Arturia AudioFuse 16Rig

Arturia have designed the AudioFuse 16Rig specifically to cater for electronic musicians. What does it offer that other interfaces don’t?

Arturia’s product line encompasses software plug‑ins, virtual instruments, keyboard controllers, analogue and digital synths, as well as an ever‑growing range of computer audio interfaces. And when they launched the first of these interfaces, back in 2017, it was almost too well featured. The AudioFuse positively bristled with audio connectors of every conceivable type, to the point where it was hard to imagine a use case that would bring all of its features into play.

Some time after our review of the AudioFuse, I had a conversation with the leader of the design team behind it. Bravely, he asked me: “What sort of an interface do you think Arturia should make?” I said that I thought the market for conventional audio interfaces aimed at recording things with microphones was already well served, and might prove hard to break into. By contrast, there was and is almost nothing out there targeted at people making predominantly electronic music. As a household name within the synth sector, perhaps this would be a natural move for Arturia?

His team promptly went away and designed the AudioFuse 8Pre: a conventional audio interface aimed at recording things with microphones, and a very good one. So much for the power of the press.

But the story doesn’t quite end there. A couple of years later, we got the first inklings of another Arturia interface, this time designed with the needs of electronic musicians front and centre. And a couple of years later still, the AudioFuse 16Rig is sitting on my desktop and twinkling roguishly at me.

Jacks Of All Trades

So how have Arturia met the brief of designing an interface for electronic musicians? Well, the 16Rig has the highest I/O count of any AudioFuse yet, yet it only has two mic preamps. Instead, there’s an emphasis on the sort of signals that are usually carried on quarter‑inch sockets — but not only line‑level audio. The 16Rig’s jack sockets can be pressed into service for all sorts of applications, most notably re‑amping and generating control voltages. It also has two sets of optical I/O for expansion, an unusually comprehensive MIDI spec, and is capable of acting as a USB hub.

The 16Rig is laid out like a conventional 1U rackmounting interface, but its rack ears are detachable and can be mounted underneath it, should you want to tilt the front panel up for desktop use. It uses a rather cheap‑feeling ‘wall wart’ PSU with a cable that’s annoyingly short, and connects to the host computer using a Type‑C USB port. That is, if you want to use it with a computer — Arturia have put much thought into how you might use the 16Rig as a standalone device, and have therefore made almost everything controllable from the front panel. In total, the 16Rig presents 32 inputs and outputs to your computer at base sample rates. This number falls significantly at double and quad rates, and not just because the ADAT channel count halves and halves again; although the 16Rig connects via a Type‑C port, it’s subject to the data bandwidth limitations of USB 2. This is perhaps a little disappointing, but hardly unusual. We aren’t seeing many new Thunderbolt interfaces at present, and apart from RME and MOTU, few manufacturers seem to have fully got to grips with USB 3.

Talking of which, good low‑latency performance is often a high priority for electronic musicians; but on macOS, the 16Rig relies on Apple’s built‑in Core Audio USB driver, and it presumably uses the familiar XMOS / Thesycon driver for Windows. Consequently, its low‑latency performance is much the same as other devices that use the same drivers. At 44.1kHz and a 32‑sample buffer size, the measured round‑trip latency on my Mac was 7.5ms. Decent enough, no doubt, but not a point of difference.

Rigs Of The Time

Under normal circumstances, the first 16 inputs to your DAW would be drawn from the 16 analogue inputs that give the 16Rig its name, whilst the other half would be sourced from the two ADAT optical inputs (there’s no option to switch these to stereo S/PDIF). All 16 physical inputs have rear‑panel quarter‑inch TRS jacks; the first pair also have combi XLR/jack sockets on the front, allowing mics and DI instruments to be connected. Inputs 3+4 also have an alternative front‑panel socket, this time in the shape of a stereo mini‑jack. All are auto‑sensing, so you can leave the rear‑panel jacks plugged up and the 16Rig will automatically flip to the front‑panel socket when you plug a mic or guitar in.

The number of physical outputs, meanwhile, doesn’t quite reach 32. There’s a dedicated pair of monitor out jacks, with their own front‑panel volume and mute control. Eight further line outputs also appear on rear‑panel TRS quarter‑inch jacks, and there’s a dedicated, independently addressable headphone output with both quarter‑inch and mini‑jack sockets. Most interestingly, the first pair of line outputs (3+4) are duplicated on the front panel, by two more quarter‑inch sockets that can operate in no fewer than four different modes. They can be conventional line‑level outputs; they can mirror the signal coming in at inputs 1+2 with true zero latency, opening up numerous possibilities for simultaneous wet/dry recording; they can provide an optionally ground‑lifted, high‑impedance output for re‑amping; and they can act as additional headphone outputs. In the latter mode, both carry identical stereo signals at identical levels. This means that you can connect up to four sets of headphones to a single 16Rig, the first two pairs sharing the main phones output and the second two pairs sharing outputs 3+4.

