Behringer U-CONTROL UCA202 Ultra-Low Latency 2 In/2 Out USB/Audio Interface with Digital Output

This is my second device. I bought one ~ 7 or 8 years ago at the recommendation of an Audacity sound engineer on their forums. I wanted to record my college team's games from my stereo to listen to later. It worked perfectly for that. I am also able to stream videos or songs from my computer over my stereo system... much nicer than my computer audio. I can also plug in my headphones to the 3.5 mm jack on the Behringer unit to listen without disturbing my family. This unit is being used to stream audio for a small Church service & is working well. The RCA jack inputs and outputs are geared more to consumer level audio systems and works very well for that functionality. I have had my 1st unit for a long time & although it is made of plastic, and has been bounced around a bit from home to office to other places it has never failed me. It is plug & play so there is no need to install any software, though I highly recommend Audacity for doing the recording, mixing & perfecting the sound quality... eg digitally boosting recordings that were made at low volume level up to the maximum without clipping. The one thing to be aware of is the audio setup. You will probably need to click on that to switch the audio input &/or output to the USB device. Otherwise your computer may still want to output the audio to it's own speaker system, or to use the computer microphone rather than the stereo audio feed. Not a big deal, but it won't work without telling it which audio stream to use or which playback device to use. For a big commercial setup with balanced cables you would be better off getting a different audio interface with TRS 1/4" &/or XLR connectors, though you could use this unit with adapters.

For this low price you get the interface you need to be able to play along with yourself with a guitar and an amp! Drivers installed this thing automatically in windows 7 and a few tweaks in Audacidy and you have it ready to record and monitor the input via headphones in real time as you are recording! This will eventually be used to connect my mixer (and drum machine(s) and bass and microphone(s) connected via said mixer) to my computer but I wanted to try a quick 20 minute or so trial run on said product and found it very easy to get an acceptable sound out of my guitar and amp with very little work. That is right, get a 1/4 in to rca cable and plug from your headphone out on your amp into the UCA 202 RCA input and click the monitor switch 'on' that is found on the UCA 202 and you will be able to hear your tone sound exactly like it will on audacity as it is being recorded! I was able to get the levels to an acceptable range so there was no distortion, connected everything up with the 202 from the amp and heard myself playing along with my self in 3 tracks in only 20 minutes. I will say that for my 5 year old laptop that there was a very small lag that can easily be corrected in audacity but there were no background hiss or buzz noises compared to when I input directly to the computer from amp or mixer. I can't wait to see what I can do with this thing once I get enough of a studio area set up, I recommend this for those that are recording on a budget to pair with other behringer products such as their mixers and headphone splitters. I may potentially use the headphone out to monitor the input of a full band so we can all hear one another live as we record through a mixer into the 202. This is my ideal set up for a band with a budget to record themselves: Use Audacity, get a mixer, mic/hook your band up to said mixer, input the mixer output into the UCA202 and have its headphone jack split into 4 (or more) using the Behringer HA400 4-Channel Stereo Headphone Amp. TADA! Everyone can hear themselves playing along in real time with what will be recorded! This thing may cater more to different crowds but if you want to have you own budget studio I think it can be done effectively using the process I listed above.

I'll add my voice to the praise for this little device. The UCA202 is a no-brainer for affordable USB audio. I purchased this solely to send improved audio quality from my laptop to my desktop speakers. While I have an audiophile-grade rig in my basement for critical listening and DJ'ing, up in my bedroom all I have is my laptop and inexpensive computer speakers, and that's where I spend the majority of my time and listen to the most music. Unhappy with the predictably low quality, noisy output from my MacBook Pro's headphone output jack, I did some research and ultimately decided on the UCA202 for two simple reasons: first, the cost. At $30, you can purchase this item and a very decent 2.1 speaker system for basically the same price as a dedicated DAC like the Audioengine D1. Second, it gives you 3 different output options depending on the type of equipment you have: digital (TOSLINK), analog (stereo RCA) and analog (stereo 1/8" or 3.5mm). Finally, because of its two RCA inputs it can also double as an analog-to-digital converter for ripping vinyl or other analog sources. All considered, this is a pretty versatile little box for $30! The quality is completely fine for computer-based applications like listening to music or playing video games. This is all I use it for, with the occasional headphone session using my Ultrasone Proline 550s. The heaphone amp is not very strong, but it's much cleaner than using the headphone jack on your laptop, so I can't really complain. In terms of resolution, it maxes out at 16bit/48khz, which in the DAC world is not very remarkable, but considering this is not marketed as a DAC but more as an external sound card, it's more than adequate for me. Remember that CD audio - still the most common medium for music even with newer technologies out there - is 16bit/44khz. Until the industry as a whole migrates to 24/48, 24/96 or 24/192, something like the UCA202 will be relevant. And I suspect that will be a very long time. All in all, if you were like me and on the fence about investing in a high end DAC or saving the money for something like this, well, that's a personal decision but I can say that I don't regret my decision of going with the UCA202 at all. While Behringer is not usually in the conversation about quality audio, I think it fills this niche very well, and gives you more money to spend on those nice desktop speakers or powered monitors.

I bought this as a low cost alternative to purchasing a new USB recording interface, since my old Lexicon finally gave up the ghost. Basically, I own a Behringer Xenyx802 mixer, and this allows me to boom the mix from that console over to Garageband when putting together new song demos for my band. For this purpose, the UCA202 works great! Clear, relatively un-"comprimised" tone coming from the mixer, and, best of all, no bleed or distortion like my old recording interface. This is a simple little device that does it's job well. I have owned this for a about a day now, and time will tell how long it lasts, but I've always had good luck with Behringer products, and I'm hoping it holds. As soon as it arrived I connected it in line with my recording gear in my modest home studio and cut a quick track. Recording chain is: Guitar / Vocal mic > Presonus Bluetube Preamp > Xenyx802 mixer > UCA202 > Macbook w/ Garageband. No problems, no drivers needed, just plug and play. I have not used the RCA Outs to run monitors yet, but that feature is cool to have. I'm looking forward to using this unit to run my monitor and record my set next time I do a solo gig. A couple warnings: First, it's plastic, and small, so be Careful!!! I think the unit could take a bit of abuse, but as it's a plastic box the size of an Altoid tin, the proper care and caution you should afford to any piece of music equipment is probably in order. Also, this only takes RCA cables, so if you're using it with a Preamp / Mixer you need to get an 1/4" to RCA cable for the input and an RCA to "whatever your powered monitor takes" for the output. And yeah, as some people in these reviews seem to be oblivious, you NEED a preamp of some sort between your instrument / mic and this unit. A passive mixer with preamps or Active DI / tube pre should do the trick. But if you're expecting to plug your passive single-coil-outfitted classic Telecaster straight into the UCA202 you're not gonna get much useable signal. Overall, I'd say if you're putting together an exquisite studio you could get something fancier and better for more money, but if you already have a good mixer like me and you're just looking to cut some demos for the band guys, this is the ticket.

We have this connected from the REC out jacks on our analog mixing board to a USB jack on our livestream computer to capture the audio. It works GREAT!

I really can't complain about this item. The build quality is fine. It is all plastic, the cord is not detachable. The jacks on the back side of it are gold plated, the headphone jack is not. As other reviewers have said, there is no software in the box, you get to go download it. I haven't used any of it, it's not what I bought it for. What I wanted to do was have a real mic and a real mixer and two separate sound cards to separate game audio and Skype audio. Yes, I know I can change this in the Windows sound manager, but I like having my analog mixer! As far as my uses go, this was perfect. I plugged it in, set it as my default communications device, plugged the main line out on my mixer into the input. It works perfectly, and people on Skype have noted that it sounds great. Out of curiosity, I unplugged my normal SoundBlaster X-Fi Pro card and plugged my headphones into output on this interface. It seems to have no troubles with my Sony MRD-V6 headphones, and it sounded every bit as good as my SoundBlaster. Now, it sounds DIFFERENT, but it's still good. The SoundBlaster's output seems to have more low end response where the Behringer interface focuses more on the high end. Now, the Sony MRD-V6 headphones are pretty low impedance, so high impedance headphones may make a difference here. But really, plug the line output into a stereo channel on your mixer and use your mixer's headphone amp. If you're looking for something you can plug your matching Behringer mixer into and record stuff or have a crazy setup for Skype, this thing is great. I could see this being used for some small recording, but it really doesn't seem like an overly professional device, having just unbalanced line inputs and outputs. For a professional recording, you might want an interface with XLR inputs. But, if you're in a small band and want to do some quick recordings, this can run from an aux send on your board. You may want to buy a couple Hosa Cable CPR201 Dual 1/4 Inch To RCA Cable - 3.25 Foot to plug this into your mixer.

