In this video I’m giving you my thoughts on the SSL 2 after using it for about a week to a week and a half. I’ve recorded a bunch of songs with it at this point, so I feel like I’m finally in a solid position to say where I stand—because when I recommend gear on this channel, I try to only suggest stuff I genuinely believe in. And honestly, my experience so far has been nothing short of amazing. What surprised me the most is how little I’ve felt the need to bring external analog gear into my vocal chain. Y’all know I’m passionate about analog and I’ve said plenty of times that having a dedicated external preamp can be important, but running my TLM 103 straight into the SSL 2 has been perfectly enough for me—and it sounds really good. The layout is super straightforward, the sound quality is crazy for the price (around $220), and for that money I really don’t think there’s anything competing with it right now. I also talk about why the preamps are a big deal: you’ve got a ton of clean gain (around 62–63 dB) and an insanely low noise floor (EIN around -132/-133), which means you can run something like an SM7B without a Cloudlifter and not deal with hiss. If you want a budget interface with two mic inputs that just works and sounds great, the SSL 2 is the one I’m comfortable recommending.