If I were to upgrade to one of these Interfaces, which would be the better choice? On the Behringer each channel has its own pad, but the Tascam has more inputs and doesn't use combination jacks. Which one has better preamps and colours sound less? I'm assuming the Behringer uses the same MIDAS preamp as the UMC202HD.

I can't speak to the Tascam, but I get along really well with my UMC1820. I use the ADAT ports for my ADA8200. I can say I haven't noticed it really color up anything. I have a 32 channel mixer, so when recording, I'm using pulling in 1-4 instruments at a time. I route them through the busses and I have the busses going in on the 1-4 IN ports. 5-6 I use for the mixers stereo output and 7 I use for the mono output. 8 I use for a mono in from a tape machine. I have a recording chain I've set up access to as an insert cable on my mixer comprised of a Warm Audio WA-76, an Art Pro VLA II, and a Behringer composer pro I use for a limiter. Pulling that into the UMC1820 gives me no issues at all.

It's highly dependable running into a usb-C hub on my Mac. Speaking of macOS, it's a class compliant audio device so there's no software to install, I'll never have to worry about drivers not working in the next OS version. In Ableton, I regularly run at 32 Samples while writing and recording giving me a 3-ish ms latency with no issues. For $299, it was definitely worth it.

For the ADAT connections, you can't use the monitoring feature on those channels, but I mainly use it for outboard processing, bouncing to tape and back. I didn't use software instruments for a long time until I had enough io with the UMC1820 to start sending their output to my recording chain and back. There's no difference in latency with those inputs/outputs over ADAT.

If there was one thing I wish it had, it would be to lock an odd numbered input's level to the even number directly after it so I'm not having to look at the meter before recording to make sure I have my stereo levels matched. I hardly ever record in stereo though, so it's not terrible. I noticed when running this on Windows 10 at a friend's house, Behringer's software mixer allowed me to do that, so if you're on Windows it's not really a problem.

I've recorded the same chain into a scarlet and notice no difference with my 1820.

I'm also looking at the Presonus Studio 1824. Anyone know if the inline preamps on it are any good (as in significantly better than the Midas preamp on the Behringer)? The Presonus costs almost twice as much, so I'd look at the UMC1820 and a dedicated preamp if there are any good ones for $300 or so (I'm doubtful since 8 channel mic preamps seem to be several hundred dollars if not more)

The us series is nice. Good latency and the sound is great. Pres are clean w ok gain that will work w most mics and not strain. The newer us series all use the same pres and conversion which helps meet the price point. One can do perfectly fine work on it but add a color pre and cover the bases.

OP: soundwise, it probably doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference (I own a UMC404HD, BTW.). And, as you said, the UMC1820 is a lot less expensive than the 1824. The Behringer high-res interfaces have gotten generally excellent reviews, which is surprising, given the negative impression a lot of people seem to have of Behringer as a company.

Am I missing out on much if I get something that's only 24/96? The 24/192 stuff is all twice the price of the UMC1820. The Focusrite 18i20 and Presonus Studio 1824 look ridiculously similar (like they're essentially the same thing), and the Tascam/Celesonic US-20x20 looks promising but only supports 24/192 on USB 3.0. If I could find one of those used for significantly cheaper I'd grab it, but they're all $600 CAD or so.

Behringer is junk. The focusrite scarlett stuff has the best specs for anything sub 150 bucks. Behringer hides their specs, lies about their specs, and is respected by no one. I recently returned a audio interface by them. Gave them 1000 chances. Self noise like crazy. Don't buy behringer. They have no standards. ever. youre not supposed to actually buy from them.

I've heard equally bad things about every manufacturer of budget audio gear, including Focusrite (and hell I've heard better samples of Behringer's UMC stuff). And from what I've seen Behringer stuff holds it's own against Focusrite for a much cheaper price. I don't think the Solo 2i2 is any better than a UMC204HD is, and at the very least Focusrite's onboard preamps are no better than Behringer's onboard MIDAS preamp.

We're also not talking about sub $150 stuff. We're talking about stuff around $200 (for the Behringer, or Tascam 16x08) or around $500 for the higher end things mentioned.

Are the preamps in the M-Audio ProFire 2626 any good? It seems like the used prices I see are too good to be true if it's any good ($200 or so is what I'm finding). EDIT: Nevermind it's FireWire, and I have no idea how to connect that to a modern PC.

