Focusrite announces Windows 10 Thunderbolt Compatibility for Red range interfaces
by The Press Desk   13th October 2020

I hope that means a finalised driver for the Clarett 8. I've had that interface since 2015 and the support from Focusrite has been poor.

Finally Windows 10 Thunderbolt drivers for Red range! Need more info on what the "appropriate Thunderbolt 3 hardware" will be...

Would also like to know if it will be compatible with AMD thunderbolt (Gigabyte or Asrock).

I understand some members here had a degree of success running the red interfaces on windows using a Alpine Ridge chipset and the older Focusrite Control software for the Clarett Thunderbolt series.

I hope support will be good a clear about the hardware.

Nice but my question is how long will Focusrite acutally support it? Focusrite has a history of abandoning driver support for many of its products when MOTU, Lynx and RME offer long term driver support.

I had a lot of Windows driver issues over the years with varies of Focusrite interfaces and the lack of driver support committment the reason why I switched. The driver department needs some work. The Beta driver website is useless that abandon farther driver development. I was disappointed when only two driver updates were ever made for the Forte interface and the interface
was discontinued after one year of its release date.

The Thunderbolt drivers for Clarett ranage has been abandoned since 2016. I got rid of my Clarett 8pre because it was pretty much obsolete with no more driver updates which seemed to be a waste of money. That kinda stuff is what steers me away which questions my confidence in their support and longevity. I like to keep my interfaces for at least 10 years with updated drivers not buy something and then support is cut off.

@ 360studios15

Thank you for your feedback and I’m very sorry that you’ve had some problems with our interfaces in the past.

We recognise that we haven’t always lived up to the expectations of our customers when it comes to long term device support in the past. To that end, over the last few years we’ve taken steps to ensure that we are continuing to support as many discontinued products as possible, including the 1st Gen Scarlett Range (originally released in 2011).

We also recognise that our initial attempts to provide Windows support for our Clarett customers didn’t play out as we would have wanted. Thunderbolt on Windows was very new at the time and not particularly stable, we spent a lot of our efforts working with 3rd party PC vendors when we found problems with their Thunderbolt implementations.

Fast forward a few years and we’re getting closer to the point where, between improvements in our driver and improvements in Thunderbolt 3 implementations by PC manufacturers, we can start to offer a solid experience on that platform (as we’ve been able to do on macOS for many years).
@ tenkas and @ GP_Hawk - we'll release information regarding the exact systems we've been testing with in the coming weeks. I can tell you now that we haven't yet tested with an AMD-based Thunderbolt system.

Best,
Jack // Focusrite Tech Support

Thanks Jack. I personally have had a great experience with the Red line on OSX, even able to use in windows minus the control mixer but the dante integration has been flawless. Sounds like you guys are moving forward and looking foward to what the future brings.

I appreciate the response and willingness to make those changes. I do still have the Forte USB interface laying around that I haven't sold just yet but don't use it as often. I would appreciate if farther support would continue. It's great sounding unit but the drivers aren't very stable and latency performance isn't all that great to what I' using now from another manufacturer. The 1.1 Forte Control software shares the same Audio driver as the (1st gen) Scarlett 18i20 that I use to own, both units would crash my Windows machines with Studio One open if the USB cable is bumped or accidentally unplugged. I get the BSOD. It doesn't matter if I was using Windows 10 or Windows 7 nor version of Studio One. It does it all on different machines. The Forte software was often glitchy.

I've also discovered a manufacturing error with the Forte unit that became a known issue from other users as well that I was able to correct myself when I dismantled the unit and found the problem. It was simply glue residue around the contacts on the PCB for the display screen as I had an annoying problem with the Omled display screen randomly jumping around with a mind of it's own. I took some Isopropyl alcohol and cleaned the contacts of the residue and the problem went away. When I initially connected Focusrite Support about the issue, no one on the support team could figure out the problem until I took the unit apart myself and found the issue.

I would like to see dual connectivity on future products instead making two of the same products with one USB and the other Thunderbolt. I think the Clarett should of had dual USB/Thunderbolt connections that way you didn't have the axe an entire line for just a different connection. I think that's where things have fallen short. MOTU and RME has done that for years for future proof and additional options esp when Thunderbolt is may not be an option on some computers.

Proper ventilation is another issue I should address with the Clarett range esp the the bigger rack mount 8pre and 8prex units that often gets pretty hot. The Clarett 8pre has no ventilation holes on the sides of the unit like the Red 8 Pre. Its inclosed in a hot box that will cause electronics to overheat. My Clarret 8Pre gotten pretty hot when I owned it as the face plate was hot to touch. Not good for electronics. The Apollo rack interfaces have excellent ventilation.

@ 360studios15 - development support for the Forte officially ended a number of years ago so I can confirm that we won't be doing any further updates for that unit.

