As I have covered in prior articles, the RØDE SC6-L is a powerful yet misunderstood and unappreciated dual-channel audio interface, with bi-directional 48 kHz 24-bit conversion via its ADC/DAC and dual-channel preamp. Now, Anker potentially expands the SC6-L beyond the iOS Lightning world to the much larger USB-C world, to allow using the SC6-L interface to work with Android, Mac and more, although for now, there are some caveats. The new Anker audio adapter seems to be a match made in heaven to facilitate the powerful RØDE SC6-L to go multiplatform, since it too is made to convert 2-channel bidirectional 48 kHz 24-bit digital audio, but…
Prior articles I’ve published about the SC6-L converter
Here’s a link to my prior articles about the powerful yet underrated SC6-L converter (Amazon link — B&H link).
The official name of the Anker adapter
The official name is Anker USB-C to Lightning Audio Adapter(≈US$29, Amazon link).
The good news:
- Memo Sauceda and I confirmed that the Anker adapter works perfectly with Apple Earbuds (with Lightning) to make a functional connection to Memo’s MacBook Pro with USB-C connection, both input and output. That was our way of confirming that the Anker adapter was indeed doing its job properly. (I asked help from Memo, since my laptop doesn’t have USB-C.)
- When we connected the US$79 RØDE SC6-L (Amazon link — B&H link) via the Anker adapter to the same MacBook Pro, fortunately the RØDE SC6/L indeed appears as an input to the Mac as Lightning Audio Adapter Input. Even in the macOS’s Audio MIDI Setup it appeared properly with its dual channel 48 kHz/24-bit, as you’ll see in the following screenshot:
Above screenshot, courtesy of Memo Sauceda.
What’s still missing
Sadly, the SC6-L via the Anker converter is silent, both to macOS and to my Google Pixel XL smartphone with Android 10.
Our conclusions
Our conclusion is that a driver is required to make the RØDE SC6-L (Amazon link — B&H link) work on macOS and Android. The hardware connection is indeed there, and I hope that now that the hardware is available thanks to the Anker adapter (≈US$29, Amazon link), either RØDE itself will offer the driver, or will at least publish the information for another developer to create it for Android and macOS. The RØDE SC6-L is such a powerful and underrated device which works wonderfully on iOS. Now let’s unleash it to work with Android and macOS too 🙂
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