Against better judgement, Firewire was basically eliminated from the mix ages ago. Apple always had a good implementation of the FW spec, and that has kept a lot of hardware going. The problem with M-Audio since the latest corporate takeover of the brand (the horrible inMusic Brands) is the complete abandonment of support for hardware that is not that old. The ProFire 2626 was a remarkable piece of hardware for the money, and was only in the line for a few years before being consigned to legacy status. Sleeper products like the Alesis (also parented by inMusic) i/0 14 and i/o 26 were similarly dispatched. The lesson herein: investigate thoroughly the manufacturer of the product before investing. Take a look at their history of support as operating systems are upgraded. The cheapest product can end up being a doorstop prematurely if you are not careful.

I ended up just getting the UMC1820. I can't imagine there are many times 24/96 won't be good enough.

my at2020usbi was 24-bit 96khz. it was hissy as hell so i sold it.

I purchased the Behringer in ear system recently for a venue that had a problem with one unit. I contacted Behringer directly and they shipped me a new one immediately and took the old one back. I get their past history, but it's not the same as it was. I have the UMC404HD and it is a great unit and people I know personally have also had great success with it for several years.

The UMC1820 feels really solid too. Although it better for $300 (not a lot for an 8 input interface, but still it's not much cheaper than the other 8 input 24/96 interfaces I've seen).

For what it's worth I've been using an umc1820 +ada8200 since the day the 1820 was available to ship. I had the 404 for quite some time and was really impressed with the drivers so I figured the umc1820 would be the same and it is. Great unit overall. I've since parted ways with the band I was in but when I was in it we would run everything into the umc and back out to 4 monitor mixes. I was able to get reaper to be nice and stable at 64 samples using low cpu usage plugins that add no latency on a measly i7 5500u. Results were amazing and it was sure something to be able to play to a almost fully mixed sound, makes you play that much better. $450 got me 16 channels of nice stable low latency I/O, I'm more than pleased. I'm so confident in the stability of my rig that I've used it several times to run live shows and just mix with reaper, nothing super serious but I take every gig serious no matter the size and wouldn't bring it out if I weren't sure.

Only thing I don't like and I'm not sure if this is even fixable but I'd love to have an interface that doesn't pop monitors when turning on/off.

I hope you have no regrets seven months later. My UMC1820 is expected to arrive here tomorrow. After ordering it, I read about the Zoom R-16 and started having post-buyer's remorse (especially with it being knocked down in price $100, making it only $20 more than the Behringer), but I'll give the UMC1820 a fair shot.

Not at all. It's definitely a good interface for the price. If you don't need to record to an SD card, don't worry about not getting the Zoom. I'd actually be more confident in Behringer at the same price point (I'd consider $100 more the same price point), but that's because I was really disappointed in my Zoom H6 purchase.

I think you need to go up in price quite a bit for there to be a noticeable difference. Like the Focusrite Claretts would probably be noticeably better than the UMC1820, but the Scarlett line is pretty much the same (if not a bit worse IMHO). The MIDAS preamp Behringers might not be the greatest thing around, but they're equally as good as anything in the same general price range. I won't be replacing my UMC1820 until I decide to get a Focusrite Clarett 8pre or similar interface, but that's well over twice the price of the UMC1820.

Any specific reason why there are so few reactions concerning the Tascam?

I mean, I am fairly new to the forum (obviously) and to a big part of the world of gear. As a performing musician I have for years mostly focused on microphones, and that's pretty much it...

I know the fairly bad reputation of Behringer, and that some of their devices still positively surprise. This U-Phoria interface seems to be one of those...

But to be honest, I had never hear of the brand Tascam until a couple of weeks back, so I really have no clue what it's worth...

Is the Tascam worth investing 1/4 of the price extra? Or for roughly the same price as the Behringer new get a young 2nd hand...

I'm just doing home recordings using Studio One 4 Professional and my UMC1820 is doing great.