We ported the 1st Gen Scarletts to our latest "4.x" driver several years ago which is why we've been able to continue to offer updates for those devices. Due to differing architectures we sadly weren't able to go down that route with Forte as well.

The Clarett units will get warm to the touch after a bit of use, that's completely expected behaviour. The components are spec'd to deal with those temperatures which is why we don't really get Clarett failures due to heat (Clarett failures of any sort are very rare).

The components in the Red Range are also spec'd to an appropriate level regarding temperature resistance, though there's an awful lot going on with the Reds compared to the Claretts (more analogue and digital I/O + screens) which is why we added ventilation to the Reds.

Thank you for your other feedback, I'll pass that on to the relevant teams.

Best,
Jack

Any chance of driver updates for the Clarett on Windows?

It's November!?

In fact so poor are the drivers that I ADAT connect my Clarett to the Presonus Quantum for extra I/O

WOW, I'm really really happy with this.

let me tell you 2 things,
first it's ridiculous that the RED4Pre being already released some years ago is only having Windows support in the end of 2020.
Really bad play from Focusrite and that has to be said, bad for the costumers like me that couldnt use it on windows, bad also for the business as one of the main competitors UAD Apollo range has perfect drivers for MAC and Windows in each product release.

Anyway, better late than never so thank you Focusrite for trying to improve

I've been watching this thread with slight confusion. Windows 10 came out 5 and a half years ago it's currently the only properly supported Windows OS and Focusrite STILL haven't released drivers for some of their high end interfaces ?

I'm saying this as an 'old school' Focusrite customer.....but my 10 year old RME card is still getting regular updated drivers - although it worked perfectly out of the box when new.

As well as being much more robust, RME total cost of ownership is much lower as you get much more longevity out of them. Why would anybody buy Focusrite ? I mean they make seem like the are making an effort today...but next year...the year after ? What does it say about the quality of their software team ?

Yes, that's correct.

Actually it's the top of the range of Focusrite interfaces

Good Product + No Drivers = Failure

I bought a Focusrite RED4Pre some years ago because it's in my opinion (compared a lot before buying) the best sounding audio interface in that price range and because I was only using MAC up until 4 months ago, so I didnt even check if there were Windows drivers at the time.

MAC drivers worked and work great by the way

I use both but I wouldn't want to be locked into a platform because the manufacturer doesn't supply drivers. I also totally understand that thunderbolt in windows isn't straightforward but this is beyond ridiculous and shows the priorities aren't on supporting the product - or more likely they can't hire the talent to make that happen.

What happens when Apple change their architecture (again) - will the Mac drivers be updated. It certainly raises a RED flag (joke intended )

When I was much younger Focusrite where an amazing and well respected company. The Forte console was a beast and I still use some of the original Red range....Now it seems they just wanna compete with Behringer.

I didn't use both just MAC so I couldn't care for Windows support at all.
It's normal also that most people that use MAC also couldn't care less if there's windows support or not.

I was just replying to your question of "why people buy focusrite?" and there's a lot of reasons for that and I told you mine.

The Red4Pre is an outstanding interface with an amazing sound with great support for MAC which is what most professionals use (this interface is target for the Pro market) although thats changing and a lot of people in the Pro community are using Windows or changing to windows nowadays.

And knowing the past lack of Windows support off course I agree that it's ridiculous that there was no support for the RED4Pre and Red8pre range.


Focusrite it's still well respected and I don't see any resemblance to Behringer.
Also Behringer has a tremendous amount of great products, some of them quite outstanding like the X32 range, and they are also well respected in their own way.

You're probably better off with the Clarett Octopre. Drivers weren't the greatest either when I owned it for over a year. The latency is was pretty high for Thunderbolt.

MOTU and Lynx Studio Technologies also offer long term driver. Motu was acutally the first manufacturer to that developed the worlds first Thunderbolt interface in 2012 with the 828X. So yeah I do agree that Windows 10 has been out for quite some time since Thunderbolt has been around for quite awhile.

So I guess they weren't ready for a November launch. Nothing available in the windows department...

And based on the lack of reply to my comment I think it's fair to say they're *still* not updating the Clarett drivers for Windows. Definitely won't be buying Focusrite again.

Totally understandable, that's a great example of a company "Shoot oneself in the foot"

I sent Focusrite support an email some months ago letting them know that.
I advise all of you to do the same.

They should get their act together, it's ridiculous

Indeed - it's a shame because their support on macOS has been very good and they do, at least to my ear, make some great sounding interfaces, but I just can't possibly be expected to give them more of my hard-earned cash when their driver support effectively gives their interfaces a very limited lifespan.

I think what they're perhaps failing to realise as well (or have realised and just don't care because maybe it doesn't affect their bottom line enough), is that even if they genuinely do support their new interfaces much better, ultimately their reputation is already tarnished for me by their poor support for their existing ones.

