Behringer UCG102 USB Guitar Link

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.

EDITED.I'm sorry to have to edit my previous assessment of this Audio Interface. On most counts, I'm still impressed, but only when it came to mixing down my music did a BIG problem emerge. The sound of the mixed down track was terrible. I couldn't understamd why, and spent an unholy amount of time on the internet looking for a solution. All to no avail. In the end I contacted the product helpline and that left me more frustrated than ever. I was asked to do all sorts of checks which were really very impractical and which in some cases was impossible with my setup. I decided to risk buying a different interface to see and chose a Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen USB Audio Interface. This works perfectly - on mixdown and on everything else so in my case at least the Behringer was, for whatever reason, the cause of the problem.I'm very disappointed because in all other respects it's a great interface at a tempting price but useless if it presents problems that other models don't.It may just be a problem in my particular case, so it may be worth a shot for anyone else.If you review it, just make sure it does EVERYTHING that you require of it before you do.My original review follows....I was a bit nervous about buying this interface as it is way cheaper than 'market leaders'. Nevertheless I went for it and I'm glad I did.The sound quality is excellent - no glitches or artefacts. It was just a matter of plug and play.Couldn't have asked for, or expected better.

I just wanted to wrote a quick review to give an oversight and correct some of the nonsensical reviews on here.I have seen loads of off-putting reviews on this site about this unit and most of them seem to be problems with the end user. Let's address some of these:* "Doesn't work with Windows 10": It does work with windows 10. I plug it in, I have a USB Audio Device. i am running these units with Win 10 / Win 11 and Linux. There's no problem.* "They're not low latency": Meh, with the stock windows driver (plug and play) they're not noticably latent. I you need ultra low latency, download the ASIO drivers then!* "It's in MONO!!!": Yeah, Windows has a tendency to sometimes see new audio devices like these as, basically, USB microphones. i had exactly this in Windows 10 where I was getting only left channel inpt presented as both left and right channel to the computer. You need to open the sound settings in Windows, find the USB Audio device and select 2 channels and the sample rate you're expecting. If it's set to 1 channel this is exactly what happens. It's a 30 second fix if you know what you're doing!* "Crackles, buzzing etc": use decent shielded cables then. If you are linking things together that span devices with their own power sources and you're getting that weird "cpu noise" interference (like on old sound cards in PCs) then invest in a USB ground loop isolator. It will break the direct ground between a USB device and the ground on the audio input and fix the problem. This is basic audio stuff. Read up, noobs!* "It doesn't have standard instrument ports on it! What are these 'RGB' connectors???": Good lord it uses industry standard RCA phono connectors LIKE VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING ELSE WITH LINE IN AND OUTPUTS! You can't plug a 1.8" jack from a guitar into this thing, it's not a guitar pre-amp!!!Ok. On to the review.I have bought three of these devices which I use on a variety of computers for streaming video and various audio work. For the money (£18 new / £14 used at time of writing) they're amazing value. Sound quality is great. 16bit / 48kHz sampling - probably all you're going to need if you're operating at this price point. They for working with line level audio. Both input and output sounds spot on. I find them to be low noise and low latency for what I do with them. They have an actual volume dial on them and a headphone jack which makes them good for listening to music from computers with horrible on board sound etc. The headphone jack doubles as a monitor when the monitor switch is set to on.I bought my first one of these units probably over 10 years ago. I've not had a single problem with any of them and the subsequent two I bought were in a lovely red colour and second hand on Amazon.I have only one gripe with them, so read this it will save you a LOT of time if you happen to be using them in the niche case I was using one of them...I have some real time compression software running on Windows and a dedicated little PC which I was using to provide some professional level dynamic audio compression. I was using one of these devices to feed audio in, compress it and feed it back out again, as these things work bidirectionally. The compression software was set to pull up quiet audio. I had some really weird issue where I was getting some really peculiar low frequency noise showing up in this situation and it took me ages to get to the bottom of it. The problem seems to be there is some leakage between the input and output, something that isn't normally noticeable in most setups however, it's a big enough problem to make using the device in this configuration impractical. The same thing goes for when I am using the device as a USB input, feeding audio in via Voicemeter Potato into the compression software and recording this to disk (whilst monitoring via the same device's out put). When I stop and start audio abruptly I can head a short echo effect, which puzzled the heck out of my for ages, thinking I'd messed up something in the software set up, however the problem was due to this slight input / output crosstalk. I wouldn't have even noticed this while recording the audio as the echo is quiet and masked by the main audio but it would have been there to some extent in the recording. Simply not using the output as my headphones device to monitor the recording, fixed this.This doesn't appear to be a fault with the unit. I got the same thing with all of them. So beware. But the chances are that you will never encounter this problem, however I am sure I have since read someone else mention it in another review but I can't find it any more!Hopefully that covers everything. I love these devices. They're no-nonsense and just keep on trucking :)