Behringer U-PHORIA UMC404HD Audiophile 4x4, 24-Bit/192 kHz USB Audio/MIDI Interface with Midas Mic Preamplifiers

I bought this because my Focusrite didn't have balanced outputs. The drivers installed themselves auto-magically. It worked perfectly when I plugged it in. This interface works flawlessly and fixed my buzzing problems! It has 4 inputs which is really useful because I can have multiple instruments plugged in, and switch easily between them when recording. It has the most features for this price range, so I would say the interface has really good value. Definitely pick one up, you won't be disappointed. Intuitive to use, didn't have to rtfm.

At one time Behringer products were the ban of the industry, cheaply made/reversed engineered/and slave labor were the typical comments you'd hear about them...I have owned several products that were frankly unusable (cheap compressor and a horrific ADA8000)...since purchasing Midas and a few other companies and being re-branded as Global Music I have to say things have really turned around... First lets talk about the drivers, if you are running a Mac OS the drivers are already installed, plug it in go to your midi/audio device settings and choose it, you're done...in Windows (depending on OS version) you are going to need to download and install the appropriate drivers...depending on your computer this can be painless or a nuisance but thats hardly a Behringer problem...my install went quickly and thank god the old days of having to restart your computer every time you installed something is over... Once installed the drivers are pretty seamless...depending on the application it seems that bit depth is adjusted on the fly, which is also a wonderful new thing, not sure if its just ASIO 2 or what but I like it. As far as the U-phoria UMC404HD...for $99.00 you are not going to beat the quality or functionality of this device... I own a plethora of state of the art converters, from Apogee and Prism to the high end Lynx stuff and even some developmental TI and AKM boards...I also have a handful of the smaller Roland/Edirol devices as well as a Duet from Apogee...so my "A/B" comparison pool is above average (yes I might be a hoarder I never sell or get rid of any audio gear)... Frankly the converters in this UMC-404HD are as good as anything in my arsenal (also considering that at anything over 96kHz you are already outside the realm of tangible human hearing when it comes to noise floor anyway)...I have a tendency to NOT like any AKM converter and I pretty much could tell these were NOT that typical wet blanket smearing that a badly implemented "signal chain/psu/chip-choice" usually gives you...these converters are smooth, no clipping, no computer noise (switching power supplies in an DAC power system are a terrible idea but the technology is apparently coming round)...I haven't tried them at 192kHz because its really just a preference and eats up hard drive space (google NWaudioguy and read his stuff on this), but at 96khz everything is smooth as butter crisp and detailed just the way you want it. The Midas pre's are wonderfully quiet, I would compare them to my API stuff with less gain, and overall this device seems to be on the quieter end of converter boxes/pre's, everything is sorta preset at a lower input level, which is fine if you ask me, no reason to drive your digital hot anyway...there is a hint of color but no smearing and no real clouding of the audio signal, its pretty much "what you hear is what you get", I cannot say this about any of my other devices with built in preamps...I NEVER use a devices pre's because I have a rack full of vintage stuff that is better, but this device is now my exception, it sounds as good as the rack stuff, just not as loud...speaking of which (built in preamps) you CAN bypass the pre's by simply using a TRS on the insert jack on the back, so if you don't like the pre's just bypass them and use your own outboard, you still get quality DA/AD conversion and you can real-time monitor with the mix knob on the front...but like I said this product seems to be on the low end of output level so that rule applies across the board to your headphone out...you are not going to be driving some high end/high impedance headphone to bleeding ears level with this thing, not a lot of volume range on the headphone mix but so what? Typically you should be sending out a separate headphone mix to a band anyway and you've only got 4 inputs so lets not pretend this is for tracking an orchestra, it is what it is and its quite good at that. As far as functionality, having an A/B monitor switch on the front of this device is brilliant thinking on Behringers part...no other device in this price range is that versatile... The ONLY drawback/complaint I have is really just a minor one and that is the phantom power switch powers ALL of the channels at once, (not that phantom will harm a non-phantom mic) and I get why they did it (cost probably and for what? A few guys like me complaining?) but it seems to me there should be a way to change this in software if you want (my Apogee Duet lets me do this). I'm not going to go into all of the functions, others (and the Behringer sales video) will do a better job there...all I have to say is if you have heard in the past how crappy Behringer products are and avoid them like the plague I can assure you that something has changed in this company for the better...now the one caveat to that is I have not had to deal with their customer service, for all I know it could be non-existent, but I highly doubt it, they seem to be forward thinking here and listening to the customer base much better than the others...at one time if you had Behringer products in your studio people mocked you, that has changed...if you DON'T have their stuff now I would say you haven't tried them...this is now my favorite converter because, well...the price and the build quality makes my pocket book smile and the ease of use and functionality makes my workflow smile...the fact that its easily portable and I can switch it between DAW systems super fast makes it a bonus all the way around. Get one. They are cheap.

