[wyager]

What would you say are the distinguishing features between home/semi-pro/pro interfaces?

Universal Audio recently released some really nice made-in-taiwan desktop interfaces in the same price range as the Scarletts. I have scarletts on my rackmount setup, UA Volt on my desk.

UA's software is atrocious though. Their spyware DRM crashes any windows VM I try to install it on.

Scarlett's software is relatively good by comparison, although you have to start their server by hand from the terminal if you don't want it running all the time.

[filoleg]

> What would you say are the distinguishing features between home/semi-pro/pro interfaces?

Without going into tons of nitty-gritty details, the major ones are the number of inputs/channels, size, and price.

Scarlett 2i2 is more than enough for most people, with its 2 channels (both with independently controllable headphone and monitor outputs).

Motu 828, the one listed as semi-pro tier, has 20 input channels.

I suggest reading reviews of each of them, but basically the rule of thumb is that if the review is listing bajillion things that you have no understanding of at all, you don't need that tier and can safely move to the tier below.

No shame in that at all. Even the home/hobby level of audio equipment today is functionally crazy, and priced insanely cheap compared to just a couple decades ago.

[wyager]

I meant more between e.g. a Scarlett 18i20 and a Motu 828.

I went with the Scarlett because A) it was relatively cheap and B) it had quite good reviews, but I'm curious what I'm losing on a technical basis by going for the $500 option over the $1000 option.