Quantum HD 2

Best standalone mic adc/amp I have used; coming with a copy of Studio One 7 was also a nice touch. Huge plus: there is minimal bloatware. You will probably want to install the official drivers so that you don't have dozens of input devices, but it isn't absolutely necessary and the software to control this is both unobtrusive and minimal. For the amp itself, the automatic gain isn't as great as others have made it out to be from my personal use, but the total gain available and audio quality is better than any other mic adc/amp I have used. It doesn't have as many available effects OOTB, like an analog compressor, but that can be done inline or via effects. I am not really much of a musician (hobbyist at best), so I can't speak too much for Studio One 7, but it works with my generic midi keyboard and has a sufficient number of instruments available. My plan was to get a low noise, higher gain mic amp that had minimal intrusive software bloat and this delivers.

Amazing interface. Preamps are and converters are so CLEAN!!!! Headphone amp has plenty gain. Presonus really did it with the new quantum interfaces. They easily expandable thru adat optical ports. The software is great and fairly self explanitory. The perpetual license for Studio One is a huge plus. Just wish they did a better job of explaining loopback setup in documentation. The documentation and explaination of features is the only comolaint I have, but if you just go thru the settings yourself thru trial and error, you can sort it all out. Took about 20 min to figure it out on my own. If they just fix the documentation for Universal Control, it would be perfect.

Don’t sleep! This was absolutely worth the money big upgrade!

Absolutely an upgrade

This interface is a real beast. Gets the job done .

I was having difficulty keeping my original Presonus Quantum 2 audio interface working properly with Windows 10 Pro updates. It uses thunderbolt 2 which had to have an adapter to work with a thunderbolt 3 port on a laptop.Bits I liked:That being said it was a really good interface and form factor for my needs. I started looking for something similar and when Presonus come out with the HD 2 it looked like a good replacement. What I like is the compact form factor, Re-Amp In/Outs, better mic pre's and the headphone output is great for different headphones. I am ok with the functionality of a one knob control, controlling a lot of parameters and is not hard to get used to. The breakout cable for SPDIF and MIDI In/Outs are also fine with me which reduces the size of the unit. This interface works and integrates really well with Studio One and also have tested working with Reaper DAW.Bits that are questionable:The one thing that is somewhat questionable is the interface working as a USB 2 protocol. It does use the USB-C connector on the back but still uses the older protocol USB standard. It does seem to have very good drivers for Windows and the latency (RTL) was better than expected. However it still seems to be a backward step going into the future. There is now USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 on newer laptops now. Still USB 2 can be fine for most audio projects and it can work with somewhat older computers etc. You still need a decent single thread CPU processor if you want to get really low latency using 64, 32, or 16 sample buffers. I use 128 samples normally with an older processor and gets by with no artifacts when recording live instruments. Have not used the ADAT IN/Out ports but they are there if needed. It only has two mic pre inputs on the back and when you plug an instrument into the front it will disengage the corresponding mic input on the back. The front display is smallish but not really a big issue. You will need to power this unit for the most part by using the supplied power cable and to my knowledge does not support USB-C bus power.

Update 01/13: Customer support fixed the missing license for Studio One Pro. I appreciate it! A new issue is the Universal Control Android client is total trash. It complains about screen being too small on my Pixel 9 Pro. The official "solution" is to enable developer tools and change the value of "smallest width". Now, regardless of whether it works or not, this solution should not even be posted, or it should be explicitly marked with "workaround", "use with caution", etc, because it's a global setting that affects all other apps. I followed the steps, and all my app icons on the home screen were messed up.What I'm really disappointed at is how their engineers don't care to fix it, despite the issue being reported since 2024 and the app sitting in Play Store with a rating of 1.4 stars.---Old review: I hope the reason why the Amazon price is much lower than the official website is not because of the missing Studio One Pro license. Yes, I did not get the license after I registered the hardware, similar to what others said.I opened a ticket yesterday and am waiting for response, and I will update this review if it is resolved.About the product itself though, the overall quality is excellent, The look clean. The display is crisp and clear. UI is easy to navigate. Universal Control is fairly intuitive. DAC is super clean. Not so sure about the preamps yet.Some complaints: I don't like that a lot of features are only accessible from the software. This means I can't use those features in Linux (actually I found some comments online that they can't even make it work as a regular playback device, but I'm yet to confirm). Another gripe is there is no mute button for headphones. The mute button on the panel only affects the main output, regardless of whether headphone control mode is enabled. The only way to do it either on the front panel or in the software is to turn the knob all the way down.

Sounds great for as portable as it is

I ordered the Presonus HD2 as it was significantly cheaper than the Fender marked one (despite the fact both are exactly identical technically and otherwise) and you can imagine my surprise when I opened the box and inside was sitting…Fender HD2. Anyway after an unhappy relationship with Roland Rubix 24 (and very happy with with OctaCapture 8 before that, but mistakenly sold to someone else…) I must admit this tiny shiny little box is a great performer and exactly meets my expectations. I mostly record using electric and classical guitar (both using line in and microphones) and the performance wise the sound quality improved dramatically (there was no need to make any A/B comparisons to hear the obvious sound improvement). The software added to the appliance is just unnecessary addition in my case as I own a lot of other plug ins and DAW’s (Arturia, Cubase, Logic Pro etc.) but for someone just starting with home recording this might be the endgame solution. Right now I just need a new set of monitors as I feel like my Yamaha HS5 are not a perfect match anymore.

入出力が柔軟で音質の良いオーディオインターフェースを探していたところ、海外では評判がわりと良くてコスパも良さそうだったので購入してみました。3曲ほど制作で使用した感想です。⭐︎良かったところ▪️DAWが無料でついてくる製品登録するとStudio One 7の永続ライセンスがもらえました■インプットの音質が良い商品説明通りです、良い音でRecできます。オートゲイン機能はわりと控えめに設定されます。■動作ドライバーとコントロールパネルがシンプルなので、操作もわかりやすいです。安定性については、Windows 11で、Ableton Live 12、Studio One 7、Reaper 7それぞれで1曲ずつ作業してみましたが今のところクラッシュもなく快適に使えてます。■アウトプットの音質が予想以上に良かった意外でしたが、アウトプットの音質も良かったです。特にヘッドホンアウトは普段聴いているRME Babyface Pro FSやApogee Symphony Desktop、Antelope Discrete 8と比べても遜色ないクオリティでした。レンジが広く味付けの少なめ、中域がスッキリしていて抜けが良い音ですが、人によっては少し淡白に感じるかもしれません。旧モデルの段階でAKMコンバーターを使ってたみたいなので、RMEの音質が好きな人にはたぶん合うと思います。⭐︎イマイチだったところ■ミュートボタンがスピーカーだけスピーカーとヘッドホンをよく切り替える人には不便です■DSPエフェクトがないApogeeやUniversal Audioみたいに、掛け録りやエフェクトをDSPで処理することはできません。シンプルな機能だけ欲しい方には逆に良いかもですが。■見た目実物は安っぽくはないんですが、他社のハイエンド機みたいな高級感はないです。■価格と情報の少なさ日本で使ってる人が少ないので、困った時の情報収集は英語メインになります。同じ価格帯で日本語レビューが多い製品もありますし、予算に余裕がある人は迷わずFirefaceを買った方が良いと思います⭐︎まとめ8万円台で買えるオーディオインターフェースの中では、コスパがかなり良いと思います。レコーディング、制作、ミックス、マスタリングまで幅広く行う方には良い選択肢になるんじゃないでしょうか。