Arturia AudioFuse Studio

Ho acquistato questa scheda con grandi aspettative, grazie al feedback di colleghi e recensioni in rete; aspettative che non sono state affatto deluse. Già dal packaging la scheda si presenta molto bene, curato come ci si aspetta da un prodotto di qualità.
La scheda è solida, ergonomicamente ben ragionata e facile da utilizzare avendo tasti e potenziometri di grandezza e manovrabilità giusti e ben posizionati.
Un prodotto di qualità nei pre, nel software di gestione e nelle connessioni.
La scheda si posiziona bene nel segmento home e project studio, offrendo ampie possibilità di utilizzo, non disdegnando assolutamente il comparto professionale ed il live, grazie alla possibilità di espansione tramite porte adat e connessioni word clock.
Interessanti le connesioni per il reamp, la possibilità di switchare tra due coppie di uscite per monitor audio, elimando così eventuali controller esterni, la coppia di uscite cuffia e il talkback integrato.
Da una scheda di piccole dimensioni, seppur non piccolissime, ci si aspetterebbero piccole prestazioni; audiofuse studio permette con un prezzo tuttavia non eccessivo, un salto di qualità audio e di routing eccezionale, mantendendo la possibilità di utilizzo on the road.
L'hub usb esterno è utile in tutti quei casi in cui si necessiti di connessioni supplementari per tastiere e simili.
Si potrebbe chiedere qualche uscita in più (per esempio per fare una somma analogica ma c'è un'uscita adat 8 canali) ma ne verrebbe meno l'ergonomia e la portabilità.
Assolutamente consigliata.

PROs
-Preamps are really good, quiet and have lots of gain, more than enough headroom, for reference 60% gain can drive a Beta58 loud enough.
-There's no other option on the market that have so many I/O and in a desktop interface size
-there are a lot of buttons and some of them are configurable, convenient for working quickly
-2 pair of Speaker out and 2 headphone out is great to have, though there is only 3 monitor mixes (good enough to me)
-Headphone out is powerful enough to drive K702 and HD650 at 50-70% volume
-Bluetooth is handy, very happy to have, but do not expect the quality anywhere close to the wired inputs
-USB cables that comes with it feels sturdy and looks cool.
-work smoothly on both my mac and PC without any issues at all
-Love the USB hub function, especially if you are a macbook user like me
CONS
-It can get a bit warm when in use but acceptable.
-Latency is not as good as the thunderbolt interfaces, it's USB 2.0 afterall

If you want an interface with 4 quality pres, 8 analog input, expandable, portable and do not need DSP, this is a very good option

I sold my Apollo Twin mkII for this and it’s definitely worth it!
Great monitoring capabilities with three presets available directly from the interface. (You have to set them up in a computer but after that they’re standalone)

I have two gripes with this interface.
One is that there are no mute switches, a thing I’ve grown accustomed to with my gear hooked up to a mixer in to the apollo interface. This way i could mute noisy stuff but still have it set up for quick recording.
This can be worked around by having cues set for muting but then you’ll lose cues for live recording with other musicians.
The second gripe is that you have to use the software for setting up the interface and make changes to it, for example, setting it up for re-amping. This is normal interface stuff which I had with my Apollo and my old Liquid Saffire but for me, about to make the change from mac to ipad recording, it’s annoying that i cant use an app for it. But for normal pc/mac users it’s no issue.

I love all the connections and they help a lot in building a hardware based, as little daw as possible, studio.

Great sturdy construction.
Great sound!
Nice preamps!
Two headphone amps!
Re-amping and two monitor sets!
Phono.
Midi!
Blue-tooth was a surprisingly nice feature.

I won’t miss my old UA interface!

This has really given me an all in one option to handle any possible scenario in a home studio. Want to use a guitar with an amp sim, sure. Have a friend with you and want to jam out with some midi instruments... two headphone outs. Have an old turntable and some vinyl to sample... phono in (also doubles as a rca line in). Want to quickly switch from speaker A to B to hear how your mix sounds on other speakers... press a button. Have a singer and a couple instruments to plug in... up to four. Basically, I can't imagine a scenario it cannot handle for a home studio and it has more features than I'll ever need. I've done all these things and it was wonderfully easy to work with. The only thing that ever tripped me up was learning that to use loopback, you must be using a sample rate of 44100 or 48000. Thank you, Arturia for making such a wonderful piece of equipment.