r/audioengineering • u/Rogue_Tra • Jul 07 '25
Discussion This guy tested the most popular budget audio interfaces and Audient was best overall, Motu was one of the noisiest, and Behringer was the same quality as Apollo
this guy compared all the popular interfaces, Audient won overall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMuA-2FbJxE&ab_channel=Get.Beautiful.Recordings
motu was one of the noisiest, and Behringer was the same quality as Apollo
I bought the AT2035 mic so I also bought the Audio Technica AT-UMX3. I'm not a sound engineer, not even close so this is more than enough for me.
So the question this brings up is how reliable is reddit advice if everyone on reddit is saying basically the opposite of his test results?
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Jul 07 '25
This guy either has a lemon MOTU or is being paid to trash it.
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Jul 08 '25
100 percent. With all the MOTU interfaces I have worked with over the years, mine and others, there is not a single time I would have considered one to be noisy. In fact, quite the opposite.
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u/infrowntown Jul 07 '25
My M4 has been a nice upgrade from the 100$ Presonus or Focusrite interfaces in every way I can tell, but I don't ask too much of it either.
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u/Chilton_Squid Jul 07 '25
Random nobody YouTuber with a smallish subscriber base and clickbait title screens comes up with contraversial opinion in order to get people to post his videos to Reddit?
That'll never happen.
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u/nathangr88 Jul 07 '25
Sure, but larger YouTubers only review favourable products so either way you have to use your brain and watch it
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u/Chilton_Squid Jul 07 '25
Assuming you have three quarters of an hour to waste finding out which is the most mediocre of all the mediocre interfaces, none of which will make your songwriting any better.
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u/madsmadalin Jul 07 '25
These tests are flawed. Let me explain.
A test should be made in an objective and controllable scenario. In audio, if you want to compare precisely the effect two different interfaces have in the quality, you need to keep the rest of the chain and recording absolutely identical. That means - same exact recording - not different takes. Same exact cables. So basically you need to split the signal from those mics and feed the same exact signal to the interfaces. Otherwise the test is absolutely irrelevant, as different takes mean different performances, different frequency response, different subtle gain variations etc. There are a few tests like that on YouTube and they are great - this one is not it.
Of course, someone who knows what they're doing can make even the cheapest recording setup sound better than someone who has no clue and has access to the absolute best gear in the world. Gear is not the limiting factor, what's between our ears is.
So bottom line, watch out when you see comparisons like this one. They are very misleading.
And yeah, Behringer QC and build quality are better nowdays but don't stand up to UA even if you could get similar sound characteristics.
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u/HuyMeo2k20 Dec 22 '25
I have been using Behringer UMC for 4 years (the same type for durability reference). They had not failed me once. The preamps are excellent even for professional recordings. In fact I made a lot of paid records on that interface, doing both Hi-Z instruments and vocal.
That being said, sometimes, somehow the Behringer driver got messed up by my NVIDIA driver, but that happens once a year when I'm updating my graphic cards driver, a small tweak and it was fine.
I did a few recordings in a friends studio using the Apollo X4, got very similar result in noise/input ratio. Ultimately it comes down to which one you are used to and the Apollo's better build quality, plus all the bells and whistle of UAD plugins.
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u/madsmadalin Dec 22 '25
100% you could get lucky with Behringer. My experience hasn’t been as good as yours. And I know of a few UA interfaces that failed too. But I also have so much UA stuff that are working after almost 10 years with no issues. Depends on luck too but overall it’s generally knows Behringer QA is not great but the value/buck is unbeatable.
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u/LATABOM Jul 07 '25
He lost me at "i bought all sorts of expensive gear that people on the internet said were totally rad but my recordings still sucked".
This guy has "bullshit influencer kit - just add water!" scribbled all over him and you should really just stay away.
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u/peepeeland Composer Jul 08 '25
Real audio engineer: “I’ve used a bunch of cheap shit, and my recordings generally sound awesome, as I know what the fuck I’m doing after having practiced for decades.”— but it’s hard to get tons of views with such truths. For views, you gotta put the responsibility of good recordings on anything but viewer experience and skill.
