# Really weird/bad sound quality thru my new scarlett solo... help!



## thinkpad20 (Mar 22, 2017)

I just bought a Focusrite Scarlett Solo interface. I took it home and plugged it into my laptop, and just listening to music, the sound has this really strange EQ to it, where the drums and vocals are super loud and the guitars are almost inaudible. I thought maybe it was my new headphones, but when I plugged those into my phone to listen to music, it sounded normal. I thought it might be the 1/4" to 1/8" adapter, but I just bought a new one and it has the same sound. So it must be the interface. Is there any reason other than just a bug or defect of some kind that the sound could be so strange? I don't have any weird EQ settings or anything on my computer (Macbook Air) that I'm aware of, and the same thing happens on Spotify and YouTube. Help!


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## Descent (Mar 22, 2017)

Look that the Focusrite drivers don't have some kind of eq on them, should be somewhere in the sys tray.


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## thinkpad20 (Mar 22, 2017)

I didn't install any drivers for the focusrite, it was just detected right away... and I don't see any controls or any other way to affect the sound. Focusrite offers a driver for windows but not mac, although they have some sort of patch for mac but it seems to be more focused on reducing latency. :\ I'm going to try it on my gf's PC to see if the story is different there.


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## thinkpad20 (Mar 22, 2017)

Welp, sounds normal on a windows box, and even after installing their driver and rebooting it still sounds weird on osx. Not great  I don't know if it's my computer or what but this is disappointing


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## Given To Fly (Mar 23, 2017)

thinkpad20 said:


> Welp, sounds normal on a windows box, and even after installing their driver and rebooting it still sounds weird on osx. Not great  I don't know if it's my computer or what but this is disappointing



If I were in your position I would do the following:
1. Make sure your headphones are plugged in all the way. Unplug anything connected to the Line Outputs on the Focusrite. Unplug any other audio devices from your computer. 
2. Toggle the Direct Monitor switch On/Off.
3. Use Audio MIDI Setup to make sure your Mac is set to playback audio through the Focusrite. The clock source should say Focusrite and you can adjust the sample rate here. 
4. Start taking things apart.......actually, don't do this. This is just what I have done in the past for better or worse; usually "worse."

Actually, read this: https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en...-Scarlett-Interfaces-and-macOS-Sierra-10-12-2


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## thinkpad20 (Mar 23, 2017)

Well I tried the first two already. With the third, you're talking about how the DAW is set up, right? The problems I'm talking about are coming up with just listening to regular programs (e.g. youtube/spotify). I'll check out the Audio MIDI setup though, thanks!


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## schwiz (Mar 23, 2017)

What ASIO driver are you using? The Focusrite one? Right click on the sound icon in your tray and go to playback devices. Mark the Focusrite as the default. Close all sound applications, re-open, and check the sound.

I highly doubt that the issue is your interface, but who knows.


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## thinkpad20 (Mar 23, 2017)

Well I'm at work right now so I can't mess with it, but I didn't have to install a driver, and I chose the Focusrite as the output device on my box, and I even restarted the machine and everything. I'm pretty sure at this point it's not the focusrite itself, because it worked fine on a PC, but something to do with how the unit interacts with my Mac. I'm going to try it on another mac to confirm that's the problem (I know plenty of people use it on a Mac so I assume if it were a problem with all Macs I would have seen something).


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## schwiz (Mar 23, 2017)

Didn't see that you were on a mac, my bad! ...I now have no advice other than to get a PC. Lol! Good luck man.


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## thinkpad20 (Mar 24, 2017)

Well I was able to diagnose it, after a lot of obnoxiousness... I had my computer set in mono audio mode! Realized it when I A/Bed with another computer that worked, playing Running with the Devil which has the guitar on only the right channel  Crazy that the other computer I tried seemed to have the same setting (haven't confirmed that).

Now if I could just get the latency working...


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