Worth upgrading to a higher-end interface?

PonchoGreg

My use case for my usb audio interface is probably a bit different to most - I mainly use it to plug in a guitar/bass and load amp sims (s-gear, neural DSP) in standalone for practice.

These days it's 99% of my playing time, I switch my actual amp on once a month for a few minutes really.

That got me thinking: would it be worth upgrading from my trusted focusrite Scarlett Solo, which is a few years old now ?

Again, I don't care about number of ins/outs or even mic preamp quality. It's all about the instrument input. Is there anything in more expensive interfaces that would give me a cleaner/nicer signal, or is it all much of a muchness?

Thanks a lot for any pointers!

Danny1969

With line inputs there's very little differences between 24 bit audio interfaces. 20 years ago you could hear the difference between a 16 bit and 24 bit interface but I doubt you could now. I probably wouldn't both unless there was a problem with your existing interface latency wise. 

goldtop

Yup. Cleaner/nicer as a reason to change doesn't apply to electric guitar that you shove through a simulator.

As Danny says, if the performance of your interface+computer is lively enough to give low latency for the amp sims/FX you want to use, then you're fine.

PonchoGreg

Pretty much as I suspected then. There's nothing wrong in my current setup, maybe 8ms of latency (I know people get very nitpicky about this but to me that's absolutely good enough).

I was just wondering if I was potentially missing out, or hampering the sound quality of the amp sims by feeding them a less than great signal. Doesn't look like it!

PolarityMan

I guess maybe look into a DI box but personally I've never found I've needed one.

Jalapeno

Maybe a newer Focusrite to shave a few mS off the latency - but if you're happy don't bother.