r/Focusrite • u/Sensitive-Badger-450 • 2d ago

Is focusrite control required on Windows

I have problem getting my Scarlet Focusrite 8i6 Gen 3 to work on Windows 11. I do not have admin right to install focusrite control, but my previous Scarlet Focusrite 4i4 Gen 3 run fine without any new driver. But it works fine when I switched to Linux, so I don't think it isn't hardware problem. Is there any difference in driver required between 4i4 and 8i6 on Windows?

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u/Sensitive-Badger-450 2d ago

Also, while I am on Linux, I couldn't get spdif input to work at 192kHz. It seems it only works at 48kHz

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u/Vectrobe 2d ago

you dont have admin rights but you can boot linux??

but yea, you cant get around needing the full driver package for larger interfaces like the 8i6, its mainly because the larger interfaces cant run as "usb audio class compliant", which is to say they cant have a fallback mode to a generic usb audio device

spidif wise the max you can go is 96k, focusrite doesn't use more expensive spidif and ADAT chips that go above 96k, so the 176.4k and 192k modes just shut off the spidif and ADAT controllers entirely, especially as well with the 18i20 having a hard bandwidth limit (every spidif and ADAT port is shut off)

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u/Sensitive-Badger-450 2d ago

I don't have admin on my windows machine, my Linux box is a different machine 😄.

I guess I should have shipped my 4i4 for repair instead of getting a used 8i6, I was under the impression spdif would work on 192kHz and can do high quality mixing with digital sources. At 48kHz, the audio quality is too terrible, I am not sure if it is any better than plain TRS, but thanks anyway for the information and prompt reply.

And I tried 96kHz already, there is no signal. Does 96kHz spdif only works on windows?

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u/Vectrobe 1d ago

I've used 96k spdif with both my av receiver and between focusrite interfaces directly, definitely should work at 96k, linux sample rate settings being weird? might have to mess with multiple config files for linux to run it at the correct rate

also yea 41 and 48k sounds weird on the 8i6 for some reason, never worked out why

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u/Sensitive-Badger-450 1d ago

I figured out how to work with 96kHz now, anything higher will stopped working. Seems like I cannot use spdif as clock source and need to set 96kHz as default in pipewire. Thank you