Tascam invented the cassette portastudio at the end of the 1970s, they are an excellent company making decent budget gear. I like the sound of most Tascam pres, generally quite round and warm - a bit like Yamaha D-Pres - although it must be said the current MIDAS branded Behringer pres are a massive step up from the previous XENYZ pres and actually sounds as good as anything in the same price point. Either box will do a decent job - buy whichever suits your I/O needs better - at the price I don't think either unit will disappoint. As I've said many times before, we would have had wet dreams over the noise floor and distortion specs of these boxes 25+ years ago. Don't worry about the absurd whitterings of gear snobs - both interfaces will deliver high quality recordings.

That’s an answer I can work with, thanks!

As far as I/O go, it would be mostly to route 6 instruments (and possible extension) through Ableton, one per channel, so the 8 XLR are sufficient, one pair of outputs to the PA, maybe another pair for ...?

I like that the TASCAM has all the inputs on one side, but that’s really little details...

I've got a 16x08 that I use with Logic. Main outs go to my monitors, other outs are used to send audio to outboard gear.

What did you go with in the end?

I'm in exactly your position and I'm also curious about the lack of detailed responses. I've searched the forum and there seems little detail there either but lots of info on the UMC - I'm guessing because it's cheaper.

Thomann recommended the Tascam to me after I asked about an interface with 8 line inputs for hooking up synths to use with Logic. I've also asked them what justifies the extra cost of the Tascam so I'll report back when I hear.

I got the Behringer...
Part of the comparison was based on the fact that I could have gotten a secondhand Tascam for give or take the price of the Behringer new... I went with new in the end.

But mostly, the two extra outs are proving much more useful in my case than anticipated, and I would plainly have come short if I had not had them...

I hook up 8 instruments, each of them get its own out, with potential effects or loops from that instrument, to the desk, and virtual instruments or clips can be sent via the main out.

Still curious about that, but quite happy with my choice.

[QUOTE=NerdyFiddler;14788355]I got the Behringer...
/QUOTE]

Interesting - thanks for letting me know. Glad to hear it's working out for you.

I'm still researching the Tascam and discovering that their support sounds poor as opposed to the guy from Behringer who repeatedly comes to this forum to patiently answer questions.

I also read someone on an Amazon review saying they couldn't install the DSP software on OS X Mojave (which I'm running) so I downloaded it to test. It installed ok but I'm unimpressed. No software update for 4 years on the Mac side and even on a 2560x1440 screen the non-scalable interface is very much on the small side (as opposed to the Windows 2020 update which has HiDip support). It also feels a bit sluggish in its response.

As mentioned I'm using 4 synths on the line inputs and to have some kind of compression and EQ on each is superfluous if I can add that and more in Logic. Might look at the Focusrite - it's double the price but if the software is good it may be worth it.

I would go the the Behringer, it sounds better than that Tascam unit. I had a Tascam UH-7000 which was a really nice unit until I updated my operating system and found out Tascam will not be updating the drivers to work in 64 bit (left a bad taste in my mouth)

I was in the same position and ended up buying the Tascam unit, and I'm really happy with it.

I was zeroing in the Behringer, but a friend of mine owns one and he recommended to get something else: he said the inputs were quite noisy and he could hear radio frequencies on his hedphone out (!). Now, this might have very well been user error, but I got the Tascam for peace of mind.

I use the hardware monitoring to hear my drums, and I send everything to a mixer (drums, track and click) to handle my monitoring and keep the buffer size to the maximum. Reaper then handles the latency compensation.

Sound quality seems excellent, even though I can't consider myself and audio expert. It's just very clean, quiet and natural.

I too went for the Tascam 16x08. I have the feeling that Tascam's pre-amps and DAC will perform better than the cheap Behringer... but who knows, maybe it's an idea in my mind. The only thing I really don't like from the Tascam is that I need to turn my computer on to use it... I really miss the standalone functionality of my previous Lexicon U42S which works as a standalone mixer and if I just want to play my synths I only need to turn on the Synths, the Lexicon and the Monitors

When I was looking for an interface for my little home setup, I went through a bunch. MOTU, Steinberg, Focusrite, etc... I ended up with the 404HD, because I got an open box deal that was stupid cheap, and the thing sounds damn good. I put away my Behringer prejudices, and just listened. It's not noisy. It's got the features I need. It was really cheap. Welcome to the 21st century.

Changed from a Scarlett 2i2 to UMC1820. No regrets at all, very quiet with seemingly good dynamic range.