goodbye APOGEE DUET, hello NEW AUDIO INTERFACE!!! // Steinberg UR44C Review

[Music] let's talk music [Music] well i'm back everyone i know you all have been waiting anxiously for my next um let's talk let's talk music gear show installment and here it is so buckle up kiddos now first of all off the off the start i just want to mention like like the youtube comment section is usually full of like really awful things that people say to other people and i've just not seen that on on my videos and it's you know it's diverted my expectations a little bit and it's kind of a letdown um you guys are extremely nice and generous and encouraging which is fine but you know just moving forward just i'd like you to be a little more awful so if you could just say some really hurtful things in the comments i feel like it would fit a little bit better into youtube land uh if you were just kind of mean so yeah do what you will with that next today on the show i have got a new audio interface last time we talked about the apogee duet 2. i don't remember what i scored it it's fine it's it's nice interface it sounds really good it uh it's just kind of outdated it's old this is like from this is like eight years old at this point so i bought the this this is a steinberg i bought a steinberg ur 44 c this is like not a super well-known brand i think they're they've been around a long time but like as far as like the hottest audio interfaces that sell just off the shelves like crazy this isn't one of them this isn't like a focusrite or an apogee or anything like that that being said i think it's of a similar quality so i guess i'll just go over kind of the main features to start off again i'm not a huge like spec person so i'll put i'll put up the specs somewhere somewhere i don't know you'll see them one of the things i like about this is it has got four mic preamps on the front uh and also it's got two line in on the back so it's got one two three four and then it's got five and six on the back so you can you can plug in a total of six things to record them simultaneously into this thing so if you wanted to record a drum set or whatever i like actually just leaving it set up with my keyboard plugged into the stereo the five and six in the back so my keyboard is always plugged in it's got uh it's always plugged in in stereo and then i've got these four to plug in mics or do extra things do guitar voice drums it's also got two uh it's got the main outputs on the back you know to your monitors and then it's also got line outputs so if you wanted to run your inputs in and then out the back if you're running into like a pa system or something you could do that which is cool it's also this is like actually a pretty big selling feature for me i don't know why i like it has two uh two headphone outputs so if i wanted to listen with headphones with a friend uh i can do that which is great it's got phantom power all the normal things you know a big old big old volume knob it's got midi in and out so you could do midi without having to run it right into your computer the interface is usbc hence the steinberg ur 44c there was an older model that was just a ur-44 that was a usb a or b or whatever the adapter is but this is a usb-c so it's the smaller kind of form factor and will probably take us years into the future with that usbc standard so that's good so it's future proofed a little bit overall build quality is awesome like i'm so surprised actually it's all like metal and it's really heavy duty the knobs feel good nothing feels rickety i'm really happy with how it feels and the overall build quality i was actually really surprised sound quality if you're looking to buy this you're probably not a pro you're probably not an expert you know audio engineer so if like if you're watching this video you're probably in the same boat as me where you just like to record stuff from home for fun and maybe make some songs and post them online and that kind of stuff and it yeah it's it's great it's fantastic for that i you know i can't imagine maybe i mean maybe they use this in professional studios all over the world but i kind of doubt it but that's not what it's for um i it it's great for me and i'm sure it'd be great for most of you it's easy to get caught up in like the whole gear in the whole gear world and kind of get overwhelmed with it and think you have have to have the nicest most high quality stuff and but when really that is not what we need to do what we want to do well uh if i were to compare the quality of the ur steinberg interfaces to another interface on the market i would probably say the those kind of lower range focusrite interfaces i think they're called the scarlets i would compare it to those the scarlet line actually this i would as far as build quality i feel like this is a little higher quality and it's not obnoxious and red and annoying colors this is just like really subtle which i i prefer some people really like bright bright stuff but as far as just the overall quality i would say it compares to that focusrite scarlett series but the cool thing is this is actually a very good price i believe it sells for 350 new the ur 44c which the the comparable model from the focusrite brand um is for 3.99 so 400 so this is 50 cheaper for basically i pretty much the same interface or same like the same specs not the same interface the same specs just seemed like it was a better deal another cool thing is i actually went on i think it was sam ash sam ash's like a