Behringer UMC202HD review (with noise measurement)

Hey Julien Kraus here and today we're going to have a look at another inexpensive audio interface, the Behringer UMC202HD. As always, let's start with the outside of the device and then dive deeper into the technical specifications. The build quality of this device is pretty good. You get a full metal construction with only the knobs and the XLR ports being out of plastic. The knobs feel nice and they operate smoothly. The pushbuttons latch nicely into place, though they feel a bit cheap. Overall, for the price, I think the build quality is more than adequate. Now let's have a closer look at the front of the interface. On the left you can see the two XLR-TRS combo connectors. To the right you have the corresponding gain knobs of the two channels. Above that you have two pushbuttons. The line-slash-inst button lets you toggle the TRS input between a line level or instrument input. And the pad button attenuates the XLR and TRS input by 20 decibels. And you got the same buttons for the second channel as well. So you have quite some options here and you can configure the inputs to fit your needs. Both channels also have an LED as a signal indicator and another LED which lights up when the signal is clipping. Further to the right you do have a headphone jack and a dial to control the headphone volume. You also have a button to enable or disable direct monitoring and a knob to control the volume of the output on the back. So then let's have a look at the back. Well, not much stuff to see here. You have two outputs which are controlled by the knob in the front. Both outputs are quarter-inch TRS connections. You also have a switch which turns the phantom power of the XLR inputs on the front on or off. You got your USB connector. And most importantly, the Kensington security lock. Okay, but seriously, does anybody use this? I have no idea, but well, it's there if you need it. And that's pretty much it for the outside look, now let's see how the interface performs. As always, I start out with the sampling rate and bit depth. The UMC202HD is advertised to have a maximum sampling rate of 192 kHz and a bit depth of 24-bit. I can confirm these specs and say that the interface really provides a 192 kHz sampling rate and a true 24-bit analog-to-digital converter. With such a high sampling rate, you can record frequencies far beyond the human hearing range and this will come in handy if you do slow down your audio recordings in post because this way you have more frequencies to work with. Of course, you can also set the interface to a lower sampling rate like 48kHz if you so desire. True 24-bit analog-to-digital conversion is also nice to have and it has the benefit that you can potentially capture a very high dynamic range. Naturally, dynamic range is the next spec we're going to look at. In the spec sheet, Behringer states that the UMC202HD has a dynamic range of 110 dBA. At least for my device, this is not exactly true. I measured a dynamic range of 100.3 dBA. Still 100 dBA is pretty good, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. For stuff like voice and instrument recordings, 100 dBA will still be fine. Especially for voice recording, you do have quite a bit of headroom with a dynamic range of 100 dBA. So while you're recording, your levels can easily be set to peak around minus 18 dBA and you will still not introduce any additional noise by the analog-to-digital converter. The next thing I always test is the noise performance of the preamps. Interestingly, there is no noise specifications to find in the datasheet of the UMC202HD. This is especially weird because the noise performance of the preamps is actually very good. You would think that Behringer would use this fact to advertise the interface, but they never really talk about noise performance. Nonetheless, the interface has an astonishingly low EIN of minus 129.1 dBu. This is the best noise performance of all the interfaces I've measured so far. Here you can see it compared to some more interfaces. The noise performance of the UMC202HD is even better than the Rode AI1 and the Behringer UMC22, which already had a very low noise floor. That said, the difference between the UMC202HD and the UMC22 is not dramatic. Have a listen to the noise of some interfaces in comparison to the UMC202HD. And now I'm using a Shure SM57 dynamic microphone, going straight into the UMC202HD, so you can get a feeling for how much noise this setup produces. I think you can agree that the noise floor is very low, if not completely inaudible. And this brings me to the question if you do need a fathead or cloudlifter for this interface. I can confidently say that you will not need a fatlifter for this interface. The noise floor is already so low that adding a fathead for example will only decrease the noise by about 1 more decibel. I really don't think that's worth it and that's actually good news because this way you can save some money. One more important point when using low-sensitive dynamic microphones is the gain that the interface can provide. If the gain is not high enough, you struggle to get your low-sensitive microphone to a proper recording level. The UMC202HD has a gain of pretty much exactly 51dBFS at 0dBu and this is quite a lot of gain so you can even drive mics like the Shure SM7B without a problem. The microphone input is specced with an input impedance of 3kΩ. Of course, I tested this with my UMC202HD and it has exactly 3kΩ. That's pretty normal and perfectly fine. I also tried to verify the maximum input level of the interface but the line-level input can handle such high inputs that my signal generator could not get the input up to the clipping level. Behringer states that the line-level input can handle up to plus 20dBu. The maximum my signal generator can put out is about plus 19dBu and when I did this, there was still some headroom left so I have no problem in believing the specified maximum input level. In the end, this means that the UMC202HD can handle pretty much any audio signal you throw at it. Regardless if it is professional line-level, consumer line-level, instrument-level or mic-level, the UMC202HD will be able to capture all these signals without a problem. Okay, let me shortly talk about my experience I had connecting the interface to a Windows 7 and Windows 10 PC. I installed the provided driver from Behringer and the audio interface instantly worked on my Windows 7 machine. On Windows 10, I installed the driver as well but then the interface wasn't recognized by the PC anymore. I then reinstalled the driver, then it did show up again and it did work fine. So if you do have this problem, reinstalling the driver might be the solution. But that's pretty much it. After successful driver installation, the interface worked perfectly fine on both my Windows machines. And by the way, the whole voiceover in this video is recorded with the UMC202HD connected to a Windows 10 PC. Now let's wrap this all up. Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised by the performance of the interface. The cheap price and some missing specifications made me a bit cautious in the beginning, but the more things I tested, the more the UMC202HD showed its true performance. I think it's a pretty versatile interface, you can configure both inputs to handle pretty much any audio source. You also get a true 192k sampling rate and a 24bit A2D conversion. The dynamic range with about 100dB is pretty good and the noise performance of the preamps is excellent. I think the Behringer UMC202HD is delivering some serious value for the money. Okay, that's it for now. 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