Best and Worst Audio Interfaces

00:02 The Behringer UMC 204 HD has high sound quality and great value. 02:00 The SSL2 and Universal Audio Volt 4 are recommended audio interfaces for home recording. 04:09 SSL2 has top-notch sound quality with extremely low noise floor. 06:05 Universal Audio Volt 4 is recommended for recording up to four channels at a time with low noise floor and vintage mode. 08:20 Dedicated line inputs add value and flexibility for external preamp use. 10:04 Limitations of the Universal Audio Volt 4 and Volt 476p audio interfaces 12:14 Metric Halo audio interface offers flexible routing and future-proofing 13:58 External device can help process plugins for high demand sessions. 15:40 The audio interface received a low value score due to noisy preamps and lack of features.

The UAD interfaces are mostly amazing for being able to reliably track with high-quality plugins with very low latency and no chance of "dropouts" that inevitably occur when trying to do input monitoring in your DAW at low buffer settings. You can set a high buffer in the DAW and record through amp sims, compressors, reverbs (some of the best sounding ones that exist) etc, in the UAD Console with very low latency.

Awesome list! I cannot believe this is only 112 views, this is too much quality content. Thank you so much for the effort and money spent on doing this, awesome job!

what held me on this video, was introducing the products honestly, and straight to the point, no dragging on. brilliant experience for when upgrading, no listening to some ones EGO tell you about "how much they know" (too much of that on here) 10 Stars x

Awesome video. Thank you so much for making it. The Behringer interface is so overlooked. I have the UMC 404 HD as a backup interface in my studio. It sounds great, and I love that it has inserts. I track with compression most of the time I use the Tascam model 12 as my main interface and I love that thing.

I bought a Motu M2 when they 1st came out and I could never be happier. Great preamps, very low noise floor and zero coloration of sound. Plus the LCD is pretty to look at! 😁

Good video. Over the past decade audio interfaces designed for home studio use have improved by leaps and bounds. A big part of this are the excellent DAC chips available today, which combined with good, stable (software) drivers, make round trip latency so low that it is generally imperceptible. Also, better mic preamp designs and loop-back features in newer interfaces have helped to sell more (low sensitivity) Shure's SM-7Bs and EV's RE-20s for the fast-growing podcast market. Today, bad audio interfaces are rare, while the market is flooded with really good ones.

the Steinberg UR-C series all have on board DSP. That is part of the price (and feature set). Since you did not know include it as part of the feature set; I question your test methods as you would not have addressed the DSP setup and settings. Also of note is The Class A Yamaha D-Pre is a derivative of Yamaha professional mixers I doubt they are "noisy", but are not Neve preamps also a bit noisy. Noise is not everything. I am not associated with Yamaha or Steinberg and actually a Focusrite fan. I own a Focusrite Forte and Saffire Pro 24

Apollo is largely justified by unison mode in terms of recording more traditionally and the fact that if you've bought UAD plugins in the past, you need DSP to run them (not so important now they're shifting to native plugins). Recording in unison with Neve 1073 is pretty much amazing – it's a great device!

Thank you for the nice video, but I think you were a bit unfair to the Steinberg UR22c. Although it might be a bit noisy when you record a very quiet source, it comes with great features that many interfaces don't have. 1. Onboard DSP fx (and quite good actually) 2. Comes with a very nice suite of fx that use the DSP chip and so they make it very easy to record with fx and no latency and you also have the choice not to print them. 3. The above give you the ability to stream with fx (instagram/Facebook/YouTube live etc.) 4. Connectivity : It can be plugged directly to an iPhone, iPad and record, stream or anything else and also use the onboard dsp with these devices 5. Comes with Cubase AI which is a very good DAW for beginners and not only. 6. Standalone mode so you can take it with you and even use it as a 2 channel mixer with onboard fx, controlling it through an iPad/iPhone For all these reasons I think that you unfair, because you are judging the interface only because of the preamp noise, which again is not a serious factor if you are not using the quietest mics on the planet. Of course I agree with you about the Metric Halo. It's in my top 3 list as well. I agree for the quality of the behringer, too, but I would everyday go for the Steinberg between them two for the additional features. Thank you for the video. Greetings from Greece.

