Los Angeles, CA—LEALE, known for his work with Juice WRLD, Deante Hitchcock and Ben Reilly, has long been a Focusrite fan, and recently added an ISA C8X USB-C audio interface to his home studio space in east Atlanta.
His history with Focusrite has evolved organically. Prior to relocating to Atlanta around five years ago, LEALE was based in Chicago, where he co-owned and managed a recording studio, Glass Tree Creative, for nearly a decade. But he also found that those walls couldn’t contain his creative energy, and he found himself increasingly working elsewhere, after hours with a portable setup, using the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 as his primary interface.
After the move to Atlanta, he outfitted his studio with tools he knew he could trust, notably the Scarlett 18i20. In 2025, he was invited to be one of six audio pros at a Focusrite-hosted creative summit in New Orleans known as Flow State, where he was first exposed to the ISA C8X, and he was eager to explore how that new interface could improve his workflow at home even further.
Projects at his home studio run the gamut, from pop and hip-hop tracking and mixing to indie rock and beyond, and the ISA C8X has helped facilitate his busy workload in recent months. “I think that the C8X has really helped me step up my game,” LEALE notes.
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“The first thing I would say is that it has elevated my vocal chain,” he adds. “I would call it an advancement toward better signal, better sound, more character and the right kind of color in the path. Second, I would say that it does several different jobs that I might previously have relied on multiple outboard units to accomplish. Whenever you can look to a single device to do multiple jobs at the same level as several devices would do, that is a win. Any time you can fold down your workflow into a more streamlined path, it not only de-clutters your space in a literal sense, but it reduces variables and possible noise in the signal chain. In terms of the quality of the mic-pre, the simplified routing, and the robust functionality, I support the ISA C8X in a big way.”