And it's not just me (or indeed, the other customers burned by this) who they've lost as potential customers, but anyone who we steer away from them based on our past experiences.

Yes I've been saying this for years. The Forte was a big disappointment. I even still have it packed away. It's a damn great sounding peice of hardware but the software/driver side failed me big time. It sounded just as good as my MOTU 828ES and the Apogee Quartet that I use to own. If Focusrite had the same driver support and quality drivers like Motu, I wouldn't of switched. So the only Focusrite products I buy is their Ouboard gear.

Hi all,

Apologies for the delay in responding to some of the comments on this thread - I'm not always able to get around to checking Gearslutz every day.
@ orange - you're quite right, Windows 10 did come out quite a long time ago. When we announced our Clarett Thunderbolt range our intention was to release a Windows driver at the earliest opportunity and we had development driver versions very early on.

However, Thunderbolt on Windows hadn't really taken off and there were very few Windows systems with Thunderbolt 1 or Thunderbolt 2 support. From our testing at the time we found that a very high number of those machines had Thunderbolt implementations that were flaky or inconsistent and we attempted to engage with various companies about that. I should note that we found there were issues not only with our devices but with 3rd party Thunderbolt audio interfaces too.

In the end we put a driver version out but labelled it as "beta" in an attempt to encourage potential users to thoroughly read and understand our release notes and articles which caveat the various problems we had seen.

When Thunderbolt 3 came along we were very hopefully that this would result in an improvement in the consistency of performance on Windows systems though, again, this proved to not really be the case. Again, we released a driver but labelled it as a "beta".

Fast forward a few years and there have been multiple revisions to the Thunderbolt ridge chipsets found in modern Windows systems and we're seeing some improvements in terms of performance and consistency.

We have no intention to mislead our customers, nor do we want to leave them waiting for something that they would clearly like. Equally, we don't want to put something out that offers sub-par performance.

Just as a reminder, we've been able to provide rock solid Thunderbolt support with very good low latency performance on Mac systems for many years now (and we will be supporting the new Apple Silicon systems in the near future too, keep an eye on this article for updates: https://support.focusrite.com/hc/articles/360017407320).
@ GP_Hawk - November is still young, bear with us!
@ JoelTheSuperior - we're intending that the upcoming update for Red customers will be made available for Clarett customers too.

Best,
Jack // Focusrite Tech Support

Hi Jack, you're talking about the Clarett, that it received 2 "beta" drivers for Windows.
How about the top of the range interface the RED4Pre (and then the Red8Pre)?

The high end interface never received a driver for Windows not even a beta version, and it's been quite a few years.
It doesn't make Focusrite look good that this was never addressed, you also seem to have missed that in your post

@ iLCacciLLo - please see the first post in this thread, we're going to be providing Red Range Windows support later this month.

Best,
Jack // Focusrite Tech Support

Hi Jack, thanks I've read that before. And I'm happy if that happens.

But my comment concerned your post from 5 days ago, although you addressed the issue with the Clarett windows drivers that in the past Beta versions were released you didn't addressed the fact that Red4Pre was released 4 years ago and never had any Windows 10 driver support not even a Beta driver.
This issue was not mentioned in your post.

4 years it's a long time and it doesn't make sense a mid level product like the Clarett having at least a Beta driver and the top of the range Interface not having any driver at all.

Things have not been well in Focusrite driver support, I really wish at least things get improved in the present and the future.

Best Regard

Tiago

@ iLCacciLLo - thanks for clarifying. I hadn't mentioned Red support specifically in my post due to the announcement at the top of this thread.

The primary reason behind Clarett support only being "beta" and the lack of Red support on Windows entirely up to this point is that we don't wish to provide a sub-par experience, particularly given the price point of the Reds. We've been able to guarantee excellent performance on Mac for many years but we couldn't say the same for Windows platforms, again primarily due to problematic Thunderbolt implementations on some Windows systems.

You may note that some companies (e.g. Apogee) completely forgo any level of Windows support for their Thunderbolt products - I don't want to speculate as to why other companies might have chosen to do that but it's entirely possible that they've reached some of the same conclusions that we have regarding problematic Thunderbolt implementations on some Windows systems.

While there are likely to be more caveats to using Windows vs Mac for some time we believe that we're in a better place now than we've ever been in terms of our driver performance and we also believe that Windows Thunderbolt implementations have been slowly improving in terms of reliability. The combination of those two factors has led us to make the announcement at the top of this thread.

Again, the reason that we haven't provided Windows drivers up to this point isn't due to lack of desire to do so on our part, nor because we don't think Windows is a great platform for audio work - it's because we do not want to provide a sub optimal experience.

Best,
Jack