SSL 2

My wife is a pro singer and a qanun teacher. She works in the music industry, and I am a session musician with several gigs a month and occasional demos. So, we need to buy a good and cheap interface to:
- record vocals
- record and edit acoustic and electric instruments (qanun, oud, flute, classic guitar, a-guitar, e-guitar, double bass, e-bass).
- Deliver online lessons with real-time singing and instrument playing
- Listen to some nice music in our dedicated - acoustic treated bedroom-style studio.
I use SM7B directly to the SSL for my wife’s vocals, and several top-notch condenser mics for the acoustic instruments. Focals for monitors, decent acoustic treatment in the room.
Results are beyond my expectations. This interface is a killer in the under-500€-category if the inputs-outputs suits your needs (I am more than happy with it, if I need more connections or we have a very demanding project, we can always visit a pro studio in my city that has thousands of € gear).
We always receive compliments about the sound quality of our work, many pro engineers had asked me what gear we use and have such good results in a home studio. Very clear sound, no noise or distortion. Even if I crank the gain to ¾ for the SM7B, I have a very clean and sweet signal. A few times I try to use the 4k switch and the results are nice on vocals but not so useful on instruments. I find the 4k switch more useful for online singing lessons (and video meetings) and not so perfect for recordings. But with online seminars, the voice is very easy to be heard from the other parties with all the wet details of the mouth and tongue.
I also like the form factor. Very easy to use and adjust settings even if I don’t look at the interface. It really pisses me off that most audio interfaces are like tiny rack-mounted devices, they are very slick and if you try to adjust a knob you end up pushing the device in back of your desk. Build quality is also top, and this thing will last for years.

Highly recomended, and excellent service from Thomann -as always.

Unit is built like a tank and looks beautiful.

Sound quality is excellent, as you would expect from a company like Solid State Logic. The legacy 4k mode is wonderful for adding a bit of "air" to your recordings as it adds a very musical HF boost which you will love. Worth noting that this a pre-recording option only not post, so you can't reverse or remove it if you record with it enabled.

The design is really well thought out and it's a decent sized chunk of metal that feels like it should be way more expensive than it is. Plus it's got that lovely big blue monitor control knob! As with all of the knobs these are similar (in look at least) to what you'd find on an SSL console costing many marriages which is a super nice touch. Also every knob and button feels like it was built to last. There is absolutely nothing "budget" about the look or feel of this thing.

Monitor mix will let you set a balance between what you hear coming back from your DAW and the direct signal into the box. This is great for a number of reasons but in particular it's very handy if you have some decks plugged in as you can monitor them without having to open up a record line in your DAW or any software at all for that matter.

You also get a 6 month free trial of the SSL Native plug-ins bundle (worth about £90 on it's own). If you haven't tried these yet you simply have to, once you do you won't be able to part with them.

Only downside for me is the lack of a mono sum button. Why? it would have been so cheap and simple. There is a stereo button on it which some youtube reviews suggest is supposed to switch between mono and stereo but this is for the input stage only (recording a stereo source), and doesn't affect the output stage. If you want to hear you mix in mono with the SSL2 / 2+ you will have to set the output to mono in your DAW.

A digital input would have been nice too but I guess that would have bumped the price up.

Goes without saying that I love this box but I also have to show mad love for Thomann who were extremely helpful when the courier delivering this went AWOL. Customer service is virtually a thing of the past these days but Thomann are a shining example of how it can and should be done.

Pros :
- Sounds fantastic
- Beautiful design and layout
- Built like a tank
- The big blue knob (it's just sooo satisfying to use and to look at)
- Free Drum & Vocal Strip plugins
- Free 6 month SSL Native trial (do it now)
- It's SSL man!

Cons :
- No mono sum button
- Input meters could have had more resolution, bit useless
- You can only access the "free" loopcloud samples if you don't already have a loopcloud account (or you set up a new one)

So, I had a 2i2 for my guitar and bass recording at home. Soundwise and latencywise I was happy but didn't like the fact that the card doesn't like high gain pickups. I had to turn down the gain on the channel input all the way and still with some humbuckers it would clip.
That's the only reason I bought SSL2. I tested it and it handles humbuckers better. Still, I would like to have more headroom for guitar recording. On 2i2 I used to turn the gain down all the way, on SSL2 I put it on 1/4 and it doesn't clip with most PAF's and similar humbuckers.
Soundwise, I don't have much to say that hasn't beend said already.