And this year’s award for the most connections on the back of a 1U rack goes to...

All of the line outputs are DC‑coupled, meaning that the 16Rig can fulfil one of the main functions that modern‑day electronic musicians typically demand of an audio interface: to provide control voltages to a modular analogue synth setup.

As well as its optical and word‑clock I/O, the 16Rig also has three DIN sockets for MIDI data. The first of these is a conventional MIDI in, while the other two are labelled out/thru. And on top of this, there’s also a Type‑A USB socket on the front panel labelled MIDI. These are all connected by a simple internal MIDI patchbay. This is a really clever idea, because in many cases it enables MIDI routings to be set up directly within the 16Rig, with no need to power on your computer and load up a DAW template. For example, you could have a USB controller keyboard plugged directly into the 16Rig, with its output assigned to both DIN out/thru ports and to the ‘USB Host’ output. The DIN outputs could then drive MIDI modules, with a DAW program recording the same data from the USB Host connection where necessary. If you just wanted to noodle around on your MIDI modules, all you’d need to do is fire up the 16Rig; there’d be no need to turn on the computer at all.

Cue Anon

The internal mixers within multi‑channel audio interfaces are typically designed so that you can set up a number of different balances of input and playback signals, which in turn get routed, with minimal latency, to different outputs. For example, you might want to feed the drummer a cue mix that contains mostly click and bass, while the vocalist hears a different monitor mix without the click, and the engineer in the control room a third balance. This goal can be achieved in one of two ways. Some manufacturers choose to have a number of independent mixer panes, each of which can be routed to one or more stereo outputs. Others prefer to have a single mixer pane for the main outputs, with alternative balances created using aux sends. In the 16Rig, Arturia have gone for the second option — but they’ve added quite a significant twist.

The main Control Center mixer on the 16Rig has four aux sends, here configured as one stereo and two mono. The mixer and aux send outputs can each be routed to multiple physical outputs.

Real‑time, low‑latency monitoring of inputs and playback sources is set up using a well‑specified Main mixer, which has four mono aux sends. These can be linked, so you could have two stereo sends instead, or one stereo and two mono. As well as providing alternative monitor balances, the aux sends could be used to integrate outboard effects, there being no built‑in reverb or delay. You have a completely free choice about which input and playback sources appear as mixer channels, so you’re never forced to gaze over endless banks of unused ADAT ins whilst trying to find the vocal channel. And on the output front, the Main mixer output and any of the aux sends can feed multiple physical outputs simultaneously.

So far, so conventional, but Arturia’s innovation is to introduce a second internal mixer into the brew. As you’d expect, the Main mixer has its own solo/PFL system, but the Cue mixer represents a very sophisticated and powerful alternative. Like the Main mixer, it can access any combination of input and playback sources; each is represented by a standard mixer channel with fader, pan, mute and solo, but no auxes. The Cue mixer’s output can be routed to a single stereo destination. In normal use, you’ll hear whatever else is routed to that destination, but double‑tap the front‑panel Cue button and this routing is overridden, so that you hear the Cue mix instead.

In a studio recording context, the engineer might have the Main mix routed to the main monitors, so that they hear whatever the musicians are hearing. Routing the Cue mix to the monitors as well allows you to switch to a different custom balance without affecting the players’ headphone mixes, which could be really handy for fault‑finding during recording. The Cue mix also has obvious roles to play in electronic music‑making and live performance. Perhaps, for instance, you have two modular rigs set up with separate sequencers, so that you can cut from one composition to the next without spending five minutes re‑patching: the Cue mixer would allow you to get the second setup going while the rest of the world is still hearing the first.

The 16Rig’s physical I/O is unusually configurable.

Pane Management

The emphasis on standalone use means that, unlike on the Studio and 8Pre, nearly all of the 16Rig’s mixer functionality can be accessed from the front panel, where a small but crisp colour display shows you what’s going on. Parameter adjustments are made using a single rotary encoder with a click action. It all works well, though as you’d expect, this isn’t something you’d do through choice when alternatives are available. And alternatives are available. Two of them, in fact. With the 16Rig connected to a host computer, you can use the mouse to move faders within Arturia’s AudioFuse Control Center utility; and in both hosted and standalone modes, the internal mixer is also fully controllable using MIDI.

