What is the Best Audio Interface under £100? (2021)

welcome back to the channel i've been testing some of the most popular audio interfaces for around 100 pounds or less and in this video i want to share with you my favorites but also discuss the build the recording and playback quality of each of the interfaces so let's get right into it [Music] just as we get started i want to say there's going to be quite a lot of information in this video so please do use the chapters and time stamps at the bottom of the video to navigate if there's like a certain interface you want to know more about or if you want to just hear about the recording or playback quality please you know navigate this guide so that it suits you best i tested over a dozen interfaces and of these i'm showcasing six on the channel four are my favorites for around 100 pounds and there's two which are a little bit cheaper at 70 pounds now i bought all these interfaces myself i'm not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the companies just to keep it really fair and i'll be giving away a lot of the interfaces after this video as well so stay tuned to find out more i want to quickly explain what an audio interface is for anyone that doesn't know that's maybe a little bit confused but skip ahead if you do know so it's a device which helps you record and playback audio from your computer it connects to your computer with the usb or thunderbolt which transfers the data but also provides power to the interface and the microphones you might be plugging into it the interface will have inputs for microphones guitars and maybe synthesizers and it will also have some outputs for headphones and studio loudspeakers they're all quite different in their design and build quality but they all effectively achieve the same thing and they help you listen to your music clearly and accurately so you can make good mix decisions but it plays no part in the final export of your song so it doesn't matter which one you have your song will be exported through your computer through the cpu not through this if you're working in the box like the vast majority of us are so don't worry about one of these changing the final quality of your rendered mix or master let's now take a closer look at my four favorites for around 100 pounds the presonus studio 24c the focusrite solo 3rd gen the audient evo 4 and the native instruments complete audio 2. we'll start with some recording tests i recorded into each of them using my shure sm7b anyone who's used one of these knows that you need quite a lot of preamp gain to get a healthy signal out of them and all four of these got a good level out of this and we can take a listen to each of the recordings now listen to the noise and tone of this preamp listen to the noise and tone of this preamp listen to the noise and tone of this preamp listen to the noise and tone of this preamp when i listen closely on my loudspeakers or headphones i can't really hear too much of a difference that couldn't simply be explained by the fact that i didn't speak exactly the same each time and while you may prefer one over another it's clear that none of them were bad and there's not one that sounds vastly superior to the others so this meant that my review took a little bit longer to make than expected i thought that maybe one would sound much better that they'd have you know quite different levels of background noise but actually it turns out what really separates these interfaces is the build quality and the workflow which we'll get to in just a moment i want to talk about the outputs so the headphone and loudspeaker outputs of each interface they were super loud when i tested with high ohm headphones all of them provided a ridiculously high amount of gain i couldn't go past 50 or 75 percent on any of the interfaces and the loudspeaker outputs again were similarly hot i couldn't go nearly past halfway before it was just frankly a dangerous listening level but volume isn't everything so how did they sound in terms of clarity depth width to test this i recorded the outputs from each interface into my mix pre using one of my studio masters i captured the audio running out of it for a whole song and then i lined them all up in my doll which i have here and none of them quite retained exactly the same clarity depth and detail that the original master had but they were all so close compared to each other they all sounded almost identical to the point that inverting one of the waveforms almost caused them to completely phase cancel and go to almost no audio at all really very impressed for this price range to be honest so the things that really separate these these interfaces are the ease of use and the build quality and workflow which is what we're really going to get into right now i'll start with the presonus studio 24c this has an excellent build quality and it was a full metal construction on the front it has combination xlr mic and line inputs which means you don't need to worry about what you plug into it whether it's a guitar the output from a synth a microphone like a condenser or a dynamic it's going to handle anything you put into that and it's not going to break you don't need to change any settings i also thought the screen was excellent it was the only interface i tested which gave me a good feedback as to the level of the microphones or guitars i plugged into it or the actual mix that i was monitoring another part of the design i like is that there's a separate dial or knob for each control preamp gain the computer or input blend for direct monitoring there's a separate control for the gain of your headphones and your studio monitors