Best Audio Interfaces | Top 10 Under $300 with Audio Examples

in this video we are going to be comparing 10 audio interfaces available on the market right now for less than $300 we will be comparing the m-audio air 192 six the tascam us 2x2 the Native Instruments Komplete audio to the Mackey Onix produce of 2.2 the roland Rubik that personas audio box I to the Steinberg you are 22 see the focusrite scarlett 2i2 which is the best-selling audio interface in the world right now the brand new SS cell 2 and the Audion ID 1 for now I do need to preface this video with a small apology a lot of people have asked about the behringer euphoria series but I haven't been able to get hold of one in the UK we're still in lockdown and there are none in the country so I'm sorry about that I can't include it in this video but I will try and include it in a future video I also couldn't get hold of the Matsui m2 or m4 I'm hearing great things about those but we have plenty to be getting on with in this video there are many details we could cover in this video so forgive me if I do skim over some of them I will be going into more detail on each of these devices in subsequent videos there will be audio examples of all of these interfaces in action later on in the video on acoustic guitar spoken-word for podcasting and vocals all ten of these audio interfaces have the following features two XLR jack combination inputs single or double Heisey instrument input two jack outputs for monitoring USB connections either a or C one time stereo headphone output 48 volt phantom power adjustable gain knobs and a frequency response of 20 to 20 kilohertz with the exception of the Presonus i to that claims to capture between 10 and 40 kilohertz they all USB powered making some of them very portable they all work with Mac and Windows and they all have 24-bit and 192 kilohertz converters with the exception of the audience personas and tascam they record at 96 kilohertz and the new Steinberg model which claims to have a bit depth of 32 bits if you'd like to find out more about what bit depth and sample rates are there is a link to a video in the description below with information on that now all of these come with some kind of music production software or da W as they're known so buying hardware units at the moment is a great time to get into music production and podcasting moving on to the devices first up we have the m-audio M audio were founded in 1988 to design software and hardware solutions to address the early challenges of integrating audio and MIDI together with computers this unit comes with Pro Tools first a more ideal addition than Ableton Live light it has MIDI in and outs it comes with USB C and USB a cables which is nice this and the SSL two are noticeably the biggest devices in this lineup it's got a good solid desktop design the knobs feel solid and have a nice resistance to them giving me confidence it's a well-built product and it has a clear input gain level display the phantom power is a switch which I prefer to a button because it's a lot more obvious whether it is on or not the downside to this is that the XLR ZAR on the back of the unit which makes me think M audio of designed this as a desktop interface as opposed to a portable interface a lot of these interfaces have direct monitoring which is a feature I really like which means you can balance the volume of the signal going into the interface from your microphone or guitar with the audio coming from your da W and on the m-audio this works really nicely the headphone output is listed at 104 decibels which was plenty for my sennheiser HD 300 pro headphones this output is very loud but the audio does start to distort towards the top end of the output the tascam us 2 by 2 is a very sturdy device straight out of the box I'm filled with confidence that this is a well-built unit the dials are a little bit close together and the direct input dial goes the opposite way on this one which I found a little counterintuitive but this is a minor detail the input gain is 57 decibels on this unit and even though this is only 2 more decibels on the m-audio there is a lot more Headroom and the sound towards the top end of the gain was very clear and sharp the headphone output is not quite as loud as the m-audio but it's more than enough to play with if you dial and monitor balance towards your door input the output produces a very clean signal right up to full volume the Native Instruments Komplete audio 2 comes with Ableton lite live this and the scarlett are the small units it feels a little bit light and the plastic casing feels a little bit cheap the design falls in line with all of the native instrument products such as their MIDI DJ deck range and there's a standalone item I'm not the biggest fan of the aesthetics the dials offer a lot of resistance which makes them feel stiff to adjust because they're so small the LED input display consists of four blue lights and then red I personally prefer a traffic light system with a yellow LED in between the headphone output on this unit is quite low and the only way I could get a good output was by dialing their direct monitoring all the way to the door input which then means you can't hear yourself to get a good balance where you can hear yourself and the input it's a very low output and personally for me it wasn't enough the good thing about this device though is there is virtually no noise on the preamp even at maximum gain the Roland Rubik also comes with Ableton like live this is a very strong robust well built unit it has MIDI interface connections the stiff dials are not hugely comfortable if we're being picky due to the protruding fret style indicators this and the scarlett are the only two devices