Focusrite is now shipping their multi-channel USB audio interface worldwide, featuring 8 Focusrite mic preamps.

This latest offering from Focusrite carries their eight of their popular microphone preamplifiers, all packed in a slim rackmountable form factor.

The Scarlett 18i20 is designed to easily handle computer recording of multiple instruments. It has 18 inputs and 20 outputs, more than enough to handle the needs of a typical band setup. For connecting your microphones, you can use its six combo XLR/jack mic/line inputs. Two front-panel XLR/jack multipurpose inputs are also provided, featuring 10dB pad buttons that lets it handle high-level inputs with minimal distortion.

For the output, this unit comes with 10 analogue line outputs and two independent headphone outputs on the front panel. Other connections include MIDI I/O, S/PDIF Digital I/O and ADAT. The ADAT interface gives you room for expanding input options, you can bring in digital sources via this input and you can add extra preamps like the Focusrite's OctoPreMk II.

Just like the other Scarlett models, this unit can digitally convert sample rates of up to 96k kHz at 24-bit. This ensures the quality of the audio being captured. This USB audio interface is also designed to be compatible with all the major DAWs and operating systems. It can conveniently connect to whatever system you are working on, be it a Mac or PC, and it can be used with an iPad using Apple's Camera Connection Kit.

Finally, the unit ships with multiple software, most notable of which is Ableton Live Lite, a functional DAW that is known for its live performance friendly features. The hardware is also bundled with a software mixer called Scarlett MixControl an 18x8 DSP mixer. Other useful bundled software include the Scarlett Plug-in suite, Loopmasters and Novation Bass Station.

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