PreSonusQuantum ES 2 USB-C Audio Interface with Studio One Pro Software

This is above all a great sounding interface. I recently moved to this platform from an old Focusrite Saffore Pro 40 Firewire. I still have that interface in my studio so I was able to A/B compare it with the Quantum 2626 Thunderbolt 3 interface.The difference in sound quality is immediately apparent. The best and most detailed comparison I could make between the two was by listening to the same audio tracks played on both interfaces through a pair of Sony Z1R headphones. The dynamics and overall clarity of the Q 2626 is far superior to the Pro 40. It's a major upgrade. Perhaps that is to be expected due to the difference in age between the two platforms but I was always happy with the sound of the Pro 40, until I heard the Q 2626.I'd like to point out (as other reviewers have) what is perhaps thr biggest flaw in this unit, the lack of any hardware monitoring for any of the audio inputs. That omission has been fairly criticized but it's not a dead end to your workflow that some other reviewers have implied. If you plug anything into the XLR/TRS inputs on the Q 2626 you WILL NOT hear it through the headphone jacks or the main outputs without doing more setup. This is not what most people are used to with their audio interfaces and I'd never encountered it in over 20 uears of audio production using many different audio interfaces in that time. In order to hear your microphone, guitar, keyboard or whatever you have plugged in to the Q 2626 you need to open your DAW software of choice and route the audio signal through there first. For example you plug your mic or instrument into the front panel of the Q 2626, then open a new project your DAW program of choice. I will use Cakewalk by Bandlab for example as it's a well known and free DAW but the steps will be roughly the same for any DAW like Reaper, Studio One, Pro Tools, etc.Open a new project in your DAW software and select or insert an empty audio track, then press the button on the track that will enable Live Monitoring. In Cakewalk that would be the "input echo" button right next to the Record Arm button on the audio track. Once you do that you should immediately hear the audio from whatever you have plugged into the Q2626. If not then make sure you have the input on your audio track in your DAW set receive audio from the Q 2626 input where your mic or instrument is plugged in (Cakewalk has a drop down menu on the track to select this) and make sure the output on the same audio track is set to the Master Out for your mix, AND that your Master bus is set to output to the Q 2626.It's easy for any experienced audio engineer or hobbyist, and while it may be work for a beginner, once you get a track template set up and saved you just need to reload it each time you need to monitor or record and you're all set.That being said I do not prefer this implementation and would have liked Presonus to include a hardware mixer built in. I can only hope it was a worthwhile trade off from a design and engineering perspective and not some plan to get users hooked on subscription based audio production software from Presonus or to buy one of their outboard hardware mixers.. Even cheap $50 audio interfaces have hardware monitoring and have forever, but maybe a quality hardware monitoring implementation would have been too expensive? I'm stretching to give Presonus the benefit of the doubt here. There is an idea that because this is a Thunderbolt 3 interface that latency is a non factor, but there is always monitoring latency, and it will become worse if you are recording in a project with 100-200+ audio tracks and running dozens of plug in effects forcing you to increase the buffer size and adding more latency to live monitoring. Most people don't have such needs though, and others who do cam get around it by upgrading their computer hardware to be more powerful if necessary.That being said what matters in the end to me is the quality of the audio this thing can produce. I don't think you can do better for the money. It's much better than I was expecting as having heard other Presonus interfaces in the past I was not impressed, but this unit is different and exceeded my expectations for audio quality by quite a lot.The preamps are full bodied and quiet even when turned all the way up. They also deliver great dynamics (to my ears) and the DI for guitar & bass excels in my opinion. It passes a very full, dynamic and clean DI signal that amp sims should love. It sounds great with Neural DSP Architype plug ins for example, partly because of the quality of the input from the Q 2626 preamp (use a good quality guitar cable too).Vocally the preamps also sound great to me, although there is likely better out there if you want to spend a lot more. These will be more than enough for most people if they have a decent mic to plug in.Another point I want to make is about the power plug on the back of the Q 2626. Yes it's a small plug similar to one you'd see on an external hard drive or laptop computer, but what's not readily apparent is that it's a twist-to-lock plug. You have to insert it and give it a press-twist to lock it in place. Once that's done the plug will not wobble and will stay in place much more securely.The power button on the back of the unit was a design mistake. It's rack mount so most people can forget about being able to use it once the interface is racked. You'd have to leave it on 24/7 or rig it through a power strip or similar that has it's own on/off switch. If it's sitting on your desktop it's less of a problem, or you can rack it on the bottom and leave an open space to get your hand behind it. The unit is not very deep, only about 6 inches so it's not too bad if you have to do this.Build quality is solid. The unit jas a good weight to it and the volume knobs have a nice resistance to them, they don't feel like cheap loose spinners.As for Thunderbolt 3 just make sure you are set up correctly if it's not a native feature of your computer. In my case I run Windows 10 x64 on an AMD CPU platform that I built. My motherboard (Gigabyte) has a Thunderbolt header on it and I'm using Gigabyte's Titan Ridge 2.0 Thunderbolt 3 PCI card. In my case I had to make sure I was using the correct PCI slot (the PCI x4 slot, usually located as the bottom slot on newer motherboards) and had to make sure the thunderbolt header on the motherboard was plugged into the Titan Ridge card and that both power cables were plugged into the back of the Titan Ridge card. You may also need a BIOS update to unlock thunderbolt fucntionality depending on the age of your BIOS. If you are an Intel or Mac user and your system came with native thunderbolt support you won't have to worry about any of this, which is great.Assuming you have your thunderbolt connection properly set up you should get very good speed from this interface. If you are a windows user there are things you can do to further improve performance and reduce latency like turning off HPET, disabling C-States, setting power modes to max performance, and more you can look up elsewhere.I should mention that you WILL hear audio from your PC right out of the box when you plug the Q2626 in, so unlike jumping through hoops with live hardware monitoring, you can plug in to your conputer and hear audio from websites or games or MP3/FLAC players, or anything else. Quality is great too.Overall I feel this is a good unit for the money that should last many years. If you can deal with a few quirks then I think you'll find it worth your while as the quality of the audio makes up for any other shortcomings.

