BehringerU-PHORIA UMC1820 USB Audio Interface with MIDAS Preamps, 18x20 I/O, and ADAT Expansion

PS - 28 April 2014. In some of the reviews that I have read some of the correspondents have reported difficulty getting the Behringer UCA202 U Control to record in stereo and some are having difficulty adjusting the volume levels. Sometimes you have to adjust the sound settings in the control panel on a laptop or PC. You have to tell your computer to record in two channels instead of one for stereo. Go into the sounds window and select " Microphone 2 USB codec" with the device plugged in to a USB connexion. Select recording and advanced and set the device to 2 channel CD quality.I use Audacity software. You need to check that Audacity is recording in two channels for stereo recording rather than one channel for mono. You go into "Preferences" which is in the "Edit" menu and then set the USB recording device to stereo in the recording box.If you are having problems setting up the recording volumes then Audacity can be adjusted with the microphone slider which is on the tool bar. This works fine for me with a line level output from my amplifier - I do not use the phono pre-amp from my turntable kit when I record an LP or single. If this fails (or where you do not have a line output from your amp) you could try the headphone output which is usually located on the front of the amplifier. If you turn the amplifier volume control right down then it will attenuate the output level. Using a combination of the Audacity microphone slider and the headphone output you should be able to adjust the volume of the recording level to make sure the recording is loud enough but does not distort. In the view menu you can set Audacity to "show" clipping" . This will display a vertical red line on sections of the recording where the volume levels are too high and therefore the music will sound distorted - this is a very useful tool.I have never used a MAC PC but I would think that it has similar methods of controlling whether you record in stereo or not by using a sound control feature. I would guess that other types of recording software similar to Audacity need to be set up to record and playback in stereo or mono according to your choice.If the above does not work then you are faced with the possibility that some of your equipment is not working correctly from a physical point of view. You could check the connections have been fitted correctly or use alternative equipment to find out what has gone wrong.When set up correctly this product works really well; I am sure you will not be disappointed.Main text: I bought this brilliant device to "digitise" old LPs, which I buy in second hand shops, and archive old audio cassettes before they self destruct.I read all the reviews and I agree with most of them and decided to buy it even though it is of flimsy construction. It is not going to be used very often and I am careful with equipment so it should last years.It literally took me ten minutes to plug it into the line outputs of my amplifier and connect the device to a laptop, then cue up a Beatles 45 and digitise it with Audacity. Audacity is brilliant in my opinion and there is plenty of help text and Wikipedia information to get you going. I deleted the the Beatles 45 file as I just used it to test the recording levels.Next up was a Shadows LP "Rock on with the Shadows in Mono". Yes, you can buy this on CD but sometimes I like to play an ageing LP for old time's sake. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I did not use Audacity to remove any surface noise from the record or clicks or pops; Hank's twanging drowns them out anyway. I played the digital recording back through the same amplifier and neither my wife nor I could hear any difference from the original: it sounded the same warts and all. At the end of the "first side" I felt compelled to jump up and turn the laptop er, record over. What more can I say about the sound quality? This was great stuff - the Shadows back in their 1960's glory, and you cannot damage the needle when you jive.One of the reviewers has complained about the the inability of the analogue converter to sample at 24 bit 96 KHz (24/96) as it is limited to 16 bit 48 KHz. This might affect you if you are mastering music and you want to keep the noise floor down when mixing lots of "takes". So, I take the point.For me, digitising old recordings at 16/44.1 or at red book CD standard is good enough. I fail to see how using a 24/96 sampling rate could improve the sound quality as I am only doing one "take". If you are only going to use this converter to digitise your records you can save yourself money and some disk space by buying this device.I have got plenty of external DACs, so I do not need to use this device for playback from a laptop or PC but I tested it just the same.The Toslink optical output works really well and so do the line outputs.The headphone amplifier is not so good but it is sufficient for my purposes. If you are on the road this device will probably perform better than your laptop's sound card or headphone output.The Behringer does not perform as well as the rinky dink DAC that I have got in my main HI-FI and I could not expect it to. But, it performs well compared to my other portable DACs.There is no Toslink input facility.Pros :-You can use a laptop for line output sources.You no longer have to use the line inputs of a desktop PC. You can connect it to a USB port on the front rather than fiddle about with connecting line outputs to the input connexions on the back of the PC. This is especially useful if your kit is under a desk.You can take your laptop to your HI-FI equipment rather than the other way round. There is no need to unplug your turntable or cassette player etc. and then plug it all back in again.It is small, very portable and very versatile - an ADC and DAC in one box!Cons: None really unless you are going to subject the device to hard and continuous use.In conclusion: Five stars for sonic performance and overall convenience; it is simply brilliant . But, it gets only three stars for build quality.The USB deck can now be given away.

I bought this to enable a stereo line input on my laptop, which like most modern laptops lacks such a facility.It works out of the box with no need to install drivers, although you can install the ASIO For All software if wanted (a separate and free download). You will almost certainly need to go into the Windows sound device settings and configure it for two channel (stereo) recording, since Windows seems to assume all sound input is mono.It has a "monitor" facility, which means you can plug in headphones to the 3.5mm stereo socket on the back of the device and listen to the sound it is capturing, a useful feature.Stereo recording and playback both work very well and bypass the limitations of standard laptop sound hardware with ease.Out of curiosity I wanted to see if it would work as a souncard oscilloscope input. I already have a "real" oscilloscope so don't actually need such a thing, but it does perform reasonably well as a two channel scope, albeit limited to audio frequencies (20Hz to 20kHz) and 1Vrms signal levels. The sampling rate and Windows recording volume settings need tweaked to get this working well, 4 to 8kHz sampling rate and volume setting of 35 resulted in a 1kHz sine wave being well displayed on my laptop. It's obviously not in the same league as a proper scope, but for simple work on low level audio frequency signals it could be useful at a fraction of the cost.This doesn't come with any software CD. I already have Audacity installed on my computer and it works fine with that. I am no audiophile so I cannot say how it works with other applications, but for my purposes it works perfectly and the price is hard to beat. Possibly those requiring more sophisticated studio level facilities will want something different but for casual home use it really is a winner and I don't hesitate to recommend it.