without a built-in direct monitoring adjustment dial which means you'll need to either use the scarlett mix application or adjust the levels in your door to get a good headphone balance the led gain display on this unit is very slow to respond so finding the right input can be quite fiddly this is one of the units that struggle to power my sm7b and the preamp introduces quite a lot of noise towards the top end of the game to use an sm7b with this unit you may need a preamp booster such as the cloud lifter cl1 the Mackie onyx producer comes with traction music production software it has MIDI inputs on the back this is one of the devices with quite a severe gain shelf towards the top end of the preamp gain making it very hard to set a level it was either too quiet or too hard even at the fraction of a turn of the dial there is a very strong headphone output making it easy to get a good balance between direct monitoring and your door input Steinberg you are 22 C comes with Cubase ie for mac and Windows and cubasis le for recording and mixing on your iPod and this is where this device could become a new industry standard by powering the device using the included plug you can connect to your iPad or phone and using their free app you can record your mobile device making it the ultimate portable recording setup with the app you control the onboard built-in DSP which enables you to monitor with some basic effects including reverb in real-time with zero latency this is a feature that stands the universal audio Apollo above a lot of other interfaces and it's a really exciting move by Steinberg to close this gap between budget and more professional units Steinberg have listed this unit is having a 32 bit depth converter now 16 bit depth gives you a dynamic range of 96 decibels which is huge and you're unlikely to hear that certainly in an mp3 or on a streaming website or on a CD a bit depth of 24 bits gives us a dynamic range of 144 decibels which is loads 32 bits gives us a dynamic range of a hundred and ninety-two decibels there's no where we're gonna hear that and live to tell the tale so I'm not quite sure where Steinberg are going with this there was some thought that this 32 bit could be in relation to the DSP processing however on their website it clearly says this is part of the converting process and more importantly digital audio workstations such as logic and pro tools process at 24 bits so 32 is a little bit irrelevant at this point until the software catches up the one thing I don't like about this unit is there is no signal indicator all you see is a red LED when the signals clipping I would like to see some acknowledgment that's there is some signal getting into the device the headphone output is very loud when setting the direct monitor input to full however when I set a balance for singing into I didn't feel like it was quite loud enough and annoyingly the phantom power is rather conveniently located on the back of the unit the personas audio box I - includes studio one artist it has MIDI iOS has a dynamic range of 105 decibels the dials are very stiff on this unit it has green LEDs to indicate signal and then go straight to red for clipping again I'd have preferred a traffic light system the preamp dials on the personas are set to increments which can make it a little tricky to fine tune the gain this unit suffers from the same problem the Mackay Onyx does where at the top end of the Priya all the sudden there is a massive gain shelf and you'll hear a new audio later the volume difference between the top two increments where it's a little bit too quiet with my sm7b and then all of a sudden far too loud and the sound clips and distorts the focusrite scarlett 2i2 comes with Pro Tools first and Ableton Live Lite with 55 decibels of input gain this was enough to drive my sm7b and you've got the well-known halo traffic light system for the input game a big feature of the scarlett is the air mode which is an EQ curve imposed onto the input signal modeled on the company's legendary is a preamps which capture up to 22 kilohertz as soon as I plug the scarlett in a little window pops up on chrome asking me if I would like to be taken to their website to set up all the bundle features that come with the interface this was the only device that this happened but they've made it super easy to set up and I really like this feature the scarlett comes with loads of additional software to find out more about this click the link for a video in the description below comparing the scarlett with a UAD apollo now the bad thing about this device is that there is no direct input monitoring dial the input monitoring is either on or it's in stereo mode which for some reason means it comes out of one side your headphones only or it's off there's no way of dialing in like other than using the gain but you don't want to do that because you want to set the gain for recording levels so you have to adjust the balance in your door now I don't understand my focus right I've let this slip when all of the other interfaces in this price range have a direct monitoring dial the Audion comes with its own intuitive mix software which is very similar to the universal audio console software that you get with the Apollo units this is the only device that is a dot supported on the back there is an optical data connection where you can connect Hardware units to extend your input up to ten this unit has a hundred and eleven decibel headphone output range and this is by far the loudest unit in this video it's got a 66 decibel mic preamp range which is piles of head room before noise creeps in the only thing I don't like about this device are the phantom power levers on the top I think they're too easy to knock