusrite 2i4 I had for 3 years to a brand new Arturia Audiofuse Studio.

I wanted to give you my overall experience. And an unboxing experience with some better closeup shots of the hardware, which is something that I haven’t seen on other videos. If you are looking to buy this and you use OBS, especially on mac, you may want to watch until the end where I explain the huge differences between Windows and Mac in that aspect. Check the timestamps on the description to jump to one section or another.

There are other videos already going deep into technical details, you’ll find some links in the description.

Loopop’s review (Buyer’s guide: Arturia Audiofuse Studio vs. 8PRE vs. Audiofuse // Audio interface checklist) youtu.be/hkb4OXgMRFI
BoBeats’ review youtu.be/I-69mWQPUxI

One of the main reasons that I decided to upgrade is simply because it has more inputs and outputs, even an aux output to record everything externally. These preamps are very clean without introducing any noise even on high gain.

I also like that you can use this audio interface without a computer as a mixer and monitor controller. This can be very handy if you have external gear that you want to use without turning your computer on. You can even use Bluetooth, yes, this interface has Bluetooth! To listen to music from your phone with your monitors.

In the box, you get a basic quick start guide. As it’s usual these days, you have to download the full PDF manual from their website.

You also get this DiscretePro certificate with preamp tests that measured the noise of each of the 4 mic preamps from your specific unit with your serial number and its frequency response.

You get a registration card you can type into Arturia Software Center to register your product and get the Analog Lab Lite and some VST effects from Arturia. To be honest, for the price I expected the whole FX collection but it comes all three “preamp effects” available, the filter mini, delay tape 201, a compressor FET-76, and the Rev Plate-140.

You get a power supply with all the different leads, which I love because I still have power strips from the UK I use. And it comes with a threaded connector you can lock into the Audiofuse Studio interface.

You get two cool-looking USB cables one USB-C to USB-C, and one USB-C to USB-A. They look and feel very well made.

And you also get these two MIDI adapters that are getting more common nowadays so you can connect to your MIDI input and output if needed.

It also has Loopback. In case you don’t know what loopback means, it’s the ability to capture PC audio directly on the audio interface. This means that you can record audio from anything that your PC is playing, even YouTube or Spotify, anything that plays on your computer appears as a virtual input on your interface. This can become very handy when you are recording videos like the ones I make where I play audio on Ableton Live and I want the video to capture it.

In the past, to achieve that I had to record the audio externally with a recorder like the Zoom H6 and sync it again with the video. It’s true that there’s software that helps with this but it’s always difficult to use, and having this feature directly in your audio interface makes things easier. Keep in mind that new Focusrite interfaces do now come with loopback as well, my old version didn’t.

There is one problem that I found with loopback and Mac OS X.
When you use software that is not intended for making music, like Google Hangouts, or OBS to record screencasts, you don’t have access to all the inputs, you just have one input called Arturia Audiofuse studio.
I also found that I had to use the first MIC preamp in order to use my mic with Google Hangouts, any other preamp is not captured by it.
Again, this looks like an issue from Mac OS X and how it handles audio rather than the device itself but keep this in mind if you were expecting to have these features.

Windows, on the other hand, shows all the inputs available, mixing cues, including the loopback, making this interface amazing for live streaming, recording podcast, or recording videos in OBS… on Windows.

Well, overall this might be an overkill interface for the majority of people. I wanted something that can last long, that allowed me to connect external gear, and made my life easier when recording. It even has ADAT that would add 8 channels of audio to the interface, that’s why Arturia made the AudioFuse 8Pre. I don’t think I’ll ever need so many, but, good to know.

Don’t forget to check the videos I linked in the description for more technical details, loopop video is amazing and he shows you all three new Arturia’s interfaces in-depth.

If you like this content please consider subscribing to the channel. Let me know if there’s something you want to know about the interface if there’s anything you would like me to try. I’ll be happy to help you.

Stay awesome and see you on the next one! Mattanee!