I used this plugged in to my eeepc and a Behringer Euro-rack 4 channel to record the dialog for a movie my friends are shooting in HD on a digital SLR. The thing is so little hassle it scares me. The computer detects it instantly and Audacity automatically sets itself up to use it as the input. The noise floor is very low; if you're using a condenser shotgun mic, I assure the microphone and the mixer you plug it in to will both create a higher noise floor than this interface, so it's really not an issue. The monitoring function is fantastic. I assure you that you won't notice the difference between 16 and 24 bit if you're just recording movie sound. What you will notice is how you just got away with using the table top mixer and laptop you already own to save yourself from spending [...] bucks on an SD recorder. That's pretty sweet. If you need XLR inputs, hook it to an external mixer. For some reason it's hard to find battery powered mic preamps. That's silly. I'll get to work building one and post the schematic on [...] Taking the cover off, I see that the Behringer uses a high quality, easily obtainable Burr-Brown chipset developed by Texas Instruments. So if it makes you feel fancier, you could scratch off "Behringer" and write "Texas Instruments" since the majority of the functionality was developed by TI. That's what makes it so cheap: TI develops a single chip solution (about 5 dollars from DigiKey), Behringer draws a PCB and adds some passive components, connectors, and a pretty box and that's that. There's probably less than ten dollars worth of parts in this thing. You're still getting a good deal; it's worth 20 dollars to have someone put this together for you. Don't be fooled into buying a more expensive interface, it'll just have more useless garbage piled into it and require proprietary crapware to run. Buy this interface, it rocks!

Update 4/2013: People have been coming at me with torches and pitchforks for this review lately, so let me clarify some things. First, I made the evaluation using speakers and the RCA outputs directly. So it's not a headphone impedance mismatch issue. NwAvGuy had a great detailed measurements-based review of the UCA-202 that I'm fully aware of now, and I have to disagree with him. I think he's very headstrong and overconfident, and it biases his results toward trusting his methodology too much, and he gives no room for doubt in his results or for subjective output analysis. As a scientist, I find his attitude suspect. But that's an ad-hominem argument, so take it with a grain of salt: the point is that I personally believe he's missing something in his analysis. Second, this review is SUBJECTIVE. Most reviews are! This particular subjective review was made from the point of view of getting an "audiophile-grade" experience. Of course we all want to believe we can get an audiophile experience for a scant $30, that would be great! And there are certainly some devices that do that--like the Sonic Impact T-Amp which really does live up to its hype. I think this little unit is an excellent sound utility! You will most certainly get audio that is good enough for almost any purpose out of this device. It is a DAC. It works. I'm not saying it sounds horrible here, I'm saying it doesn't have the top 2% needed to make the experience real. And it's not because of the price (I tested this DAC, as well as the comparison DACs, through that little $35 Sonic Impact T-Amp, which easily resolved their differences), but because of the device itself. I personally believe that the quality is somewhat limited by the price, but it doesn't have to be. There are DACs today for even cheaper than 4 years ago, FiiO makes some great ones, as do other companies. The UCA-202 however is still the same, and I don't think it's improved much while other companies have been innovating and bringing down the price of high quality audio. If you're going to write a comment on this review attempting to argue with it, you're not the person this review was intended for, and you're wasting your time. Don't bother. Please, purchase and enjoy the UCA-202 instead--and don't worry about how it sounds, because it will sound just fine. If you're the kind of person this review was intended for, you probably won't be thinking about the UCA-202 anyway, but this review is intended to validate that obvious conclusion. Thanks, and please, spend your valuable time doing something better than arguing about the sound quality of little $30 devices on the internet. I've moved on. Original review: =================================================== This device is great for those who just want to get sound in and out of the computer conveniently without plugging in too many audio cables. It is nice to sit down at a desk, plug in the USB hub, and get sound in and out right away. I used mine to connect out to my ADS monitors and in from my run-of-the-mill Behringer 802 mixer. Key word "used." After a few hours of listening to the device, both recording and playback, I realized that it actually sounded worse than the headphone output on my laptop. Now, realize that I am a stickler for audio quality - your needs may vary - but for those with good ears this may be useful information. The sound is dead and lifeless, without much clarity or image. It seems as though a veil lies between me and the music that I can't get rid of. This, my good-eared friends, is the problem with a cheap DAC. That's the Digital-to-Analog converter, and it's what takes the bits from your computer and decides how to make sound waves out of them. Devices such as this one are cheap for a reason - the DAC chips and op-amps and components in the signal path are cheaply bought and cheaply constructed, and you'll get that signature veiled Behringer (oops, am I generalizing?) 'cheap' sound. If you have good ears and know you will be able to hear a difference - do yourself a favor and invest in a good DAC and ADC instead of this. You will thank yourself many times later on for it. There are many options in the $100-$200 range that those with good ears will (unfortunately for our wallets) require. So this review is mainly targeted as a warning to folks with discerning ears. However, if you're just looking for simple input and output and aren't running it to a good set of monitors or doing serious recording, then this will do just fine. If you know you won't be able to hear the difference, there's obviously no point in spending any more than this. Enjoy! (As a side note - if you're wondering why I care so much, let me put it simply: I think I end up listening to and enjoying more music when it sounds remarkably real. It's way more enjoyable. That's all. If you can avoid it, I suggest staying blissfully unaware of this fact; it's way cheaper.)

