TC Electronic Impact Twin Audio Interface

The TC Electronic Impact Twin audio interface has just been announced, and the Danish manufacturers aren't holding back with extolling the virtues of what could be a very serious contender for those looking to get the best out of their audio capture device.

TC's claim for the Impact Twin is that it can  “ensure the music you record sounds as good on the inside of your computer as it does on the outside.” We're all used to seeing every product release laden with superlatives, but in the case of TC Electronic, it would be naive to dismiss these claims too quickly. After all, this is the company that brought the world the Finalizer, the 2290 and the System 6000!

The  Impact Twin is a compact, half-rack sized Firewire audio interface that has a total of 14 simultaneous inputs and outputs - 4 analogue, 8 on ADAT and stereo SPDIF, as well as a single MIDI I/O pair. Its a common format, offering enough I/O to make it interesting to those who have (or intend to) progress beyond bedroom musician status and places it into the professional or semi pro arena. But where TC look set to distance themselves from their competition in a slightly crowded marketplace is in the inputs. They state - rightly so - "no matter how good your mic amps, if your signal path doesn’t then lead on to the best converters then you may as well pack up and go home," and it is with this in mind, the Impact III preamps have been designed. The Impact III preamps take their name from the three stages in input signal. First, there is the Impact preamp, which is a very transparent, quiet and accurate mic or line preamp indeed. This is married to a converter that can work up to 192kHz to ensure the best conversion rates possible.

The third stage, and where the Impact Twin leaves its competition behind, is a DSP driven collection of recording channel tools including 4 band EQ and compression to really get the most out of your input signal. The DSP also delivers on board monitoring reverb with sends available from all inputs, including the digital inputs, and provides a realtime cue mix to the twin headphone sockets. A routing matrix allows inputs to be routed to outputs on a custom basis and a really nice touch is that the compressor can be adjusted from an illuminated rotary on the front panel - an idea first seen on the remote control of StudioKonnekt 48 flagship interface. For the guitarist, they also include a tuner and there are Hi-Z inputs on the front of the interface.

What all this means is that TC have placed more of the tools, which users would normally have to rely on, on a specialist channel strip to provide directly into the interface. And given the sonic quality that TC are renowned for, thats a serious bonus. I'll confess to not taking the Studio Konnekt seriously at its claims until I used it, at which point I was so blown away by it that I bought one. Sonically, this unit will be challenging the RME Fireface 400 if it sounds as good as its larger stablemate, but it has a retail price of a mere £365.00 incVAT as opposed to £800 and an impressive set of extra features. As an added bonus, TC are including their M40 software reverb, Assimilator and Resfilter plug-ins plus a copy of the TC edition of Ableton Live Lite 8.

The proof of TC's claims will be revealed when these units start to ship, but I'll be taking my place at the font of the queue of a load of people who are very eager to see if the TC Electronic Impact Twin really can “simply and invisibly tame and enhance” whatever mic signal you throw at it.

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