Which audio interface shall I buy?

[behenny]

Looking at buying an audio interface for a home recording setup. Ideally something under £100. Probably second hand. I’ve been looking at the well known focusrite Scarlett series. I’m sure I want the 2i2 but not sure which generation to go for out of the 3. I’ll be running it with my Neat worker bee mic. My priority is obviously with the sound quality but also don’t want to break the bank. Not against another brand although I’ve heard I can’t go wrong with the Scarlett. Would appreciate any advice! Thanks!

[Sam Spoons]

You won't go far wrong with the Scarlett. If you decide to buy new the Behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD comes in well under budget and seems to get excellent comments on here.

[Arpangel]

You won't go far wrong with the Scarlett. If you decide to buy new the Behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD comes in well under budget and seems to get excellent comments on here.

^^^^

The Behringer is great, I’ve one on my PC, surprised at how good the audio quality is for the money. There are no issues, just gets on with it.

[behenny]

cheers I’ll check it out!

[ef37a]

The UMC204HD is still well under £100 and is better equipped for I/O. It is also the start of the range that has its own ASIO drivers AFAIK. The 'lower' marks use the ASIO4all 'trick' and whilst this gets one out of a hole, dedicated ASIO drivers are generally better.

I had the 204HD for a few weeks and it checked out very well. The mic amplifiers are very good for an AI in this class. Sent it on to son in France and he has not complained!

Dave.

[DGL.]

The UMC204HD is still well under £100 and is better equipped for I/O. It is also the start of the range that has its own ASIO drivers AFAIK. The 'lower' marks use the ASIO4all 'trick' and whilst this gets one out of a hole, dedicated ASIO drivers are generally better.

I had the 204HD for a few weeks and it checked out very well. The mic amplifiers are very good for an AI in this class. Sent it on to son in France and he has not complained!

Dave.

One little tip with the cheaper Behringer USB AI's (i.e. the little plastic ~£20 units) is to find a copy of the old Behringer ASIO drivers, these are not just ASIO-for-All but proper (ploytec?) drivers, despite their age they work fine on W10 64bit and naturally work much better than the current generic drivers.

[ef37a]

The UMC204HD is still well under £100 and is better equipped for I/O. It is also the start of the range that has its own ASIO drivers AFAIK. The 'lower' marks use the ASIO4all 'trick' and whilst this gets one out of a hole, dedicated ASIO drivers are generally better.

I had the 204HD for a few weeks and it checked out very well. The mic amplifiers are very good for an AI in this class. Sent it on to son in France and he has not complained!

Dave.

One little tip with the cheaper Behringer USB AI's (i.e. the little plastic ~£20 units) is to find a copy of the old Behringer ASIO drivers, these are not just ASIO-for-All but proper (ploytec?) drivers, despite their age they work fine on W10 64bit and naturally work much better than the current generic drivers.

I still have the driver disc that came with the ill fated BCA2000 is that what you mean?

If it is of any use to anybody I could We Transfer it to them.

Dave.

[behenny]

Sorry I'm a bit new to home recording and I'm a little bit confused about the drivers. I've used asio drivers before for my very basic audio interface (alesis core 1, which doesn't have phantom power). So in short the behringer has better drivers than the scarlett? As long as I'm not missing out on sound quality I would be inclined to go for the cheaper behringer. Cheers.

[ef37a]

Sorry I'm a bit new to home recording and I'm a little bit confused about the drivers. I've used asio drivers before for my very basic audio interface (alesis core 1, which doesn't have phantom power). So in short the behringer has better drivers than the scarlett? As long as I'm not missing out on sound quality I would be inclined to go for the cheaper behringer. Cheers.

Now I could get into trouble for saying this but. I do not think Focusrite drivers are anything to shout about? Not at least at the budget level. During my admittedly short time with the 204 I had no trouble at all with clicks or other driver related issues. I did not try ultra low buffers or strive for very low latency but as a working AI the 204 was fine, comparable at least I would say to the 2i2.

IMHO, so long as you don't want very low latency, for MIDI work say, I am sure the extra inputs of the Behringer will prove useful in the future as well as the savings. Even if you DID want super low latency I think you would have to move up to the £200 area and go for something like the Native Instruments KA6 or the new MOTU. You also need a pretty sprightly computer.

Dave.

[Drew Stephenson]

I'm a happy focusrite user here but I'd agree with Dave that at this price point there'll be nothing to choose between them for most practical purposes. And the drivers won't make any difference to the sound quality.

[Sam Spoons]

Definitely worth going for the UMC204 if the cheaper ones rely on ASIO4All drivers. I've been out of PC/Windows for a long time now but when I did run windows, dedicated ASIO drivers were significantly better than ASIO4All and head and shoulders better than generic drivers.

I doubt that the Berry has better drivers than the Focusrite but I wouldn't expect them to be inferior either.

[DGL.]

The UMC204HD is still well under £100 and is better equipped for I/O. It is also the start of the range that has its own ASIO drivers AFAIK. The 'lower' marks use the ASIO4all 'trick' and whilst this gets one out of a hole, dedicated ASIO drivers are generally better.

I had the 204HD for a few weeks and it checked out very well. The mic amplifiers are very good for an AI in this class. Sent it on to son in France and he has not complained!

Dave.

One little tip with the cheaper Behringer USB AI's (i.e. the little plastic ~£20 units) is to find a copy of the old Behringer ASIO drivers, these are not just ASIO-for-All but proper (ploytec?) drivers, despite their age they work fine on W10 64bit and naturally work much better than the current generic drivers.

I still have the driver disc that came with the ill fated BCA2000 is that what you mean?

If it is of any use to anybody I could We Transfer it to them.

Dave.

It's the BEHRINGER USB AUDIO Driver Win64 2.8.40/BEHRINGER_2902_X64_2.8.40

From the readme file,

1. HARDWARE Support:
--------------------
UMA25S, UCA200*, UCA202, UCA222, UFO202, UCG102, iAXE393/624/629 and many more

It also worked for the USB interface in my LEM RDX204U mixer.

GS supports zip file uploads so I might put the copy I have over there.

EDIT: now available in this thread https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-c ... st14823569