Review: Audient iD4 – Promising

Disclaimer: Audient loaned the iD4 for the purposes of this review. It goes for around 199$ USD. You can find out all about it here: Audient iD4.

Relevant links:

Lynx Studio Technology HILO – Way More Than You Bargained For
RMAA: Lynx Studio HILO — ohm image
RMAA: Audient iD4 24-bit
Grace Design x Massdrop m9XX – more mojo than Mojo

If you’ve got a guitar and a mic, the iD4 is great. It’s solid, generally simple to use, and sounds great. Even if you’re just a podcaster, iD4’s stability, great microphone pre-amp, and decent headphone output, are incredible boons to productivity.

Not sound

It’s embarrassing that in the Firewire days, I was impressed by Edirol’s FA-66, whose ins and outs weren’t on par with the iD4, which is both less expensive, and at least on paper, less well specced. Today, I record podcasts and harmonica/mukuri through a Zoom H6, whose main draw is its feature pack and battery-power. Neither it nor the FA-66 record mic’d signals as clearly. Neither are as easy to use, either.

Check out iD4’s top plate: independent attenuators for mic and instrument pre-amps, a nice fat main monitor mix control. A single press of that fatty and playback dims by around 15 decibels. When engaged, the mute LED flashes. That button also cuts the speaker output. The iD button controls various functions in both DAW software as well as default mouse scrolling in any application. Safari scrolling, for instance, defaults to the iD4’s fatty.

I’m not keen on the iD4’s panning control, which requires the simultaneous depressing of both the mute and iD buttons. From there, you turn the fatty clockwise or anti-clockwise. Quickly it becomes second nature, but it isn’t as elegant as a dedicated panning attenuator.

The back panel is well laid-out but could be better labelled. For instance, there’s no ‘out’ label for the speaker outputs. And while it should be self-explanatory, the mono microphone/line input is the same. Right next to it is the 48V phantom power button, the depressing of which lights the +48V led on the front panel. In general, the iD4 is easy to use. Each monitor control sports a hard indent indicating its position along the scale. None are speed damped, but even friction keeps them in place. The fatty wobbles on its axis a bit, and bumps over gentle bearings. Its LED display array shows approximate attenuation along five levels and doubles as a stereo level meter.

Sound and more after the jump: