Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2

Of all the traditional 2-in-2-out interfaces on our list, the Complete Audio 2 is the most compact and features a very different kind of design to the...

My Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2 is considered out of date be because it uses USB 2.0 bus power, but I can still achieve round trip latency of less than 10 milliseconds pretty easily and monitor with near 0 latency through direct. Still, if you have 3.0 available there's no reason not to use it.

When it comes to interfaces you thankfully have some more good cheap options. I can personally recommend the Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2 at 170$ CAD. If you need something that can survive a real beating, then spending a litttle extra on a focusrite might be worthwhile but otherwise the recording quality of the NIKA 2 is absolutely amazing for the money.

DAC capable of 24 bit 192 Khz Sample rates for both listening and recording. Sound is crisp and clean with a very flat response... I have yet to try out any stand alone DAC for even triple the price that out performs my Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2. If you need a power amp for your monitors then you'll need another solution but if they're powered monitors then truly it's hard to argue that someone needs to spend more money than the 170$ CAD a NIKA 2 costs for amazing audio on PC.

The answer to that is yes. edit: My recommendation for budget audio interfaces is the Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2. An absolutely stellar option for high quality recordings at an affordable price.

I've seen the Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2 recommended as a good audio interface. Is there better around that price range?. For mics, I was looking at getting 2 Audio-Technica AT 2031. Again, is there better available for this price?.

When I added the Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2 to my PC setup the result was amazingly clean and crisp sounding audio. I use a USB cable from PC to Interface then a set of 1/4 TRS to RCA balanced cables from Interface to my Integrated stereo amp. My noise floor is extremely low, so much so that I cannot even hear hiss or hum from my speakers with my ear directly in front of the woofers or tweeters, even when the gain is set to ear splitting levels.

I loved how it sounded out of the box, but when I tried updating the drivers I had all kinds of issues. A couple days later I couldn't resolve them so I switch out my M-audio for a Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2 and was not at all disappointed. At least as good sounding as the M-audio, maybe a bit better for the recordings and no issues with asio drivers at all. Wonderful unit.

I personally love my Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2. Now to be clear it's considered out of date using only USB 2.0 I believe, and I've also heard there's something about the headphone monitoring that is a love or hate feature, I just don't use headphones almost at all so I'm not sure. At the end of the day I just recommend it because my recordings are crystal clear, I love the audio quality and it doubles nicely as the DAC for my two channel stereo setup.

The M-audio had comparably excellent recording quality but I personally had some driver issues I couldn't get around and ended up with a Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2. I'm super happy with it. I use it with an SM57, a Rode NT-1 and my guitars/basses.