Recording - November 2015 - 48

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Audient iD22 and iD14 Audio Interfaces
Elegant flexibility and great sound in a small (or smaller) package
The iD22 has all of its I/O on the rear panel:
two mic/line inputs on Neutrik Combo XLR/TRS
jacks, a 1/4" TS high-impedance DI jack that supersedes Input 2, balanced TRS inserts on both inputs,
two pairs of balanced TRS line outputs, and a
stereo headphone jack. There's also a jack for the
12V external power supply and a USB 2.0 port,
plus Toslink optical digital I/O.
The iD14 has its headphone jack and DI input
on the front of the unit, and on the rear there are
two Combo mic/line inputs, balanced TRS line outputs, one Toslink optical input, USB, and a power
jack. While the iD14 can run on bus power from
most computers' USB ports, the included 12V supply is recommended, as you can't use phantom
power without it.

Audient is a British audio company that's been making large-format consoles since 1997, and has a variety of standalone products (mic preamps,
monitor controllers, etc.) based on technology pioneered in its mixers. With
the new iD22 and iD14 audio interfaces, Audient steps into the crowded
interface market with designs that leverage its experience with console
design while adding new features that ease recording with any DAW.
In this review, I'll primarily be focusing my attention on the more fullfeatured iD22 and calling out the differences to be found in the smaller and
more affordable iD14.
Getting to know the iDs
The iD interfaces are solidly built tabletop boxes that offer analog and digital input and output (up to 24/96) over USB 2.0, along with onboard lowlatency mixing and routing control. They're built into solid metal chassis and
feature excellent build quality: the converters are high-end Burr Brown units,
and the Class A mic preamps are the exact same ones that are featured in
Audient's other products, from their best consoles on down.
48

RECORDING November 2015

On the front and under the hood
Each of the iD22's preamps has controls for 48V
phantom power, a 10 dB pad, polarity reverse,
and highpass filter (12 dB/octave with a 100 Hz
corner frequency). All of these features are analog
circuitry, and act on input signals before the insert
and A/D. They are accessed with a row of small
but extremely robust front-panel switches under the
input gain knob. The iD14's preamps have individual phantom power switching, but no other
analog-side controls; in the iD14 mixer software
(see below) you can apply a 10 dB boost (not a
pad) for lower-level signals, and a polarity reverse,
per input.
On the output side, the iD22 has a large, very
smooth main mix volume pot, a smaller headphone volume pot, a 4-stage LED output level
meter, dedicated Dim and Cut (Mute) buttons, and
three assignable Function buttons. The iD14 has
one large push-click encoder and three buttons:
one to select main output level, one to select
phones level, and a programmable iD button. Its
output meters are 8-step LED ladders; the extra resolution is important because they also indicate settings of the main and headphone output levels
when they're being adjusted. Both units feature a
Status LED that lights green when the unit is powered and has a good USB connection.
Mixing it up
Each unit comes with drivers for Mac OS X and
Windows, and a software mixer application that
gives access to the full function set in the interface.
The iD14 and iD22 have different mixer applications
that can happily coexist on the same computer.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2015