It’s a little over a week since we asked the community to Tell Us What Audio Interface You Are Using. The time has come to crunch the numbers. Which brand is most popular with which sector? Find out here.

The survey was popular, reflecting the broad nature of the question. We had nearly 3000 responses and the respondents’ areas of work broke down as follows:

This reflects our audience accurately, with the majority of our audience working in music but a really significant number working in Post, either exclusively or alongside music work.

Which Is The Most Popular Interface Brand Overall?

As the chart below shows, Universal Audio are ahead of everyone else in our sample, with Focusrite, Avid and RME in the second tier but all significantly behind UA.

What About Sector By Sector? - Music, Post and Other/Both

Music

Among music users Universal Audio’s lead is even greater. Given the fact that music users are the largest section of the respondents this suggests that UA’s popularity within the music sector is responsible for UA’s position overall. Although we don’t drill down to the level of which model people have, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that much of this is down to the sustained success of the Apollo range.

Post

Post is dominated by Avid hardware. Given the dominance of Pro Tools in post-production this is unsurprising. Of more interest is perhaps what comes next. Focusrite and RME are both well represented.

Both/Other

The Both/Other category is an interesting mix, with UA and Avid both popular but with a more even spread among other brands.

Music Users

We gathered data based on the channel width of work being done and, while some of the samples were quite small in some categories, for example surround music, and this is reflected in the charts, we again see a dominance of different brands at different widths.

Post Users

Avid’s dominance of Post is upset by the stereo-only category where Focusrite come out on top. It’s fair to say that Avid are on top in post but there are lots of other choices being explored.

Both/Other Users

For Both\Other we see UA dominant in stereo-only work but Avid again emerges as the most popular choice in surround and immersive. This probably reflects the relative mix between music and post projects undertaken by the respondents in this mixed category.

Which Is The Most Popular Brand For Immersive?

The most important reason for gathering information about respondents’ use of immersive was to find out whether there is a clear most popular brand of interface for immersive work. Indeed there is. Across all our respondents Avid are the most popular overall choice for immersive mixing.

Will This Change over Time?

An interface has a relatively long shelf life in a studio. Users who, for example, have invested in a MTRX Studio for immersive mixing are unlikely to swap it out on a whim, so if we run this survey again it will be interesting to see whether it is mixers moving from stereo mixing into immersive and purchasing new hardware which is the driver of any change we see.

What do you make of these results? Are you surprised by any of the charts? Would have have expected to see a wider spread or are you unsurprised to see clear leaders in some areas? Share your thoughts in the comments.