by accident the SSL ii comes with Pro Tools first and a series of their bomb factory plugins ableton like live plugins and a gigabyte of samples from loop cloud it also comes with USB C and USB a cables which is a nice feature this is the largest of the 10 devices and all the inputs are on the back of the unit which suggests SSL have designed this to be a resident desktop device it's got a traffic light input meter which I like the preamps have a gain range of 62 decibels which is plenty before any noise kicks in the headphone output is also 111 decibels but despite being the same spec as the Audion it's not quite as loud the SSL 2 has legacy 4k mode which is similar to the Scarlett's air function this imparts the tonality of the original SSL 4000 on to the preamps the effect of this is heightened top-end and the subtle addition of harmonic distortion to add the classic SSL character to the sound right let's hear how all of these sounds starting with acoustic guitar and then some spoken word for you podcasters out there and then with some vocals to finish it off to record the guitar I've used an SE 4400 a condenser mic with a reflector shield around the back of it to isolate the sound from the guitar as closely as possible for the spoken word and the vocals I've used an sm7b microphone a lot of podcasters and vocalists are using this mic and I thought it would be a great microphone to put these interfaces through their paces this is a very high gain requiring microphone and although most of the interface has handled it just about there a couple that did struggle noticeably the Mackie Onix and the Presonus audio box weren't really loud enough at the top end of the preamp and then all of a sudden they seem to hit some kind of game shelf and that the gain would boost dramatically and all of a sudden it would be far too loud so although every effort has been made to get all of these audio recordings as close as possible with the gain and I've measured it using an input meter with these two devices and one or two of the others it was quite difficult and across 10 devices this isn't as straightforward as you would think but I think you'll agree with when looking at the audio files they're pretty close [Music] [Applause] [Music] so there's not a huge difference in how these interfaces sound and I wouldn't expect much difference in this price range the standard unit for me so far though is the tascam it sounds clear bright and quite smooth next we have the spoken word section and I've put the personas audio box at the end and the reason for this is you're gonna hear it at two different game structures now like I said earlier this unit suffers from having a quite drastic game shelf all of a sudden it's either too quiet as you'll hear or too loud and clipping slightly so watch out for that at the end one two this is my voice going through the m-audio air this is my voice talking through the tascam us two by two this is my voice talking through the Native Instruments Komplete audio - this is my voice through the Rowland's Rubik this is my voice talking through the Mackey Onix producer - point - this is my voice talking through the Steinberg you are 22 see this is my voice talking through the focusrite scarlett 2i2 this is my voice going through the audience ID 1 4 this is my voice going through the solid state logic - this is my voice through the ssl - with legacy 4k mode this is my voice talking through the focusrite scarlett 2i2 with air mode on this is my voice talking through the personas audio box i - this is my voice talking through the personas audio box i - and finally moving on to the vocals again same thing the personas is at the end he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning he gave me life for my creation lit the fuse now I am burning and this bitter sweet sound rollercoaster takes my soul so as you guys can tell there's not a great difference between these interfaces and I wouldn't expect them to be one at this price point I would only expect to be able to hear a difference with a significantly more expensive unit I do have a video coming up where I'll be comparing the scarlet and the claret from Focusrite so maybe we'll hear a difference between those two interfaces but for me the standout ones with the vocals again were the tascam and I quite like the scarlet with air mode imposed just before we go I'm going to be starting a new series on Tuesday called two minute tech review Tuesdays which is going to be a concise you guessed it two minute video exploring products microphones plugins reviewing gear all things home studio related starting next week we'll go into more detail on each of these audio interfaces so hit that subscribe button so you don't miss one of those episodes with that in mind if you'd like to find out more about the differences between a budget and a more professional sounding audio interface click on this video here or alternatively YouTube will make a suggestion for a video here thanks for watching and I will see you all with more lockdown here again this is getting ridiculous very soon [Music]

Channel: Ed Thorne Music Production

Views: 114,570

Keywords: top 10 audio interfaces, best audio interfaces 2020, best usb audio interfaces 2020, audio interface, best audio interface, audio interface comparison, sanjay c audio interface, M audio, m audio air, tascam, tascam us 2x2, comparison, native instruments, komplete audio 2, mackie, mackie onyx, mackie onyx producer, roland, roland rubix, presonus, presonus audiobox itwo, steinberg, steinberg ur22c, ssl, ssl 2 interface, focusrite, scarlett 2i2 3rd gen, audient, audient id14, ed thorne

Id: x50dw_BfudU

Length: 18min 14sec (1094 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020