I had this item in my wishlist for a long time and finally bought it. Totally worth its price. I use it with Audio Technica M20x monitor headphones and it's a very good combination.

review: Ultra-Low Latency 2 In/2 Out USB/Audio Interface with Digital Output Got this to do a quick and simple job recording vinyls to my laptop. Stereo L/R recording works. sample rate 48khz at 16bit res. Auto detected driver from win10. Matched it with free software Audacity. Initially had trouble recording stereo -- kept recording in mono. Ended up being windows not audacity . The trick for me was to CLOSE software (audacity) then open windows Sound manager -> Recording -> Mic properties -> Advanced -> pick a TWO CHANNEL recording format mode. For some strange reason when the driver auto installed, it picked ONE CHANNEL MONO recording only. And no matter what i did in Audacity, it would only record MONO. This trick allowed me to record in independent L / R channels. I was about to return this product as a defect until i realised this wasnt setup properly by default. Anyway, a few things about this product 1. nice clean simply recording -- i have no complaints. I wouldnt call this the most cleaning audio interface (like my steinberg box) but for the size and portability, its darn good. 2. headphone direct monitoring with no latency -- nice that it has this switch. very handy when youre trying to monitor the recording. 3. Also used as a DAC so you can OUtPUT to the audio interface to send the audio to external amp (via output RCA ) or just headphones from the unit 4. Headphone DAC has a small dial to control volume of headphone monitoring (nice!) for the price, portability, and function, this cannot be beat.

Interfaz sencillo, de buen precio, pero potente en prestaciones. -Sampling de 48khz, superior a CD -Gran potencia de salida, bastante mas alta que una Focusrite. y menos ruido. -Entrada de linea para grabar de una fuente analógica. -Minijack para monitoreo con auriculares -No necesita drivers, ¡PLUG'N PLAY total! -¡Funciona hasta en mi telefono android! También en Raspberry y Linux -No pesa ni ocupa nada -Salida optica (Toslink) de regalo No puede falta en cualquier caja de herramientas.

It's a great little unit, sounds good and does the job it's designed for real well. It you are using it on windows, just check you sound settings for the device as microsoft seems to have decided that a stereo device should be set to mono as it's default, which is real weird as windows knows & tells you it's a stereo microphone but still decides to remix it down to mono if you don't change you sound settings. Other than the windows issues, I've had no problem with the hardware, it's been plugged and unplugged lots of times without an issues. I would happy by any of the Behringer 202 range again.