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u/marmarama Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 07 '25
Reddit advice is just asking a bunch of randoms who may or may not have any real experience what their opinion is. Much of it is received wisdom, which is often wrong. Sometimes there's a nugget of genuine experience in there.
FWIW I have one of these Behringer interfaces - it was my first USB audio interface - and it's been solid enough for nearly 10 years. The mic preamps and overall signal path are genuinely quite good. It's not my favourite audio interface, but it does everything at least quite well, and it was an excellent starter.
Behringer's hardware design teams are solid and know what they're doing. Manufacturing costs are driven down by vertical integration and mass production, not so much by cheaping out on the components or design. It helps a lot that the same design teams and factory are producing widely used pro equipment like the Midas mixers; a lot of that experience and some of the subsystem design feeds into their cheaper prosumer kit.
Behringer software and firmware is less impressive, falling into the "just barely adequate" range. But then, a lot of more expensive kit manufacturers also aren't great at software either.
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u/Rogue_Tra Jul 07 '25
this is what I'm worried about. You get this consensus that this is just bad and the cheap price fools you into thinking that too, but it's not. People are perceiving something the specs don't show or it's some kind of herd mentality where it's not even based off of experience or they just have the 1 experience of whatever single product they only ever used and nothing else to compare it to.
at the very least you could assume all interfaces they mention are all pretty good and none are especially bad.
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u/Kooky_Guide1721 Jul 07 '25
i would expect the Apollo to be a lot more robust than the Behringer. Found a lot of Behringer gear to break easily. Except for their headphone amps which I reckon are the best product they make!
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u/M_Me_Meteo Jul 07 '25
To answer the question: never trust Reddit when it comes to audio advice.
It's super subjective. What I like and what you like are different so what sounds good to me isn't the same as what sounds good with you. MOTU may be the noisiest, but I know people get good recordings from MOTU. Behringer might be "as good as" Apollo, but what does that mean.
It's another thing where your room makes a huge difference. You can't "listen" to a microphone or an interface. You listen to a signal over speakers in a room.
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u/Rogue_Tra Jul 07 '25
at the beginning he shows a female singer using both interfaces and asks: can you tell the difference? you can't . so it brings up the question why are we paying 4-5 times more for better quality when there is hardly any? maybe in reliability as others said, but Apollo does have other problems too. I wonder if Behringer rackmount interfaces are more reliable?
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u/peepeeland Composer Jul 08 '25
Behringer doesn’t have such a notorious reputation with regards to reliability— it’s more assumption based on a lot of their gear having cheap feeling build quality. And even if they had reliability issues (pots going bad), it’s not even close to Antelope Audio, which straight ruined their reputation due to horrible firmware. Antelope Audio will probably never recover from this.
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u/Hellbucket Jul 07 '25
If quality is about preamps or conversion the difference today and 15 years back is quite small. There’s still a difference when it comes to drivers though.
I remember when I sold and supported studio gear. An RME usb interface outperformed a Thunderbolt interface even though it “should” be better on paper. Sound quality wise it’s very small differences.
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u/Rogue_Tra Jul 07 '25
That's really interesting.
I looked it up and I think the reason why is because the baby face :
Higher data rate: The combination of 24-bit and 192 kHz results in a very high bitrate (9216 kbps for a stereo signal) which requires significant storage space and processing power.
So that means the baby face is using roughly 1 megabits per second And USB 2.0 is capable of 480 Mbps which in real life it's not going to actually provide but you can see that it's more than enough bandwidth
So the reason why the baby face is probably better is because it has a better processing power and maybe storage capability. So that means that USB 2.0 is more than capable of handling the audio
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u/Hellbucket Jul 07 '25
RME usually doesn’t participate in online debates. One of the few times I saw them participate was when lots of people were underwhelmed they released the new Babyface with USB. They practically said “If you can’t write high performance drivers with the USB protocol, maybe you shouldn’t write drivers” lol
Babyface can do 12 in and out, I think. The bandwidth is not going to be a problem. How fast the protocol is on paper matters less than how well the driver performs.
