After a load of mucking about and comparing, I think I’ve come to the conclusion for my home rig I may sell my HX Stomp and use software - yes the Helix interface and hardware are nice, but I’ve ended up playing sat at my laptop every night anyway and Spark just sounds so much better and more raw/real than anything in Helix.
What sub £100 (used) USB interface would you suggest primarily for playing guitar through headphones via VST plugins for minimal latency/best feel, not too noisy and with a good headphone amp output. Planning on plugging my guitar straight in so a good hi-z input is crucial. Currently will be on my old Windows 7 i3 laptop which I will eventually be upgrading to something Win10 and i7, so good windows drivers are essential.
Audient id4? Or a 2nd gen Focusrite Clarett?
Comments
It's new but I believe it comes in at just under £100.
I can't answer that question directly, but I tracked down the SoS review of the 3rd gen interfaces that was mentioned by @Heel. It's at the link below.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/focusrite-scarlett-usbc
Based on my experience with that, I'd spend the extra on a Focusrite next time (although it does work, and was a lot cheaper).
https://mercuriall.com/cms/details_spark
Pete Thorn has a great demo of it on YouTube.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
edit - looking at my task manager cpu usage is only at 20% when playing with Spark so is the laptop power (ram/processor) likely to be the problem or something else going on?
edit2 - turns out I only get glitches and pops when I have the reaper FX window open to tweak settings. With it shut I get no glitches unless I’m running very low latency settings. Strange but it all seems to work, sound and feel great!
I wanted to check by using my Helix LT as my interface to compare with my Zoom UAC-2. As I expect the Helix LT will behave similarly to the HX Stomp. But for some reason I can't get Reaper to recognise my Helix LT. Anyway that's my problem that I need to sort out.
Moving on, does the Helix Stomp give an spls reading on your computer and what is it for your low latency? IIRC the Helix doesn't give particularly low latency when used as an audio interface (as opposed to using the internal sounds). So you might be able to use a higher spls setting on a different interface and get low enough latency. But this is currently guesswork on my part.
At least I've bumped your post and someone else might be able to give a more definitive answer.
With all of the laptop issues, there's plenty you could try to sort it. I might start a thread on this.