Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD

After doing a lot of research and reading reviews on a lot of different Audio Interfaces, I came to the conclusion that the Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD offers the best bang for your buck.

The great thing about this Audio Interface is that it’s excellent both for starting musicians and also experienced ones who need a simple Interface to do some home recording.

It’s got 4 ins and 4 outs via USB, MIDI I/O, zero latency monitoring capabilities, 4 inserts for external processing, Stereo/Mono Switch and it can record at a 24-bit/192kHz resolution, which is really high-quality.

It’s a very affordable Audio Interface  and honestly, with all the features it provides, it’s the best one overall when taking the price into account.

If, however, you want a step up in quality…

Audient iD14

The Audient iD14  comes with the ASP8024 Class A Mic Preamp Circuit which is the same one used in the Audient consoles and it also has the Burr-Brown Converters.

The sound quality is absolutely fantastic, but it costs significantly more than the UMC404HD.

Even though it only has 2 inputs, each with a mic/line input on combi XLR/jack sockets, it can be expanded through the optical input which allows for an extra 8 channels of ADAT at 44.1kHZ or 48kHz, 4 channels of ADAT at 88.2kHz or 96kHZ, or 2 channels of S/PDIF between 44.1kHz and 96kHz.Channel one also has a ¼” instrument input.

Both channels have separate phantom power switches and they can increase the gain by up to 56dB.

It comes with a great software control panel where you can show and hide different sections of the mixer and have a lot of control over what is going on!

Like i said, it only has two channels but they can be expanded through the optical input by connecting an A-D and D-A converter such as the Audient ASP800.

Or maybe you’re interested in a much more affordable A-D and D-A converter, like the Behringer ADA8200.