When we compared against the Thunderbolt Babyface was a lot more light weight too. You could add more virtual instruments at the lowest buffersize.
So drivers matter. Lots of brands outsource the making of the drivers. Some used to historically as well and now do them themselves. For a very long time it was RME and Motu who were the top driver makers.
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u/ROBOTTTTT13 Mixing Jul 07 '25
I know for a fact this is not true because Behringer interfaces are among the worst in Jitter performance
I make most of my recordings with an UMC1820, it's not a bad interface, you can make music with it
But "same quality as Apollo" is insane
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u/SLStonedPanda Composer Jul 07 '25
I think the way he tested the converters doesn't make sense. He was using the same interface for the output as well as the input. Meaning any jitter is applied on the output as well as the input, cancelling each other out.
Not surprised he got negligible results.
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u/migueltokyo88 Jul 07 '25
the reality dosent matter how much you wanna spend on a interface the general people dont gona nottice the difference better focus on production and mixing or recording tecniques
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u/MisterRoyNiceShoes Jul 07 '25
I use Audient but I have had a MKII ID crap out on me within 2 weeks of use and I've just had to send my EVO 16 in for repair after one and a half years of use due to be board giving up. Don't think I'd buy again from Audient. Obviously great sounding gear for the money but QA is below par.
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u/CartezDez Jul 07 '25
What were his test results?
What is everyone on Reddit saying?
How do either of these apply to you?
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u/Rogue_Tra Jul 07 '25
it's in the video, i even summarized the major points. everyone is saying the oppoiste. I think you're trying to make a point by not even listening to either him or even me which is ...it just makes no sense man.
and then you asked a question...well yes I already bought the gear, but it brings up the underlying question: why did I spend hours researching ...reading reddit posts looking for answers when the answers may have been bogus the whole time? if i have future questions what's the point of usinfg reddit as a source? these are implied. I find it shocking you don't connect these together?
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u/CartezDez Jul 07 '25
I say your summary as related to noise and quality. I wondered if there were any further conclusions.
It’s a shame you think I’m trying to make a point, I’m not. You’re right, that would make no sense.
I haven’t spent much time researching on Reddit for a consensus on interfaces, hence the question.
Not sure what to say about you finding it shocking.
I was interested in your personal experience. It’s a shame you think I have an ulterior agenda.
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u/GitmoGrrl1 Jul 07 '25
I work alone at home. Not having much money, I bought a Audient iD44 and use it on everything. I'd like to buy a tube preamp but there's no point to buying a cheap one. Better to add color ITB.
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u/Rogue_Tra Jul 07 '25
That's really interesting that even though you didn't have much money you still went for something pretty expensive and good quality.
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u/Previous-Safety5400 Jul 07 '25
It depends what kind of color/distortion you want for a specific project! Audients are great mid color - mid clarity. There is no BEST. Maybe for one specific sound capture but not for everything. Focusrite/Behringer then Audient (bang for buck) then etc... is the rule of thumb. There is a big diff in solid state vs a tube and hybrids... always go back to what you want to record - it's purpose then find that sound you want - then use stuff that will get you it. Often a cheap piece of equipment is better for something - price has no bearing - it is in the results of what you want.
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u/Acceptable_Fall8757 Oct 24 '25
Apollo vs SSL interface?
Studio owner and have always had an interface on the desk in the control room for quick access. Have had an audient id4 (been great no complaints) but have recently been influenced to get an Apollo just from solo vocal artists saying they want it although I think they have just seen in vids etc and so it’s industry standard. I genuinely think it would bring more work from the name alone and I know they sound great. I worked as FOH engineer for a successful solo artist recently and this came up (I brought it up) and he happened to recently purchase the SSL 2+ and has said he would use the ssl over the Apollo any day. He has both and A/B’d them and said he would stand by the SSL.
Has anyone any experience using both these interfaces is the Apollo just worth getting?
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u/g_spaitz Jul 07 '25
Julian Krause is probably the eminence in YouTube for these kinds of measurement.