Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

4.5 / 5 stars. I am pretty amazed at how far entry level consumer audio interfaces have come. Allow me to compare this $80 interface to my $2500 RME UFX. Headphone Output (5/5)- The big surprise is that the headphone amp is loud and clean. There is virtually imperceptible hiss at the highest, ear splitting volume level. This means you can monitor through phones in comfort. Build Quality (5/5)- Knobs are solid. Unit is heavy enough and there are non-slip feet so it can be used without sliding around every time a cable is connected or removed. Audio Playback (5/5) The printed specs are s/n -110 db, which is excellent. This level of clarity was only available in high end units only five years ago. Brief listening tests show it is clear and loud. Preamps (4/5) I can't easily AB with the RME, but the preamps are clear and very functional. Not as much gain as the RME, but these are more than acceptable for a project studio. Clean and clear. Drivers/Latency (5/5!) I am as surprised to write this as anyone. My machine is an i7 4790K Devils Canyon OC to 4.7G, Win7 64bit. Machine is fast. Before installing drivers, I disabled all other sound devices so there would be no conflicts. Driver installation was drama free. My biggest concern is if I can get a low enough round-trip latency to play virtual instruments? Launched NI Guitar Rig 5 Pro in standalone, which is a very hungry resource program. Using the UMC ASIO driver, I lowered buffers to 128 and reported round trip latency was 4.4ms. No drop outs, CPU at 10%. This is not the same thing as running many VSTIs in a large project, but it shows that if tracks are frozen and load is not too heavy, that the interface has the ability to play at low round trip latency for tracking. Also tested with Addictive Drums 2 standalone which is also very resource intensive program. DI Input, High Z (2/5) Running high impedance guitar pickups to the DI input, the sound is muddy and does not let VSTis shine. I am pretty sure that the signal will need to be low-Z (active) to get good performance out of the direct input. DI is probably acceptable when used with active pickups. Passive pickups will need a high quality active DI in front. Connectivity (4/5) The outputs to mains are TRS (balanced) and provide excellent performance. The channel inserts are also standard TRS and work as any mixer would. This is a nice feature to have. You can run a signal direct to the front, and send it external FX as insert (TRS) or either loop back to the other input. This is a poor man's version of some of the routing capabilities provided by the RME mixer app. The "playback" outputs are RCA which I don't understand for "pro" audio application. I suppose they are for hooking to a stereo with full gain. Phantom Power (4/5) I have tested this to phantom power a GI-100 cab sim in my tube amp rig. The power is fine, but there is a faint 60-cycle hum at higher volumes. The RME has better noise rejection and gives a pristene signal with this arrangement. Fine for live use, but I have some concerns for tracking. Ground loops and other noise issues are always a possibility when hooking with tube amps and longer signal chains. This kind of thing is why you pay $2500 for an RME. Overall, the audio performance is excellent, the design and connectivity is very good, the only shortcomings are the DI input and the noise rejection is not on par with pro equipment. This is probably not an issue for most applications. Edit: I did some more testing with this unit. Reamping (4/5) - Loopback test from output 3/4 into front shows very little loss at the interface. Unbalanced signal from 3/4 outputs needs an isolation transformer to avoid ground loop when connected with amplifier. I am using a Pyle PHE400. Besides needing another piece to deal with ground loop noise, the final result, when reamped with a Radial X-amp is very good. As mentioned earlier, the weak link is the DI input. If you are using passive guitar pickups, you will need to convert to a low impedance signal before input.