music gear website and i typed in this model and this product and it came up as they had an open box model that was discounted so i got this for uh 300 instead of 350. so i got yeah again 50 cheaper off the list price 100 cheaper than the comparable focus rate so i like it a lot so far a couple things that i don't like no just kidding i'm i like it i'm not gonna throw it um a couple things that i don't like are first i plugged it into my i normally use a mac when i record music and stuff which is great but um i plugged it into my windows pc you can see it right there that white thing right there yeah that's like a pc that i built and runs windows and plug this in and it was working i opened youtube and i clicked play and turned up the volume and then the youtube video just froze and stuff and it just kept glitching and buffering and not even buffering it would just skip and audio would cut in and out switched audio output devices on my computer and i switched it to just like my headphones that were plugged directly into the computer and then it was fine and then i switched back to the output being the ur-44c and it started to glitch again so and i updated all the audio drivers i updated all the stuff i updated with the firmware and the audio drivers for this and the audio drivers on my pc and it still did it and so i mean i built this pc so it maybe is some user error thing that's happening probably probably that's probably what it is but i couldn't get to work and i feel like i'm somewhat kind of a techie and i couldn't figure it out so i don't use this on my windows pc not saying that it won't work on yours it just doesn't work great on mine as far as mac goes it works great i'm really happy with it the installation process was kind of a bugger so basically when i had this apogee duet well i still have it but when i used it regularly because there's no buttons on this thing basically all the controls are done from your this piece of software on the computer called maestro and so if you want to adjust any of the settings you have to do it in this software and so i was just conditioned to believe that steinberg had this special software that i had to use in order for this to work and so i went on steinberg's website and there was this big download where it said like download all the updates for the firmware and the drivers and all the software that you'll need and all this stuff so download it here and i you know i registered the product and i clicked the big download button and it downloaded like six things and i should have known like don't download six things at once maybe do them all individually anyway i downloaded all six things everything installed it gave me a bunch of software i didn't need and it actually installed this weird registration like product registration software on my computer where it wanted me to register that i owned this and then it wanted me to register um like logic and final cut and all my programs that are i bought legit through apple years ago but i wanted me to register them and i couldn't open my any files with this thing installed on my computer it would say you need to register and i didn't want to because i don't want to give out my information so um that happened and i was literally locked out of all my recordings all of my songs all of my software and so i was like okay well there goes all all my work that i've ever done in my entire life bye see you later [Music] and so i immediately uninstalled that software i immediately installed everything plugged this in and it worked great without anything installed so don't install stuff go to their website if you get this there's an installation to update the firmware of the actual device and then there's an update to just download the drivers for your computer and that's the extent that you'll need don't install the extra software stuff because you don't need it it's just a bunch of baloney that's what's great about this is it has all the buttons and everything on it so you can just control everything from the device itself unlike the apigee which you needed software to run it you don't need software to run this just just use it which is i actually really like that about it so in the conclusion i would definitely recommend this like i've said in previous reviews with other like really sturdy products this is definitely something i could throw off a bridge and it would probably be fine um i don't i don't plan on throwing anything this off a bridge anytime soon but if it happened to fall off a bridge actually this will probably never leave my house so it'll probably be fine so overall if i were to give it a rating i wasn't happy about the software stuff that bugged up my computer i was able to uninstall it though and i also am not super thrilled that i'm struggling to get it to work on my windows pc but that's okay because i don't really use interfaces for my windows pc anyway that's gonna ding it a little bit so i'm gonna give it a four steinberg ur 44c interfaces out of five steinberg ur 44 c interfaces so that concludes today's episode of the let's talk music gear show bye see you later

Channel: cj

Views: 1,895

Rating: 4.909091 out of 5

Keywords: music production, audio interface, pro audio, focusrite, Scarlett, steinberg, apogee, duet, ur44c, review, gear, pedalboard, logic, Mac, garageband, home recording, recording, recording studio, preamp, windows, audio driver, musician, gear rig

Id: TIi8BIGrlN4

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021