which lots of the other interfaces in this price range don't have and that's just an invaluable feature for me all of the controls also feel really good they're not wobbling they're not going anywhere and just generally it's a full metal construction and it really inspires confidence if we head around to the back it's got these quarter inch outputs for your studio monitors and your headphones i like my interfaces to have the inputs on the front and the outputs on the back but this is a consideration for you if you're plugging your headphone in and out all day you might want the port to be on the front instead of the back it also has midi inputs on the back which is excellent if you're using some slightly older gear and it's usbc for the power and the data transfer which is excellent i really think that to be competitive things need to be usb-c or thunderball now we're going to take a closer look at the focusrite solo 3rd gen it has a similarly excellent build quality for the money all the controls feel good but the inputs and outputs are slightly more limited as you can see there's one xlr here that isn't a combination so you can't plug say a guitar into this but you do have a guitar input over here on input number two so for your needs this might actually be perfect you might only be using one microphone or maybe an electric guitar and that's all you need the level and clipping indicators here around this halo that glows green or red i thought those were great they actually did help me set the game i was kind of surprised by them i i really like having an actual meter i did much prefer having the screen on the presonus interface but to be honest this wasn't a lot of fuss it was pretty simple just sort of turn it up until it's green and then you're good to go on the front there's also a control for monitoring this changes the level of your headphones and loudspeakers and the the and is important because you can't control your headphone and loudspeaker volume independently which for me just doesn't work but again if you're only using headphones or only speakers this might not be a problem for you at all on the back it's similarly streamlined just two line outputs for your left and right for the studio loudspeakers and usbc which is great i'm glad they've upgraded this to usbc it's more sort of forward thinking it helps keep the latency really low and i've found using focusrite products for years that the usbc versions have been a lot more stable on my pc than the old usb type b connectors now we're going to take a look at the native instruments complete audio 2. overall the build and design is accurate and clean but it's all plastic but it doesn't slide off my desk when it's being you know pulled by headphone cords or anything like that it's just a shame that on the back it's still this usb type b connector which i think is a little bit dated and if native instruments just upgraded that to a type c made it a little bit faster i think this would honestly be incredibly competitive like the presonus it has these combination inputs on the front which i like so you can plug anything into there and as long as you choose line or instrument it'll be good to go and there's not going to be a problem i like that there's pretty much one control for everything you don't have to switch modes but here's a criticism i have of a lot of the interfaces it's not just this one uh this output control okay let's take a close look hopefully i can actually get this camera to focus so you might expect that this is the lowest volume or or nothing this is pretty low and then this is the loudest possible volume you could tolerate before you know maybe exploding your eardrums but in reality this is nothing this is extremely quiet and then here it's already unbearably loud so you get this huge rotary dial here to control your volume but in reality you only get to use a few degrees of it just here to here so i do like how smooth it is it's just that it's not very useful this dial however out of the box was not level which i've sort of taken a video of it's at a weird diagonal and i don't know if that's a design feature but given that everything else else is squared off i think that's just a little bit of quality control slipping there but the reason i've included this is that i think that if they get a little bit of metal in this and they change that to a usbc i really think this could be a competitive interface but right now it's maybe a little more expensive than it should be and finally let's look at the audient evo 4. from a technical perspective this interface is great you know the recording and playback quality but i just can't get past the plastic at this sort of price point i've got a little video here showing some of the build quality this interface is completely different suits an entirely different workflow because it doesn't have lots of little controls it has one big dial here and then lots of buttons to choose what this does but it didn't take that long to get used to the workflow you pretty much have to select you know which input you want to set the gain for and then you can either set it manually or you can use the smart gain function i really don't see a need for the smart gain function i think it's so easy to just select an input and set the gain manually especially when it's got a meter on it but that might just be me but one of my big criticisms of this again like the focusrite is that you can't use the headphones and the speakers at the same time or change their volume independently it's sort of one or the other but it does have all the inputs and outputs you'd expect and these two combination xlr line mic inputs are