Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2

I tested them both and and I could only see TWO major differences...

1 - The Komplete Audio 2 is made of plastic whereas Focusrite's audio interfaces are made of aluminium. If you're cautious with your gear, you don't have to care... but if you're not, go for the aluminium.

2 - The software they are delivered with. With NI Komplete Audio 2, you may get lucky and have a promotion (free Guitar Rig 5 or iZotope Elements Suite). Personally, I don't mind the rest (Ableton Live 10 Lite, Machine Essentials, Monark, Replica, Phasis, Solid Bus Comp...maybe you'll do !). On the other hand, Focusrite Scarlett comes with XLN Audio Addictive Keys which are AMAZING (and XLN Audio Addictive Drums 2: Studio Rock is pretty nice as well).

So pick a team, and stick to it : plastic or aluminium ? Guitar-oriented and mix plugins or keyboard & drums VST ?

Considering your answers, you might want either one or the other. Otherwise, I have no complains : NI Komplete Audio 2 never failed me in 3 years.

I like this.

The build is all plastic, but of nice quality and feels sturdy. Additionally it is also quite light, which is good for travel, also considering it is USB powered.

The NI drivers work well and allow to select the sampling rate, but do not offer any kind of additional features, such as routing options or effects. All of that has to happen in your DAW.

I do not have much experience with mic preamps, but these have given me no issues: low noise, no clipping issues and have phantom power. The instrument input mode also worked quite well.

Overall, no complaints. Especially for the price and portability

I was looking for something to replace my Behringer 404hd and wanted to give this a shot. I found the build quality to be plasticky (but is to be expected at this price point). The device worked out of the box on MacOS mojave but when I plugged in my dynamic mic, I found the preamp to be very quiet compared to the 404hd. To the point where I could barely hear my mic. Not sure what brand the mic is as it was given to me and is not very high quality/expensive but it worked well on my 404hd. I ended up testing the same mic on the Motu M2/M4 and the volume was much louder. So you may have a different experience depending on your mic.

I tested them both (i own the audio 2 and a buddy of mine has the scarlett) and i found out:

1.The Komplete Audio 2 is made of plastic while the scarlett is made of mostly aluminum. if you care about build quality, this is one aspect to look at.

2.The software: with NI Komplete Audio 2, you may get lucky and have a promotion (free iZotope Elements Suite in my case, and they are cool mixing tools if you dont own any, and also i got the komplete select: plenty of synths, instruments, effects, sounds and so on), while the scarlett comes with the hitmaker expansion (check it out on scarlett's page, they've got as many things like the komplete select plus a few vocals oriented vst's like the auto-tune)

So pick a team, and stick to it : plastic or aluminium ? NI ecosystem or the scarlett ecosystem?... though the comparison is not entirely fair since the scarlett as of writing is 2x the price of Audio 2.

specifically of the audio 2. is incredible for the money. gets everything done without issues, for the past 6 months of ownership.