I’m adding this here just for info for people who find the thread in future searches.
I bought a Presonus Studio 24 earlier this week. These can currently be found for about $95 (in the US), which is heavily discounted from the normal $150-ish because the Studio 24 is the 2018 version and the 24c is the 2019 version. They’re identical except the color, so I took last year’s color for the discount.
I’m generally pleased with it for a cheap, basic interface. It has good Windows drivers for Multiclient ASIO and MIDI (meaning multiple apps can access both audio and MIDI at the same time). [Among my interfaces, only Focusrite still lacks multiclient support.]
Round trip latency results as measured by GP running 64 samples @ 48kHz on my various interfaces:
- RME Babyface 3.9 ms
- Presonus Studio 24 5.7 ms [9.9 ms at 128 samples]
- MOTU Traveler 6.4 ms
- Focusrite 18i20 7.1 ms
They all sound identical to me.
I chose the Studio 24 over the simpler devices mentioned earlier in this thread because I wanted something with real manufacturer provided ASIO drivers. My experience with things that rely on Windows “class compliant” drivers has always been frustrations. I’ve gone down the “try ASIO4ALL” path and have had very mixed results. The MIDI I/O was a “nice to have” as well.
I’m pleased with the Studio 24 for a cheap little box. It does its job. In a DAW/GP environment I don’t have any complaints. There are some modest annoyances for more general Windows use, and if you want to do “real time monitoring/mixing” of inputs with output. Those revolve around the fact that the two inputs are seen as a stereo pair, which means you’re going to have mic in one channel and guitar in the other, for example.
No big deal in your DAW or GP, since just treat them as mono inputs, but you can’t tell Windows to view them that way. If you’re playing Team Fortress 2 or you’re live streaming a gaming session, everyone’s going to hear your mic only in the left channel. Same goes for doing live monitoring. The “internal mixer” on the Studio 24 has no mechanism to pan the two inputs separately.
That’s all pretty typical of devices in this price range. For now, that’s what you get in the sub-$150 category.
There are workarounds for that left/right mono/stereo issue for general windows use. You can use a “virtual interface” intermediary like Voicemeeter or ASIO Link and have route the channels as you like. This interface is for my son, and it will see more use in gaming and voice chat than real musical performance, so the Studio 24 playing nicely with those is a must. It does.
It can’t replace my Babyface Pro or Scarlet 18i20, but if I was just going to take a laptop and a simple interface to a casual jam it would certainly be up to the task.