Georges Basile Stavracas Neto: Focusrite is hostile to Linux, avoid if possible
Last year, I acquired a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4. The main purpose was to improve the quality of my live coding sessions, and also to allow me experiment with recording my own songs.
It was a pain from the moment I plugged this card into my laptop, until now.
As of today, I’m happy that I’m finally getting rid of it.
Allow me to explain how much of a disaster their approach is. Most USB digital audio interfaces are compatible with industry standards – they’re class compliant. That means they advertise features, inputs, outputs, etc, using a standard USB protocol.
Not Focusrite.
Focusrite decided they didn’t like hardware buttons. So they removed them, and switched to software-controlled features.
For some reason that I’m yet to understand, Focusrite decided they wouldn’t use any standard protocol to advertise these features. So they invented a proprietary protocol only to control these features. This protocol is only usable through their Focusrite Control software – which, as you might have guessed, is proprietary, and only runs on Windows and Mac.
Focusrite decided they didn’t want their hardware to work on Linux, so not even a minimal documentation about routing was published. That makes it even harder for the heroes trying to reverse-engineer their cards.
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