Behringer UMC1820

Traditionally I would avoid Behringer as the products have been cheaply made and never seemed to last or have the sound quality of the products they were similair to. That said I recently bought a Behringer X Touch and was impressed with the build quality and feature set. So it was I needed a new audio interface as my Motu had developed a fault. The Behringer UMC1820 seemed to fit the job and had a lot of features and didnt cost the earth. Upon arrival the product seemed fairly well made and put together but not of the build quality of the X Touch that I had purchased. Given the price of the product it met my expectations from a build quality standpoint, now to the nuts and bolts, once connected up to my studio equipment which is made up of good quality Desk, Outboard and Monitors all connected by very good quality cables & Plugs which are balanced my hopeful expectations in the sound department were dashed. I will temper this with the fact that I read ALL the reviews on the Thomann page about this product good and bad and the good ones helped sway my purhcase. Now back to the sound - the UMC1820 is noisy, lots of hiss and prone to mains born interferance even though I have this running off a clean supply and Furman. I played with the gain structures but still the noise was an issue, recording using mid priced condenser microphones reveals that the UMC1820 has a brittle sound or brittle characteristics which to my ears is not pleasant and making some test recordings using various instruments and mics it became apparent this was not going to be a keeper so I had to unfortuately return the product to Thomann and at the time of writing this review I am still awating my refund two and half weeks after returning the product to them. Not Great service this time round Thomann.

In conclusion this product will not be for everyone and within my wider experience of Behringer this particular product is in my opinion in line with their earlier budget products in terms of Sound Quality and build Quality which I suppose reflects the price. If sound quality is important you might want to look elsewhere.

That's must be some kind of record, cause my Behringer umc1820 stopped working on 4-5th day of usage. I see there's many people complaining about problems due to drivers, but in my case the device wasn't turning on anymore at all. I just couldn't believe it, so at first i thought "oh, that's must be just cheap power adapter" but nope, i checked it right away, and the cheap power adapter was working! :D It was the device that shut down completely due to unnkown reasons. And it was quite a shock for me cause my previous usb device (Scarlett 2i2) had served me well for 4 years or so, and has never let me down.

So, i had to send the behringer back to thomann and now, when i'll finish writing this review, I'll go and order scarlett 18i20:)

Wouldn't recommend behringer to anyone. I don't believe this thing is capable to be used for more than couple of months:D

Thanks to thomann crew. They responded fast and we solved the problem very quick.

I really, really regret buying this cheap interface.

POSITIVES
Cheap
Loads of inputs
Class-compliant (works with Linux)
Mix knob enables blend of system sounds and inputs (great feature!)

NEGATIVES
Connectors low quality and introduce noise
Intermittent noise / interference
Broke within 3 months of ownership

Disappointed that Thomann would not offer a credit against a better-built device, instead they are trying to repair it. I've now ordered a better quality interface from elsewhere and this will go on ebay after it has been repaired.

"Buy cheap, buy twice" :(

I was very curious about this interface, so I wanted to give it a try, unless it's a Behringer with a very low price for a 8-channel AD interface. I spent two days to get the drivers working (Windows 7 64bit). The drivers on the website didn't work and after adiscussion with the Behringer helpdesk they offered me an (beta?) 3.34 version. Which worked (after trying again for a few hours). On my laptop (also W7 64 bit), the new driver didn't work, however, the most ancient version did (!). The sound of the interface is very good, also the dynamics and without any audible noise. But during a two-track recording suddenly the connection fell off between interface and computer, which stopped the recording suddenly. I am sure this was because of the drivers. After an endurance test of two days in which the interface was switched on constantly, the connection stopped suddenly. After that, the PC didn't 'see' the interface anymore, not even after a complete reinstall of the drivers ! The offered driver software is very bad. I failed to get the device working through ASIO4All. Unstable drivers are lethal to a recording, because a sudden breakdown isn't desirable. Therefore, So I have to send back the device unfortunately. The interface itself is fine (but rather primitive in terms of mixing, metering and routing). This quality is not enough if it has to operate without proper driver software.