Audiolink Light : List of flaws and benefits.

I'm a long-time studio guy and musician. I've used all kinds of monitoring up to lower 5 digit budgets. I got the Audiolink for fun as a mobile interface to record ideas and take anywhere without concern. For me it fulfills its purpose but I won't lie about its flaws.

Sound:

This little interface has a respectable level of detail with a strong signature sound, nothing neutral here. The output sound has a pronounced upper mid and an interesting saturation signature. It is also substantially lacking in low frequency. The positive bits of this are that critical listening with this sound will make you extra sensitive to the mix being overly dense, and the low rolloff actually makes the melodic aspect of bass guitar psychoacoustically more prominent and its low notes are clearly recognizeable. The negative bit of this sound profile is that this is a formula for ear fatigue since you will set your refrence level higher to hear the lows. It is also hopelessly useless for judging sub frequencies.

The appearance is outstanding. It looks and feels very slick! The design has its flaws:

-The input clip/signal indicator lights are completely wrong, you may as well ignore them. On mine, the clip lights start to glow before the signal indicator even flickers. It's irrelevant to the resulting digital input as well.

-The blue power-on light is obnoxiously bright

-The output volume level is on the back

-The monitor switch routes input 1 to output L and input 2 to output R, so if you want to track a guitar or vocal with headphones, you need to fully rely on your software return unless you are OK with monitoring using only one ear.

-The preamps have an overwhelming sound signature with a highly resonant saturation/distortion and awful hard clipping character if you hit them too hard. If you record with these it will strongly resist sounding dead, however the saturation is very dominant, and too much of it will ruin most any multitrack recording. On the upside the preamps have very low noise. Tonally these preamps are not for everything, but they aren't worthless.

-when plugging-in / powering-on there is a short loud noise from the outputs

This interface is good if its purpose is just to go anywhere without a care and sometimes quickly record ideas. It's unique sound signature might also help you easily notice something new when reviewing a mix, but it can't be a main reference, and due to the lack of lows I wouldn't use it for serious editing either.

If the main flaws can be corrected in a subsequent model this little guy would be competent. Especially the lows being relatively absent in the output really reduces its usefulness. The input signal indicator lights should be made roughly accurate, or else just remove them.

A final note: despite all, this interface is still a sonic improvement in precision and detail compared to the built-in sound chips on inexpensive computers. I will use it, just don't fool yourself thinking this is reference quality sound.