excellent and the output sounded brilliant and long time viewers of the channel know that i love audient gear and i've supported them for a long time so it's not a criticism of the company they make fantastic gear i just feel that this is potentially a little bit too expensive for what you get i hope that taking a closer look at the build and design helps you maybe figure out what suits you or what doesn't but there's another big factor to buying these interfaces which is the software they come with pretty much all of them come with a light version of a daw or two and then a bundle of plugins or like a suite of effects to help you get set up in this daw just from having running this channel for so long i've tried absolutely all of this software and i think based on what they're offering right now at the time of making this video that the presonus and the focusrite offer the most sort of compelling or competitive suite of software but i know that a lot of these companies constantly change it but i just think the plugins that come with the focusrite are excellent especially that addictive keys piano and some of the soft tube plugins that just incredible stuff there and the presonus coming with that light version of studio one called artist i really like using studio one and i think of the dolls that these come with it's the most user-friendly and easiest to get set up with even though it's not the door i use every day i use fl studio 20 of course but that's my take on it i think the software with the presonus and the focusrite is the easiest for beginners and the most competitive at the time of making this video some people particularly want to know what my recommendation is or which i would choose and of these it would be the presonus and the focusrite the presonus is the only one i would use every day in my studio because it has pretty much all the functionality i need but i would also happily use the focusrite one if i had a more streamlined setup but it just doesn't have all of the inputs that i need in my studio so now that we've got those four out of the way i also said i would show you two for around 70 pounds which i would recommend if you don't quite have the budget to stretch to 100 i do think as a general rule you get what you pay for with audio equipment and if you can you know maybe try to buy one of these used instead of a cheaper one new but the two that came out on top were one from mackie and another one from presonus there were so many in this category that i ruled out from many other manufacturers so these are sort of the best of the rest i tried stuff from beringer steinberg and a few others which i just completely wrote off because of so many issues they were giving me but both of these unfortunately come with some compromises so they're both the usb type b which is quite quickly becoming redundant i'm finding with a lot of audio equipment although you know it works fine i never really had much of a problem with it but everything's going type c and i can see that being sort of the forward standard a few more of the compromises include that this presonus one for some reason the output distorts the headphones and studio monitors unless i turn my pc's system audio down and then turn this up this seems to distort at any volume but i think for a beginner this would be absolutely infuriating wondering why it was clipping but the quality of the inputs and outputs was great on this one and then the mackie while it didn't have any issues with clipping or distorting the quality of the inputs and outputs i just felt wasn't quite up to the standard of the other ones the build quality though full metal again at this price that's just fantastic but when you're dealing with you know professional audio you're making music maybe doing a bit of mixing you really want to be able to hear everything in the highest quality that you possibly can so although those are my sort of two favorites out of the rest of the bunch at the lower price point i really think it's better to buy some used equipment if you don't quite have the budget yet because a lot of these devices don't seem to really degrade or deteriorate over time they tend to just sit on people's desks and get very light use i've bought a lot of used equipment and almost none of it's in fact none of it's broken on me and i just think it's a better way to go you sort of get more for your money anyway this video is getting a lot longer than i thought it would be so i'm gonna wrap it up here but i do have a giveaway where i'm giving away some of these interfaces to people that need them because i'm done testing them out now so check the description for more information on how to enter if you need one of these interfaces or you know someone that needs one please do enter that giveaway and if you have any questions about these or the other ones i tested please ask me in the comment section down below i really like helping people figure out what's right for them in their setup so please do feel free to ask me anything thank you very much for watching and bye for now [Music]

Channel: In The Mix

Views: 180,459

Rating: 4.9636364 out of 5

Keywords: best audio interface, under 100, top, best, audio interface, which, audio, interface, music production, mixing, best under 100, choosing the best audio interface, usb interface, high quality, top 5, focusrite, presonus, audient, focusrite solo, vs, evo 4, studio 24c, Komplete Audio 2, Mackie Onyx 1.2, Behringer, Tascam US 1x2HR, Steinberg UR12, M Track Solo, Komplete Audio 1, Best sample rate, recording test, best budget, music studio, In The Mix

Id: kmdg5jJK4H4

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021