I don’t think the microphone modelling will be useful for voice. It is basically the two-notes guitar cab simulation that has switchable mics. I don’t think it can be used for mic modelling alone for vocals.
And it is not USB powered, it needs the power supply due to the valve which runs at high voltages (a lot of cheaper audio gear with valves run the valves at lower voltages which don’t get the best out of the valve).
The best things about the interface, even at full price, are obviously guitar focussed but you can make good use of those features even without using the amp sim stuff.
the valve preamp would be nice to have. It’s a high voltage valve and can be used on guitar and the mic and line input as well. You can switch it off for mic/line so you only need to use it when it actually adds something good.
I’d imagine it will sound good with synths which I would use a lot. I also want to get back into playing guitar and like the fact you can use it without a computer, which is a minor thing for me but might work out to be genius. Just being able to play without the distractions of a DAW/computer reminds me of when I had the first POD. I used to just sit and play in the evenings and really enjoyed it even though I’m not much of a guitarist. I find the DAW too much of a distraction when you have so many options and then I’m off doing other things. Having three presets it’s perfect. Just choose one and play.
But the feature that interests me the most is the re-amping. I have been setting up a lot of my old gear recently and have set up a Patchbay which lets me route audio out of the DAW and through external fx. It turns out that that’s a lot of fun even if not strictly necessary but I’m in this for fun. If I spend a couple of hours farting about making things sound awful by running them through an old Alesis 3630 it’s time we’ll spent
And to get to the point; the reamping feature of the Sono ramps this up hugely as it would allow me to really easily run any audio from the DAW though guitar pedals as it sends out a guitar high impedance signal. This removes the need for additional DIs to convert signals and had the potential to make things really quick and frictionless. And running DAW tracks through guitar pedals is fun.
I’m guessing you can go straight from the out back through the guitar input to run existing tracks through the valve preamp as well. Might be fun to do that instead of using a preamp plugin?
Just the fact I’ve written so much here shows that there’s a lot of stuff in the interface the makes things interesting all for less £s than an entry level Audient interface. And even an entry level Audient should sound better than what I already have.
And it had ADAT inputs. You can get an old MOTI 2408 audio interface without the pci card for peanuts. At least you could last time I looked. And then you have an extra 8 crunchy 1990s 20 but converters as the converters of the 2408 works without the pci card.
And It got great reviews from guitarist focussed mags when it was released at full price. For £149 any drawbacks are minor and not relevant at the price and make it a worthwhile box to have even as a second interface or POD-u-like.
Anyway. I think I’ve sold one to myself.