Audient iD14 MKII

The most "popular" review on this site is a disgruntled customer who may have received a unit that got past inspection in poor order or else was damaged in transport. This does every other positive an injustice. My experience of this unit after two weeks has been excellent so far.
Pros:
DA Conversion: Superb - I have interfaces from Zoom (R8), Tascam (US 16-08), Behringer (404HD and UMC 1820, ADA8200 Pre's), Native Instruments, Maschine Mk 3 and ocassionally I use the Digitakt as a DAC when operating in a DAW. I can safely say my unit has by a very audible margin the best output audio quality of any of the aforementioned. The Behringers may beat it in output volume (the 404HD in particular) but the claritiy of the audio with the ID14 is exceptional.
2) Loopback: This features allows you to flawlessly record incoming audio from any source within your computer directly into your DAW. A particularly nice feature for podcasters and OBS users as well.
3) Build is excellent, but I expect that from a "premium" product.
4) 8 x 48K ADAT inputs. This means I can offload the UMC 1820 and the Tascam and upgrade my monitors :)

Cons: wish it had a 5 pin din in/out like all the other units I have.

Highly recommended especially for the additional features.

Nice quality metal chassis. Great sounding input and output preamps.
Enough gain on mic inputs to drive sure sm57 without additional amplification. Gain control could be a bit better. First 90% of gain gives smooth slow change. On last 10% every movement gives much more pronounced changes. Also the last 10% starts to get quite noisy - escpecially so with the phantom power engaged.
Headphone output is great with higher impedence headphones. Unfortunatelly with low impedence headphones it losses its flat response.
The instrument input on the front is great for both low and high output guitars and basses (had some software glitch at first which made high output guitar clip even on lowest gain setting, after reset it handles the output with enough headroom). However using the instrument input takes over one mic input so You can only record two tracks at once, but I think that most interface in this price range behave that way.
My biggest gripe is latency. At buffer size of 32 I am getting about 7 ms round trip latency on 2020 Macbook M1 (tested with rtl utility and cable looping back output to input). It's about the same that my 12 year old Komplete Audio interface. It's not that bad for tracking guitar (depending of course on additional latency introduced by plugins used) but tracking vocals with this latency gets quite annoying.
The software mixer that comes with the interface is very nice. You can create seperate mixes and easily control the routing of inputs to ouputs. Internal loopback is a nice addition, though it would be nice to be able to assign virtual loopbacks input to different mixer inputs. Now the loopback is on inputs 11 and 12, in some applications (like zoom, teams, discord etc.) you cannot choose which input is being used - they just pass whats on input 1 and 2 by default.
All in all very nice interface. Superb audio quality for the price. If you don't plan on using high gain guitars and don't mind the round trip latency, this is the best audio interface to buy at this price point

Sometimes, there's "something" that doesn't quite fit. For this unit, this wasn't the look, the style, the form factor or the features, it was something deeper, intangible, like troubles in the back of your mind.

The things that I liked:
- This is solid metal, it feels rugged and yet "toy-ish" at the same time. It looks great though and clean.
- Buttons are solid and have a nice feel on your fingers.
- 8 channel ADAT !! Hello ! For this price point ; unbeatable.
- Nice access to Hi-Z plug for the guitar,
- nice little "flick switch" for the phantom power (independent also),
- Pressing the big knob to mute is a great feature too.
- The assignable ID button is a great idea too, and it works !

But yet, something didn't "gel" with me. Here are the things I didn't enjoy:

- The initial setup was worrying and not smooth. I was asked to update the latest firmware out of the box, and it failed systematically (macOS 15 sequoia + macMini M1). I contacted Audient support via chat (automatic AI chat bot... proof that the bug is known and common) the issue was solved by removing preferences and caches in the Mac library... Nevertheless, that was not a great and easy set up as promised. I thought this thing was plug and play with no fuss... but yet, it took me 45 mins to get it updated to the latest firmware.
From this point, I felt unsure. As described above, it worked well but the initial excitement vanished pretty quickly and the whole experience and navigation of the unit got me wary.

- I got confused between the headphone button and the main volume button.
- The ID software worked ok overall but sometimes I got no sound from the interface, so I had to launch the ID software first to get the sound working.
Got me to a point I had to open Spotify or YouTube first thing to make sure 100% I got sound coming out.
- I got confused with the direct monitoring and the routing...
- And... the (in)famous "pop" at boot or shutdown. Not too loud though, but a "pop" in the speakers nonetheless.
You have to remind yourself to mute the things before turning on the speakers, or turn off your speakers before shutting it off (still mute it just in case).

All in all, those weren't earth shattering, big issues, just nuisances, gremlins, sand in the cogs that made the whole experience unpleasant and made me "walk on egg shells" every time I turned on the computer.

Uncertainty, unpredictability, confusion... even the beautiful look couldn't redeem it. It sounded good while it lasted but I had to return it. I can't possibly start projects knowing (or not knowing) what is going to happen with my hardware. I'm here to make music and the hardware is the tool to achieve this, I can't be worried about this.

I was very pumped about the iD14 mkII. Bus power, LED meters, a massive history in audio industry - everything I knew about Audient and its products brought me to purchase the new iD14. I was disappointed to say the least.

Pros:
- build quality is nice, aesthetically good
- controls on the top panel allow for lots of negative space around them with a smaller form factor than the competitors
- LED meters

Cons:
- drivers implementation is absolute garbage. See issues below
- at times, the interface would be initialised at max volume after connecting it to a Mac or Win computer, thus potentially harming my equipment and ears if I don't remember to touch the big volume knob upon starting the interface. Moving the knob will snap the volume at the correct value, but if you forget to do that, expect to jump on your chair at the first notification you get
- the interface produces a loud pop when powered up, making it fit for mobile setups, not so much for desktop or non-mobile setups where users will want to start their whole gear up with one single action
- when connected to a computer in sleep mode, the iD14 keeps requesting power from the bus source, thus staying on when connected to a sleeping device. This drains the computer's battery very quickly, and it's painful especially with mobile setups
- these issues would be acceptable on Behringer and similar low-budget brands, and none of the above is happening anyway on those products. An Audient product at that price point simply cannot show such problems, and this puts this product way below the competition
- all the issues above were reported to Audient's support centre, which proven inadequate as far as helping fixing them. Long response times, useless suggestions, no reporting of the issue to engineers that could fix it. I was basically asked to do QA on those issues for free. That can't happen.

Very, very disappointed with the product and the brand in general.