Hi, I am soon receiving a midi instrument and am considering a gig performer setup, instead of using a sound expander. Especially because I already have a nice mini PC to run it on.
I am wondering about the audio interface though, what hardware to get? Ideally I’d like an audio interface that can take midi, a mic or two, and maybe another instrument for my 3 piece band. And have a line out to connect to speakers, and then I can skip a mixer
Am I supposed to get a PC card or USB thing? I was looking at the M audio Air 192/6. It says it has 2.5 Ms of round trip latency. Would this be good?
Behringer recently cut prices on most of their audio interfaces. The Behringer U-Phoria UMC1820 USB Audio Interface is currently only $189. I got one about a month ago and don’t think there is a better value out there at this time. It has ASIO drivers that so far have been more stable than the Focusrite drivers I’ve been using for years.
UMC 1820 has more channels. But the smaller Behringer devices had higher sample rates - typically 192k as opposed to the 1820 @ 48k.
Newer Behringer products are being released early next year which appears to be why current products are going for such great prices. I bought a few of the lower priced accessories myself. Grab them fast while they are still available.
It actually can do 96k. For live performance 48k should be fine. BTW: I know Plugin Alliance sells at least 1 plugin that doesn’t go any further than 96k (if memory serves me well: the Gallien Krueger 800RB, which is actually useful to me).
Edit: I forgot to mention: I use a focusrite 4i4 3rd gen or a UMC 1820, depending on the number of channels I need.
Thanks, I am strongly considering the behringer 1820, it seems like an affordable option with a lot of capacity and a good rep
Since you have one can you answer this: it looks like the 1820 can output a live signal from the headphone port for monitoring, but it’s all the signals mixed? So if I want individual line signals for personal monitoring, I just need to use a splitter before I plug into the 1820 right?
There are 2 headphone outputs. You can choose to monitor outputs 1&2 or 3&4 on each independently. The outputs 1&2 can be anything between the direct monitoring or just the daw outputs 1&2.
If you turn the mix control fully counter clockwise, you get direct monitoring from inputs 1&2 or the mix of 1-8, depending on a switch setting. Fully clockwise means monitoring the daw outputs 1&2 (so no direct monitoring in that case).
Keep in mind that the outputs 1&2 at the back get the same signal, so if you use the mix of inputs 1-8 for direct monitoring on your headphones, outputs 1-2 at the back will follow that.
@Frank1119 thanks for correcting that. It has bothered me ever since I realized what I said and just now got the opportunity to come back and correct it.
What I meant to say is that the 1820 has a sample rate of 96k. My 1820 has an ADA8200 attached to it which gives me 16 channels but forces the sample rate down to 48k.
The reason for bringing up the sample rate is that it does make a difference. digitizing a signal results in distortion. We smooth the signal to get rid of chop. But the signal is still never really the same. The question then becomes how much distortion can we allow before the listener notices. At 48k, higher frequencies may have noticeable distortion. Personally, I notice it with brass horns. There is also a perceptible difference when playing NI stradivari violin.
Realize that the lower tier mixers all have an internal sample rate of 48k. You have to spend some money to get internals of 96k. But, when you send an analog signal created at 48k (which has some level of high frequency distortion) to a mixer with internal processing at 48k, you are just compounding the distortion.
So, back to the 1820. @ 96k, you are pushing the limits of the USB level it supports. Depending on your computer and other USB devices connected, you may be forced to lower the sample rate to 48k to avoid signal drops or high latency.
Bottom line, yes, it’s nice to have 16 channels at times. But if more channels result in unacceptable lower quality, you might want to think more towards less channels. And I love my 1820 as well as my 404HD(s). Very versital little tools.
I will depend on the use case.
In a noisy environment it might not really matter. When your keyboard finds itself among 2 wall-of-sound mixed guitars in full distortion it might not matter. When the mixing engineer pushes the level towards 92 dB and everyone gets deafened somewhat it might not matter.
When you’re going to give an classic orchestra concert with solo violins and a quiet and thoughtful audience it will matter.
But if you can afford it to raise the standard you should definitely go for it
(There’s one thing with 48khz: with some eq’s a bandpass filter might become rather asymmetrical when its central frequency is increased. But Melda solves that problem by offering internal oversampling. )
