After using my microphone, I've been using this interface for about 2 years now and absolutely love it. It's entry level with a decent amount of support for just about any dynamic mic. The only issues I had was noise at maximum gain (which is to be expected), but you'll need to be aware of that if you plan on running something very gain hungry like an SM7B, and you'll probably need to compensate in post, or if you're podcasting it's going to be a little more hassle to remove the noise. Otherwise, it's a solid choice with superb audio qualityThis does what it was made for, but after a decent period of time the included cable started to crap out on me. after replacing it with a similar cable, ive had no issues sense.This thing is great, very clean 24-bit audio in and out. Flawless plug-and-play setup, easy, nice form factor, etc.HOWEVER. I bought it in summer and later in winter realized this: if you live somewhere cold and dry with lots of static electricity in the air in winter, every time you touch it, it's going to disconnect your audio and need re-connecting. Meaning you're going to have to feakin' unplug the USB from the back of the unit, reconnect it, and wait a couple seconds until it recognizes it again. And with some programs, this will require re-starting the program. The reason for this is that it's metal and the volume knob is metal. (And possibly there might be a design issue with the schematic.)This problem occurs in a well-designed studio with properly grounded equipment set up correctly. And it's the only piece of gear doing this. Even other metal gear doesn't do this....Which makes me wonder if this unit is designed with a grounding issue? That's not as uncommon as you'd think.Sure, the red brushed aluminum looks AWESOME, but usability is much more important that looks to anyone serious about music.THERE IS AN EASY FIX, HOWEVER....I covered the whole thing with one layer of clear plastic packing tape and now it doesn't disconnect the audio connection when I touch it. I also put that same tape on the volume knob, until I could get a plastic knob to replace the metal knob with.SUGGESTION FOR SCARLETT: Admit this is a problem.Then fffer the unit in plastic (would probably shave a couple bucks off the price too.)If you must keep it "looking sexy", offer it in plastic, but also offer it in WOOD for a few dollars more. Also have an outside electrical engineer look at the schematics, and do some bench testing to see if there's a ground issue in the actual design. If there is, it's also probably a lawsuit waiting to happen when someone gets electrocuted using this in a house or studio with poor grounding.All in all a good unit, but is going to frustrate the heck out of anyone living anywhere cold who doesn't think to cover it with tape.I have been using it for 5 years and I have no complaints.At first I used it with my speakers and my guitar.Then I decided to buy a preamp to connect my speakers and now I only use the Focusrite with a behringer C-1 mic that needs the 48V and it has always worked well.I don't use the headphone jack but I tried it at the time and it always worked fine.It is a great product.Crystal clear quality. I use 30-70% of the power, depending how loud I want my voice to be. AMP starts to lose quality only at the top 10% or so, but at that point I can literally hear a TV behind the wall.Box can get a little warm. I once left a chocolate bar on top of it (still in the package) and it melted. But if you are not going to keep your food on it, you'll do just fine. :)Direct monitor works as advertised, there is no perceivable input lag. Design is okay, everything is clearly labeled and the whole thing is very easy to use. LED lights are dim and will not bother you at night. Though I wish we could turn off the 48v light. 10/102nd Edit: After Finally getting to the Focusrite Support staff they were wonderful and stayed with me for the 5 hours it took to fix the issue, I'm leaving the past negitive paragraph in for context but support was wonderful. my only slight dissapointment was the time it took to get to support but that's due to weekend's and my working hours so that's not really focusrite's faultEdit: Unfortunately I'm here having to edit my review of this interface. when it works it's great... unfortunately in the process of about 6 hours my interface has gone from working perfectly fine to not working at all instead i get a infernal buzzing sound and no audio from my computer. don't worry I've tired different USB ports, headphones, 2.5mm adapters cables... but nothing, honestly It's a shame cause I liked it but I also don't expect something that cost £100 to break with 8 months of frankly standard useOriginal: At the end of the day your getting a focusrite audio interface. their good quality, decent price and will work completely fine. this Scarlett solo is no different, with that said considering you can jump up to the 2i2 for around £20-30... it makes the lack of flexibility in the solo more of an issue for me. at the end of the day however it is a small audio interface that as you would expect gives a clean audio signal(tested on Sennhiser 280 pro's and the Beyerdynamics DT 770's) and has direct monitor and phantom power. To finish off I would really recommend that you just jump up to the 2i2 for the £20-30 it's worth but the solo itself is not a bad interface by any means.Absolutely fantastic being able to upgrade to one of these from a normal USB microphone, this has just what you need - Phantom Power if need be (48V) for microphones that could need one (such as my RODE NT1) and a guitar input for guitarists (which is also a massive bonus for me!). The reason I've given it 4 stars rather than 5 is because whilst I've been communicating with people sometimes, apparently I start sounding robotic after a bit of time to them when to me I still sound fine (tried this out with Audacity recording once and it sounded fine on my end). Searched it up and saw other people had similar issues, however it isn't that frequent, and seems to be fixed a bit nicer by rising the kHz on the computer and makes it a lot less frequent. For fixing it as well you can simply take out the red USB from the back and plug it back in and it'll sound normal again. Otherwise, great little starter USB Audio Interface.I got this to replace a USB external Sound card. I also needed to improve quality of audio recording and to improve sound output from the computer. This box does both and then some! Using this Scarlett Solo means XLR from the microphone to XLR to the Scarlett, rather than XLR to 3.5mm input on the cheap external sound card I was using, which means better quality and higher signal to noise ratio. The box is powered by USB and has phantom power. There is VERY low noise both on input and output. No detectable noise or distortion when Monitor Volume is turned to maximum. The 'Halo' feedback on the level of the microphone is very intuitive and accurate and gives a very good indicator on the levels. Listening to music or any other audio output from a computer using the Scarlett Solo gives far better quality. Stereo separation is very good on music and you'll notice much less bleed between left and right. Essentially you'll hear all types of music much more accurately and in far greater detail!This audio interface worked for a while. I used all of it's features at some point or another and for a short term use it did what it should do.Unfortunately extended use (+1 hour) will cause gaps in audio and, on a voice chat with my friends, I would either turn into a robot or have missing segments of speech. Resetting the device sometimes fixed it and increasing the buffer size either did nothing or cause more stutter issues. I reset the device one day and after that the thing just didn't turn on.I give up.I am now looking for a replacement device and I am not going to buy from Focusrite ever again.Avoid this model