Small icons at the top of the AudioFuse Control Center window allow you to switch between five main tabs. The first presents controls for all the physical inputs and outputs: gain, pads, polarity, phantom power and so on for the inputs, and some more unusual and interesting settings for the outputs. For example, the gain at the headphone output can be switched between three different ranges to cope with headphones with different impedances. This is also where the various options for outputs 3+4 described earlier are configured, including switchable ground lift for the re‑amping. The line ins and outs have individual trim controls, which, again, could be handy for CV purposes.

The next two icons prompt Control Center to display the Main and Cue mixers respectively, whilst the fourth switches to the routing matrix. This has been thoughtfully designed in such a way that blocks of inputs and outputs can be collapsed, so it all fits comfortably on your screen and you aren’t presented with endless digital inputs and outputs if you’re not using them.

The fifth and final tab is devoted to MIDI configuration. The upper part of the pane is where the global MIDI routing features described earlier are handled, but the main part of the window is where MIDI controls are assigned to parameters in the Main mixer (the Cue mixer cannot be MIDI‑controlled). Eight channels’ worth of fader levels, pan, aux send levels, mute and solo can all be placed under MIDI control, as can levels for the master fader and aux masters, and you can bank left and right if necessary.

All parameters on the main mixer can be placed under MIDI control.

In general, I found Control Center intuitive and easy to use; it presents a lot of information in easily digestible ways, and setting things up is fast and straightforward. I did experience a couple of strange glitches whereby the meters and headphone control stopped working, but other than that, it was plain sailing.

MIDI control can be used to implement talkback functionality, as long as you didn’t mind sacrificing an input: simply plug a mic in and use a MIDI controller to mute and unmute its channel in the Main mixer. Sadly, it’s not possible to assign MIDI controllers to any of the 16Rig’s monitor control features, but a preference allows the blue button next to the main volume control to be set to engage mono, dim or A/B speaker switching at your choice.

Given that the AudioFuse 16Rig is otherwise so well featured, in fact, you could argue that its monitor control capabilities are on the basic side. Call me entitled, but I’d quite like to have speaker switching, dim and mono all separately switchable in hardware, and with only two mic inputs available, I’d prefer not to have to lose one to enable talkback. You’d also need an external monitor controller to use the 16Rig in a surround context, not that 10 line outputs is quite enough for most immersive formats anyway.

Fit For Purpose

In making these points, I realise I’m assessing the 16Rig in terms of its suitability for conventional studio roles. And there’s a good reason for that, because although the 16Rig was designed with electronic musicians in mind, it makes an excellent recording interface. In fact, its I/O complement makes it the perfect companion to a smallish analogue console or rack of preamps. There are surprisingly few interfaces that offer 16 line inputs and dual ADAT expansion within this price bracket — in fact, the only one I can think of is MOTU’s 16A, which is rather different in many other ways — and other 16Rig features like its re‑amping capabilities and MIDI‑controllable mixer all have obvious benefits within conventional recording scenarios. (My own experiments with the re‑amping were marred by hiss and other noise pollution, which seemed to originate either from the PSU or the USB connection to my Mac, or both. I never managed to get to the bottom of this during the review period.)

Although the 16Rig was designed with electronic musicians in mind, it makes an excellent recording interface. In fact, its I/O complement makes it the perfect companion to a smallish analogue console or rack of preamps.

Those recording things with microphones will particularly appreciate the 16Rig’s excellent audio specifications. The mic preamps offer a 72dB gain range and a superb Equivalent Input Noise measurement of ‑129dB unweighted. Dynamic range on the line ins and outs is 118 and 115 dB respectively, while the monitor outputs up that to 119dB. The line‑level I/O is also unusually flexible in terms of levels, allowing it to be calibrated to complement outboard or an external mixer. And the ability to repurpose outputs 3+4 gives you, at a pinch, up to four headphone sockets.

So, does the 16Rig also meet the unique needs of electronic musicians? On the down side, the use of generic drivers will disappoint some, and a particularly entitled reviewer might have hoped for mini‑jack MIDI alongside the DIN sockets, or perhaps even a built‑in MIDI‑CV converter. But for the most part, Arturia have done a great job. In particular, the integrated MIDI routing system and accompanying emphasis on standalone operation are hugely refreshing. I think it’ll be a big deal for many people to be able to walk into their studios, turn on the audio interface and make music without having to fire up a computer and DAW. Setups that might otherwise have needed a hardware mixer may now be able to manage without one. The Cue mixer is likewise a major innovation, and has all sorts of potential applications within a synth‑based setup.

And best of all is that although these features target electronic musicians, they’ll be just as valuable to more traditional users. No matter whether your recording endeavours are based around modular synths or microphones, whether you make experimental ambient techno or old‑time folk music, the AudioFuse 16Rig has a great deal to offer.

Information

£1159 including VAT.

www.sourcedistribution.co.uk

www.arturia.com

$1299

www.arturia.com