With the abundance of entry-level audio interfaces with impressive features and specs, something that offers an improved creative workflow is the winning ticket. Lewitt Audio is an Austrian pro audio company founded in 2009 by Roman Perschon. From the beginning, his vision was to change the status quo of microphone design – no small feat. For such a young company, standing among many relics in the pro audio sphere, Lewitt has made great strides, and it seems to be their unique and fearless approach to infusing their ideas with technological innovation that has earned them the respect of the big names in the industry.
Lewitt CONNECT 6
Lewitt is best known for its masterful microphone design with revolutionary products like the LCT 1040, but has more recently turned its focus to audio interfaces, releasing the Connect 6 a few years ago and the Connect 2 – which we’re reviewing here – just a few months ago.
Find out about the latest reviews of music equipment here.
Features of the future
Connect 2 is packed with intuitive features and is easily one of the most user-friendly audio interfaces I have ever seen. It is perfect for musicians/songwriters and content creators. The inviting capacitive touch interface houses control buttons for the levels of Hi-Z instruments and mic preamps, studio monitors, headphones, mute, input/playback, as well as a custom button (more on that shortly) and most excitingly, Automatic gain. Each of these buttons can be easily selected and adjusted using the capacitive touch center wheel. The rear panel is just as intuitive and features two inputs: the mic preamp is an XLR with switchable 48V phantom power and the second input is a Hi-Z 1/4″ jack for instruments. Two balanced 1/4″ jacks are for connecting studio monitors and a 1/4″ and a 3.5mm jack for headphones – you never know when the headphone adapter will mysteriously disappear, we’ve all been there.
Hi-Fi recording at 24-bit and up to 96kHz is nothing unusual. The Lewitt Connect 2 is of course powered by its USB-C port when connected to a MacOS or Windows computer, but can also be used by devices with USB-C and Lightning ports via the usual camera connection kit and external bus power. The Connect 2’s specs are impressive too, with a wild 72dB of gain on the mic preamp, an equivalent input noise of -129dBV(A), 118dB(A) dynamic range and a THD of 0.001%. That’s pretty impressive for an interface in this price range.
Aside from the ease of use of the physical unit itself, the control software for Connect 2 is wonderfully easy to navigate. While other audio interface software can get bogged down in complex processing and routing options, Control Centre keeps things simple, intuitive, and helps make adjustments super-quick. For all its simplicity, you might assume that Connect 2 is some sort of no-frills interface with not a lot of processing going on under the hood, but quite the opposite. Some really powerful features are just a click away.
Whether you’re a musician/songwriter or content creator, there’s little worse than having your audio distorted or clipped during a recording, and sometimes there’s very little you can do to prevent this from happening, especially when recording live. Connect 2’s built-in Clipguard feature prevents this from happening during unexpected peaks, ensuring your recording remains perfectly intact and clip-free.
This is a remarkable feature for an entry-level interface and is particularly useful for beginning recorders. Another impressive feature is the Denoiser. By using an audio extension, this incredibly useful feature helps remove extraneous noise from a recording, such as from an air conditioner or similar. Simply let Connect 2 listen to the noise for about 10 seconds and voilà! It’s gone.
Autogain is one of the most exciting features of Connect 2, and while this type of technology has been around for years, especially in handheld recorders, Autogain in Connect 2 really seems to get it right. Simply playing your instrument and/or singing into your microphone (yes, this feature can be enabled for both inputs at the same time) will automatically adjust the input levels. Not only does this save a huge amount of time, but it also streamlines the creative workflow, as less time and energy is spent setting things up for recording, leaving more time to focus on a performance, brainstorming ideas, or just getting creative. Alongside the Autogain feature, Connect 2 also has Auto Setup, which takes this intuitive setup a step further: with a few simple selections from the available options, the most ideal settings can be automatically chosen so you can get started right away.
Personally, I’m pretty skeptical about these kinds of features, but Connect 2 actually handles them very well and is not only a great way to help users quickly adjust settings, but also acts as a learning tool for those who want to explore different kinds of parameters for their shots to then tweak and refine them further.
Of course, no modern interface is complete without some sort of built-in compression. The Connect 2 compressor settings help to tie things together nicely and give a recording that extra edge without going overboard. Combine this with the three available mic presets, Clean, Warm and Vivid, a simple voice recording or an instrument and vocals and the sound reproduced is professional and has a three-dimensional quality that is true to life.
Practical experience
Connect 2 seems to strike the perfect balance between the responsive and tactile feel of the hardware and the simple, straightforward control software. The ability to quickly and easily set up ideal settings, whether for a podcast, live stream voice recording or singer/songwriter session, is seamless. Despite the amount of potential processing that can be enabled via the Control Center on the inputs, this never feels overwhelming, but simply offers well-laid out options for refining one’s sound. Monitoring sources is so easy, with the ability to perfectly blend between input and computer source playback, and the dedicated loopback functionality makes streaming setups, recording samples and the like a breeze. The dim and mono options available on the output are simple but desirable features that take this entry-level compact interface well beyond its price of admission. A very intuitive plug-and-play interface that anyone can use, with a wealth of helpful features and processing power under the hood if desired. Thumbs up.
For local inquiries visit Electric Factory (ELFA).