PS - 28 April 2014. In some of the reviews that I have read some of the correspondents have reported difficulty getting the Behringer UCA202 U Control to record in stereo and some are having difficulty adjusting the volume levels. Sometimes you have to adjust the sound settings in the control panel on a laptop or PC. You have to tell your computer to record in two channels instead of one for stereo. Go into the sounds window and select " Microphone 2 USB codec" with the device plugged in to a USB connexion. Select recording and advanced and set the device to 2 channel CD quality. I use Audacity software. You need to check that Audacity is recording in two channels for stereo recording rather than one channel for mono. You go into "Preferences" which is in the "Edit" menu and then set the USB recording device to stereo in the recording box. If you are having problems setting up the recording volumes then Audacity can be adjusted with the microphone slider which is on the tool bar. This works fine for me with a line level output from my amplifier - I do not use the phono pre-amp from my turntable kit when I record an LP or single. If this fails (or where you do not have a line output from your amp) you could try the headphone output which is usually located on the front of the amplifier. If you turn the amplifier volume control right down then it will attenuate the output level. Using a combination of the Audacity microphone slider and the headphone output you should be able to adjust the volume of the recording level to make sure the recording is loud enough but does not distort. In the view menu you can set Audacity to "show" clipping" . This will display a vertical red line on sections of the recording where the volume levels are too high and therefore the music will sound distorted - this is a very useful tool. I have never used a MAC PC but I would think that it has similar methods of controlling whether you record in stereo or not by using a sound control feature. I would guess that other types of recording software similar to Audacity need to be set up to record and playback in stereo or mono according to your choice. If the above does not work then you are faced with the possibility that some of your equipment is not working correctly from a physical point of view. You could check the connections have been fitted correctly or use alternative equipment to find out what has gone wrong. When set up correctly this product works really well; I am sure you will not be disappointed. Main text: I bought this brilliant device to "digitise" old LPs, which I buy in second hand shops, and archive old audio cassettes before they self destruct. I read all the reviews and I agree with most of them and decided to buy it even though it is of flimsy construction. It is not going to be used very often and I am careful with equipment so it should last years. It literally took me ten minutes to plug it into the line outputs of my amplifier and connect the device to a laptop, then cue up a Beatles 45 and digitise it with Audacity. Audacity is brilliant in my opinion and there is plenty of help text and Wikipedia information to get you going. I deleted the the Beatles 45 file as I just used it to test the recording levels. Next up was a Shadows LP "Rock on with the Shadows in Mono". Yes, you can buy this on CD but sometimes I like to play an ageing LP for old time's sake. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I did not use Audacity to remove any surface noise from the record or clicks or pops; Hank's twanging drowns them out anyway. I played the digital recording back through the same amplifier and neither my wife nor I could hear any difference from the original: it sounded the same warts and all. At the end of the "first side" I felt compelled to jump up and turn the laptop er, record over. What more can I say about the sound quality? This was great stuff - the Shadows back in their 1960's glory, and you cannot damage the needle when you jive. One of the reviewers has complained about the the inability of the analogue converter to sample at 24 bit 96 KHz (24/96) as it is limited to 16 bit 48 KHz. This might affect you if you are mastering music and you want to keep the noise floor down when mixing lots of "takes". So, I take the point. For me, digitising old recordings at 16/44.1 or at red book CD standard is good enough. I fail to see how using a 24/96 sampling rate could improve the sound quality as I am only doing one "take". If you are only going to use this converter to digitise your records you can save yourself money and some disk space by buying this device. I have got plenty of external DACs, so I do not need to use this device for playback from a laptop or PC but I tested it just the same. The Toslink optical output works really well and so do the line outputs. The headphone amplifier is not so good but it is sufficient for my purposes. If you are on the road this device will probably perform better than your laptop's sound card or headphone output. The Behringer does not perform as well as the rinky dink DAC that I have got in my main HI-FI and I could not expect it to. But, it performs well compared to my other portable DACs. There is no Toslink input facility. Pros :- You can use a laptop for line output sources. You no longer have to use the line inputs of a desktop PC. You can connect it to a USB port on the front rather than fiddle about with connecting line outputs to the input connexions on the back of the PC. This is especially useful if your kit is under a desk. You can take your laptop to your HI-FI equipment rather than the other way round. There is no need to unplug your turntable or cassette player etc. and then plug it all back in again. It is small, very portable and very versatile - an ADC and DAC in one box! Cons: None really unless you are going to subject the device to hard and continuous use. In conclusion: Five stars for sonic performance and overall convenience; it is simply brilliant . But, it gets only three stars for build quality. The USB deck can now be given away.