So far I can't complain. The device does everything it's supposed to do that I have tested so far. That's everything except MIDI. Looking at the aggregate reviews of this product and its siblings on Amazon you will see a really mixed bag of results including as much as 12% one star. That can be a bad sign, but not necessarily. Looking at the reviews of this exact product on another web site that sells musical and pro-audio exclusively the aggregate rating there is higher with a near-zero fraction of very low ratings. That fact combined with the low cost of the product made it worth taking a chance on. At this price point, compared with what I will have to pay for a different very high-end product that pretty much takes out all the risk makes this Behringer product "trial" essentially disposable. For me, that's pretty much how I have to look at the costs of these things. That won't be true for everyone. So my experience with this so far: Set it up with some audio sources to the inputs, verified they were routing through to the headphone output, made sure I understood how to use the controls associated with this basic mode of operation. All good. Tested it with a CD player, a guitar (through an effects box), and a microphone. Phantom power is good, but it's all-or-nothing for all four inputs so watch out for that if you are using mixed microphones. Downloaded the UMC driver from Behringer and installed it. No problem, no conflicts. This is on Windows 7. Make sure you're up to date on windows updates, and read the release notes for the driver thoroughly. There are a couple of things that will break the driver due to missing updates or non-default group policy. It's all spelled out in the release notes. This alone probably accounts for half of the "didn't work with my computer" problems. After installing the drivers I connected the device to the computer for the first time. It was recognized and appeared in the driver's on-screen device list/manager window. This is a nice feature of the driver. You can't do a ton of stuff with it but at least you can see what's connected and you can do some basic configuration. Next thing I did was start my DAW. I'm using the current (free) version of Cake Walk by BandLab. I figured it would see the new audio device and ask me if I wanted to switch my input and output assignments to this device. What it actually did was blue screen the computer! And it was not a fluke. Totally repeatable, as long as the 404's usb cable was plugged in. But it started with no problem with the 404 disconnected. Once Cake Walk was running I connected the usb from the 404 again and everything was ok. Cake walk recognized the audio devices and I switched my inputs and outputs over to it accordingly. With that step done, Cake Walk now opens and closes and opens again while the 404 is connected with no problems. I would have to say it's a toss-up between blaming the UMC driver or Cake Walk for this initial problem. It doesn't matter, it was just a transient. So now my audio is going in and coming out of the computer. I'm really just learning Cake Walk so I'm not doing a lot of complex tests at this point. I recorded some audio off the input from the 404 and played it back through the 404 and that all worked. Audio quality is fine. I'm not an audiophile and I'm not using this for professional recording and it suits my needs for now. A couple of negatives: Phantom power is not individually selectable per input. Everyone will complain about this. The headphone / monitor output on the front panel can only listen to two of the four output channels (audio coming from the computer) at once. A pushbutton on the front panel selects between outputs 1+2, or 3+4. You cannot get all four at once, and this is quite a limitation if you're not using a mixer. Overall I'm totally happy with this so far. I have not experienced any of the complaints that I have read in other reviews. It will be interesting to see if it holds up over time.

Tres bonne carte son externe Facile à installer et qualité Au rdv

Sicuramente un prodotto che in quanto a qualità\pezzo batte tutti Molto buono il convertitore Driver abbastanza stabili , i pre midas sono fuori faccia in senso positivo. Ha tutto quello che serve

Good product

Great value for money. You won't find a sound card with this build quality and with 4in/out ports. The knobs have nice resistance, so you can't accidentally bump it to a higher level. which is good in a dark environment. The sound quality from this unit is also superb.

Soy un usuario no experimentado y la compramos para grabar un podcast hasta el momento a cumplido todo lo esperado por el precio es una gran opción