u/_intimacy

I upgraded my 13 years old iTrack Solo to a Volt 2 a few days back, and it sounds great. Very pleased with it all in all.

However, I feel like the headphone output is too loud? I have to basically have it set to around 8'o'clock the whole time. Setting to 9'o'clock is too loud, anything past that blows my ears out.

I also have this weird issue that for a very small area around 7'o'clock on the dial, if I want to turn it down more, the signal only goes to my left ear. However, if I turn it down past that (almost inaudible) it returns to stereo.

It's a bit annoying to say the least, it's like I only have a few milometers of the knob to actually play with for volume. (The only way around this is to turn down the source/master volume on my computer I guess, but doesn't that defeat the point?)

Or is this normal? The iTack Solo didn't have a dedicated headphone volume control.

Headphones: Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO X

I've had a Focusrite iTrack Solo for over 10 years now. I want a side-upgrade to a newer interface.

I mainly use the interface for my Yamaha HS7s, but I occasionally use the inputs to record on and from my 4 track tape player, and very rarely but sometimes for microphone when gaming.

You may ask, why upgrade? Well the primary reason is this thing is old now. It still works very well which is great, but I'd like to get something with balanced TRS connections now. I'd also like a separate knob for headphone volume control (accidentally blasting my ears gets tiring eventually lol).

The main model I've been looking at is the MOTU M2. It's the max I'd want to pay for something like this tbh since I'm not planning on doing crazy recordings or anything like that. Others I've been looking at are Arturia Minifuse 1/2 and UA Volt 1/176.

Just want to know any other recommendations or your experiences with these models, thank you!