Post by mystifierce on Jan 12, 2021 17:10:03 GMT -8
Greetings, you all! My first post here. 
I'll jump straight into it...
After saving some money, i am ready for an upgrade to my humble studio. And now, i have come to the part where i need to upgrade my interface, where my current one is the Behringer UMC202HD. I feel like i am at the point where i feel like my UMC202HD doesn't cut it anymore. It's more of a bother than anything else. Not sure how to describe it, but i feel that i don't get enough with that interface for my purpose, which is being a voiceover artist/voice actor and a live streamer. While it was good enough when i started with this, i feel like it's about time to do an "upgrade" now, even though that these upgrades seems to be a budget-option...
A little bit about me and my field of use for the interface:
- First of all, i am located in a distant village far north of europe (scandinavia), where the nearest studio is...well...not even worth considering for me, hence why my home studio is the only option for me. This also means that shopping on Amazon is NOT an option for me (because Amazon doesn't ship here). Also, there are no nearby places where i can test things out before i buy them, unfortunately.
- I have been into voiceover, live streaming and narrating for about 4 years now.
- As mentioned, my primary fields are voiceover/voice acting, live streaming, narrating and some occasional podcast, usually with a friend of mine.
- My budget for the new interface will be up to $300. I understand that i will be rather limited because of this, but i should be able to get an interface that i can work very nicely and quite semi-professionally with, at least from what i have seen elsewhere and others be capable of doing.
- I don't own a Mac, so i will do all my work through either a laptop or a PC.
- While i do most of my work alone, i do have a friend i every now and then work together with, but that's usually for podcasting and some voiceover-sessions. Saying this, means that i definitely need an interface with the option to have at least 2 mics available. I will be using Behringer HA400 for the getting the 2x audio outputs.
- There are no instruments involved in my work. Note: IF i would be using any instrument, it would be to connect a keyboard to it, because my mentioned friend plays keyboard actively, so we might get the idea to do a collab some day, but having a MIDI out/input is not important!
My current mics that i am using:
- For my voiceover sessions: Røde NT1 and Techzone Audio Stellar X2 (i switch between these, depending on what kind of voiceover job i am doing).
- For my live streams: Røde Procaster (this works optimal for my kind of voice-range, which is about as average as it get as it is neither deep nor too bright. I can fetch an audio sample if needed?)
- Note: I will eventually buy TLM102 or 103, depending on my budget, but that'll not be done just yet...
I have gone through several reviews and videos on youtube and google, and so far, i have noted down the following interfaces that are all in my price range, in no particular order:
1: SSL2 / 2+ (quite the price difference on the regular and the 2+ it seems, but the SSL2+ do have the MIDI-ports + 2 headphone ports, which can come in handy)
2: Audient ID14 (apparently, there's ID14 mk2 available as well, but it's quite the price difference between the mk2 and the regular ID14)
3: Audient EVO4 and EVO8 (considering that both are pretty much identical, evo4 would probably do as fine of a job as evo8, considering that i will have max 2 people using it at once)
4: MOTU M4 (those MIDI-ports can come in handy at some point, but not for the moment)
5: Steinberg UR-RT2 (it's a little bit above my price range, so i reckon the others mentioned are as good as this one, or?)
Out of those 5, it does seem like the SSL2+, EVO4 and M4 are those that seems to be hitting me good, but yea, i am not sure...
So, with the above things taken into the consideration, what would be the natural upgrade from UMC202HD for me? Any suggestions?
I hope i have given as much information as needed for you to advice/assist me in buying the right interface. If anything else is needed, do let me know. Pardon for all the tl;dr-text, but i hope i was as thorough as possible.
I'll jump straight into it...
After saving some money, i am ready for an upgrade to my humble studio. And now, i have come to the part where i need to upgrade my interface, where my current one is the Behringer UMC202HD. I feel like i am at the point where i feel like my UMC202HD doesn't cut it anymore. It's more of a bother than anything else. Not sure how to describe it, but i feel that i don't get enough with that interface for my purpose, which is being a voiceover artist/voice actor and a live streamer. While it was good enough when i started with this, i feel like it's about time to do an "upgrade" now, even though that these upgrades seems to be a budget-option...
A little bit about me and my field of use for the interface:
- First of all, i am located in a distant village far north of europe (scandinavia), where the nearest studio is...well...not even worth considering for me, hence why my home studio is the only option for me. This also means that shopping on Amazon is NOT an option for me (because Amazon doesn't ship here). Also, there are no nearby places where i can test things out before i buy them, unfortunately.
- I have been into voiceover, live streaming and narrating for about 4 years now.
- As mentioned, my primary fields are voiceover/voice acting, live streaming, narrating and some occasional podcast, usually with a friend of mine.
- My budget for the new interface will be up to $300. I understand that i will be rather limited because of this, but i should be able to get an interface that i can work very nicely and quite semi-professionally with, at least from what i have seen elsewhere and others be capable of doing.
- I don't own a Mac, so i will do all my work through either a laptop or a PC.
- While i do most of my work alone, i do have a friend i every now and then work together with, but that's usually for podcasting and some voiceover-sessions. Saying this, means that i definitely need an interface with the option to have at least 2 mics available. I will be using Behringer HA400 for the getting the 2x audio outputs.
- There are no instruments involved in my work. Note: IF i would be using any instrument, it would be to connect a keyboard to it, because my mentioned friend plays keyboard actively, so we might get the idea to do a collab some day, but having a MIDI out/input is not important!
My current mics that i am using:
- For my voiceover sessions: Røde NT1 and Techzone Audio Stellar X2 (i switch between these, depending on what kind of voiceover job i am doing).
- For my live streams: Røde Procaster (this works optimal for my kind of voice-range, which is about as average as it get as it is neither deep nor too bright. I can fetch an audio sample if needed?)
- Note: I will eventually buy TLM102 or 103, depending on my budget, but that'll not be done just yet...
I have gone through several reviews and videos on youtube and google, and so far, i have noted down the following interfaces that are all in my price range, in no particular order:
1: SSL2 / 2+ (quite the price difference on the regular and the 2+ it seems, but the SSL2+ do have the MIDI-ports + 2 headphone ports, which can come in handy)
2: Audient ID14 (apparently, there's ID14 mk2 available as well, but it's quite the price difference between the mk2 and the regular ID14)
3: Audient EVO4 and EVO8 (considering that both are pretty much identical, evo4 would probably do as fine of a job as evo8, considering that i will have max 2 people using it at once)
4: MOTU M4 (those MIDI-ports can come in handy at some point, but not for the moment)
5: Steinberg UR-RT2 (it's a little bit above my price range, so i reckon the others mentioned are as good as this one, or?)
Out of those 5, it does seem like the SSL2+, EVO4 and M4 are those that seems to be hitting me good, but yea, i am not sure...
So, with the above things taken into the consideration, what would be the natural upgrade from UMC202HD for me? Any suggestions?
I hope i have given as much information as needed for you to advice/assist me in buying the right interface. If anything else is needed, do let me know. Pardon for all the tl;dr-text, but i hope i was as thorough as possible.
