I have the iRig2 and use it to interface between my guitar and my MacBook Pro running Garageband. Before I got this new Mac, I had the version of Mac that had a separate sound input port. That worked fine. The new Mac doesn't have that port, it has the combo headphone-microphone input. Hence, I need an interface. I could have purchased a USB interface to the USB-C connectors, but iRig2 was less expensive so I'm using it.
The guitar signal is supposed to sound like attack-decay-sustain-release. The iRig2 seems to have some sort of noise gate effect. iRig2 attenuates my guitar signal when I'm trying to sustain, so I get attack-decay-sustain-attenuate. Sometimes for the lower notes it's attack-attenuate. This sounds like the kind of behavior that would be used to eliminate noise.
The attenuation is too aggressive for my taste. I don't like this effect and I want it gone. I want to get back to a straight-in interface without the interface device trying to shape the signal.
This feature of the iRig2 doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. As I look for an interface that doesn't do this, I suppose I can't expect the documentation to describe whether the feature exists or not before I purchase the item.
I see the iRigHD2 has USB interface in addition to headphone-mic interface. I'd be willing to try this unit if I knew that it didn't also have the attenuation behavior. Do you know if iRigHD2 is noise-gate-free? Or do you know of some other way to get un-processed input?
Mike