I really like this interface. It's sleek and modern and high performing. Plenty of inputs and outputs for home / small studio use. The pre-amps are dynamite and the auto-gain function is nice for quickly setting up an input channel! Incredibly low-latency drivers on Windows 11. Very flexible routing options, including routing different channels to each headphone jack. I will say that I picked up some noise on the headphone ports, which I traced back to my laptop. Used a power isolator (iFi iDefender Max) to fix. Not an issue with this audio interface. The USB data, however, is digital and not impacted by noise from your laptop.I'm *very* close to taking away one star, however, for being so picky... so, so, *so* picky... when connecting via USB-C! There's a convenient USB connection state light on the top of the interface: blue if connected to driver and amber if not. Connecting the interface to various Thunderbolt hubs failed to connect. Connecting via a USB-C hub uplinked to laptop via USB-4 @ 40 Gb/s also failed to connect. So, it's not just Thunderbolt. I could connect the ES 4 directly to the same Thunderbolt and USB-4 ports on my laptop and the interface initialized just fine. Also, using a USB-C to USB-A cable was a lot less picky, connecting through USB hubs just fine. In the end, even though your audio interface can't begin to touch USB speeds, I suppose it's to burn a port on your PC, for the lowest latency and cleanest signal path.I also really appreciate the free access to Presonus Studio One Pro 7 for 6 months. I'll still purchase it, but I get to play with their money for half a year. This interface and Presonus Studio One Pro are a match made in heaven and absolutely worth the money! A very hearty "buy" recommendation. Like now. Go buy it. Right now. :)

Super clean preamps and excellent functionality. Glad I bought it.

Excellent interface. It started working right out of the box as soon as I connected it without installing any software at all. Extremely easy to connect, and it sounds like liquid velvet. It offers me way more than I need at the moment, but at this price, you can't find anything that even comes close to this unit. Extremely content with the sound quality and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to produce music.

I received the quantum ES ultimate bundle on the date promised. I was able to set up all the electronic equipment and interface it with my MacBook. However, it is required that you register the product with Presonus. After literally 25 attempts and the pre-Sonos website repeatedly rejecting the serial numbers for both the audio interface or the speakers, the only two items that actually have serial numbers, I am unable to download the software that is part of the deal. There is no product key included in any of the product or shipping documents. Therefore, all of this great stuff I just paid hundreds of dollars for is useless and you cannot find a telephone number or email address for product or tech-support without having first register registered and downloaded the software. I’m not a low tech individual. This just sucks. I’d expect more from Fender as a company. These things should not be as difficult as they are and it seems like the only option is to return all this try and get another bundle and see if the registration is any easier. But I doubt it.

UPDATE!!!Sent a support ticket to Presonus and explained to them what happened... They got back to me the next day! and I was REGISTERED! Got it fixed!Thank you Presonus!Presonus just got all 4 stars back!I've been wanting this unit ever since the release well not no more! Having the same issue with registering my product! PRESONUS BETTER GET ON THIS! Or I will return this product and go with a competitor that I know will be better. Waste of money! I paid 800 bux! Welp 800 bux down the drain!!!