iD4: the affordable Audient interface
Updated – the first information we had on the iD4 had the UK price at £199. This was a mistake, it should have been £119 which makes it much more affordable – nice one!
Audient make some nice high-end gear, including studio consoles and microphone preamps. I was surprised when a couple of years ago they released the iD22 USB audio interface. It was good box, 2 inputs and 6 outputs plus 8 channels of ADAT. They followed it up last year with the iD14 which gives you 2 in and 2 out, plus ADAT. The iD14 is knocking around for £189. The new iD4 comes in at a refreshing £119 and offers the same level of quality in a 2 in/out box.
Audient iD4 Features
The iD4 contains all the same sort of features as the other two. You’ve got a Audient console microphone preamp, a JFET D.I, dual headphone outputs, monitor controls and the iD knob “ScrollControl” scroll wheel. All of it encased in solid steel and aluminium. The mic preamp is the same technology as found in the ASP8024 Heritage Edition console – so it’s a big deal.
The iD knob is a very handy little device that can be allocated to pretty much any control or parameter with the touch of a button. It essentially moves whatever you put the mouse cursor over.
Apparently, according to Audient’s technical director Tom Waterman, when plugging in a guitar or microphone “You can just plug in and play too”. I’m not sure what else you would have to do on any other bit of gear but he probably has years of experience in these things.
Other ground breaking features include “Monitor Mix” where you can blend direct input and DAW playback, and “Monitor Pan” where you can pan inputs 1 and 2 to left and right respectively. Is that exciting? I’m sure it is. It also has dual headphone outputs which is something that I find very useful.
The retail price on the Audient iD4 is £119.99 inc VAT ($199, €149) and it’s available for OSX and Windows now.
More information on the Audient iD4 is available on their website here.
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