Audient EVO SP8

Audient’s EVO ecosystem grows further with an unusually intelligent ADAT expander!

Audient’s EVO 16 made an immediate splash on its launch last year. Designed to compete against products like the Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 and PreSonus Studio 1824c, it offers features not usually found in its price bracket, such as digital control over preamp gain, and a colour display featuring Audient’s Motion UI graphics. With eight mic preamps built in, it also proved the worth of their Smartgain feature: the EVO 16 can ‘listen’ to your sources and set the mic gain automatically, which is a boon for self‑recording musicians in particular.

The EVO 16 also features two sets of optical I/O. Depending on the sample rate, these allow up to 16 additional inputs and outputs to be added, making it possible to record really quite large multitrack projects. However, Audient’s own ASP 800 and 880 expansion units don’t quite fall into the same price bracket, so initial EVO 16 owners might have been driven to explore competitors’ products such as the Focusrite Scarlett Octopre or Behringer ADA8200. Now, with the advent of the EVO SP8, that gap in Audient’s own product line has been well and truly filled.

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