Any review like this that doesn't include Audient is seriously compromised.

Nice list! Would’ve liked to see the Motu M4 and Audient Evo 4 to see how they compete in your list

Apogee and RME would have been nice to include. Just going by my headphones from Youtube I think the UMC204HD and Telefunken mic sounds really great.

I have a UR22C which I got for the DSP capabilities. You didn't mention that you can have realtime compression, EQ, Reverb, AND a guitar amp/gate/speaker sim on EACH channel simultaneously with no latency. I don't print the FX, but it's a real pleasure to track with.

I seriously love the SSL12. My first USB-interface a lot of years ago was the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. I did not have any problems with it. Later I bought the SSL2+ because i needed the midi-connections. Later when I needed more channels I bought the Behringer UMC 1820. That was a big mistake. I just couldn't get a good signal and just had so many noise issues with it. Don't know if it was a faulty unit or if they are all like that. The shop took it in and after looking it at it told me they couldn't repair it and gave me my money back. I then got a Rubix24 which was better than the 1820 for sure, but it still had more noise than I remembered from my SSL2+. So after some hesitation because of the price I returned the Rubix24 and bought the SSL12. And I am so happy with it. I get strong signals and there is pretty much zero noise, even after adding effects like distortion or increasing the gain in my DAW. The SSL12 is just great and I will never again accept anything that doesn't perform as well as it does.

Nice detailed and scientific analysis... I've had to do that "camera" thing when using external preamps and noise can accumulate, as well as the "color" of the sound is hard to predict what you'll get as a result. Thanks for using that analogy. IOWs, just by switching out the "VINTAGE" preamp color in the Volt, it still boosts the signal and introduces color and noise... abet less color. And then you'll have to reduce you gain too. I'm getting a Volt because UAD finally has released Native Versions of their plugins (well many of them). This removes the need to by expensive external UAD Satellite Accelerators for UAD plugins! Yea!!! I have 10 cores in my i7 CPU... Why not use them instead of SHARC Cores? That's what my Neural Network Models do. Or I can send the calls to a GPU but my laptop doesn't have something as powerful as a NVIDIA GPU. So we make due with what we have, but today's laptops are quite powerful for music creation applications.

Nice video. I have both the Behringer UMC204HD and the SSL 2+. I had some issues with the Behringer with Apple Silicon Macs leading me to try the SSL 2+. I am quite pleased with the SSL 2+. I had tried out a MOTU M4 and it screeched and made horrible noise so I swapped it for the SSL 2+ which has performed flawlessly.

I like the footnote you made when talking about the Volt 4's line inputs not having mic pre's for when running through external analog pre-amps. The camera lens analogy is very good. So many folks are using AI's hybrid analog/digital with outboard gear yet double dipping on coloring with 2 mic pre's in unison. I wish the SSL 12 had that option to bypass onboard pre's as well not be USB powered. I have a SSL2+ on a M1 mac mini and Apollo Twin on windows and both are excellent. I'll probably grab a Volt 476 as I plan to add more external gear (have a 1073EQ and a SSL VHD pre's).

I've been using the Steinberg UR22 for many years (not even the UR22C, which is deemed the worst here) and got decent results. Great to know that I must be a l33t audio engineer, and that any shortcomings are due to my crap audio interface. Thanks!

I'm a very happy owner of an SSL 2+. The audio quality of its mic pres are IMHO just as good as my old sold Mindprint Envoice and Joe Meek TwinQ from the early 2000s. My only wish is that the extra outputs weren't RCA connections and that I could have a separate pair of alternative monitor outs like my old M Audio C600 and Digidesign M Box 2 Pro interfaces.