greetings earthlings welcome back to a very budget version of the vs. series so today we're comparing
two of the cheapest interfaces on the market of the behringer um two verse the UMC 22 but what
I'm most excited about here is to find out what the heck the difference is between the behringer
xenyx preamp and the behringer mitos preamp but before we get into that let's briefly talk about
the build quality both of these interfaces have the exact same features they have XLR
combo jacks instrument inputs direct monitoring computer playback output volume control and 48
volt phantom power the main difference between these two interfaces is the layout of the dials
and the build quality the UMC 22 has an all-metal chassis and feels really well put together while
the behringer um 2 is all plastic and feels like an absolute trashy toy but now let's go ahead and
jump into the tests ok so right now I have the rode nt1 connected directly to the UM 2 with the
48 volt phantom power turned on my gain is set at 12 o´clock this interface will set you back
around $30 it has the xenix microphone preamp it has an XLR combo jack like i already mentioned and
it records it up to 16-bit 48 kilohertz and now i'm speaking into the NT one connected directly
to the UMC 22 with 48 volts on and my gain also set at 12 o´clock this interface will set you
back around $50 it also has the XLR combo jacks this interface has the behringer mightest preamp
and it records it up to 16-bit 48 kilohertz now I have these shure sm7b connected directly to
the behringer um to the gain is set at 100% and this is how the audio is sounding when
I'm speaking into the microphone and this is the level of background noise you're getting
and now I have the sm7b connected directly to the behringer UMC 22 also with the gain
set at 100% this is how the audio sounds while I'm speaking into the microphone and this is
the background noise and in order to get a better understanding of the noise floors of
these preamps I'm going to be measuring that using a methodology shown by Julian Kraus and
I'll go ahead and link his video in one of the upper corners if you want to check that out
okay here we are looking at the latency for the um two with the sample rate set at 48 kilohertz
with an i/o buffer size of 128 samples we have a round-trip latency of 10 and 1/2 milliseconds
or an output latency of 4.7 if we drop it to 64 samples we have 7.7 milliseconds round-trip
or 3 and 1/2 milliseconds output and if we jump to 256 we have fifteen point seven milliseconds
round-trip or seven and 1/2 milliseconds output now we're looking at the latency for the UM C
22 also recording at 48 kilohertz with an i/o buffer size of 128 samples we have eleven point
seven milliseconds round-trip or four and 1/2 milliseconds output drop to 64 samples
we have nine milliseconds round-trip or three and 1/2 milliseconds output and if we jump to
256 samples we have 17 milliseconds round-trip or 7 point 4 milliseconds output ok so right
now I have my Gibson Les Paul Studio which has passive pickups and I'm going to plug
it directly into the instrument input of the behringer um - as well as the UM C 22 I'll go
ahead and show you the raw audio signal from both interfaces so you can hear the difference
is there and then I'll run both audio signals through an amp simulator and show you the outputs
and the winner of this vs. series is the UMC 22 and in order to explain why I selected this
interface let's walk through all the findings of my tests first up the gain offered by both of
these interfaces is seemingly identical both of them were barely able to drive the sm7b at 100%
so I would guess that they have a max gain of maybe plus 50 or plus 55 decibels so there's no
real winner there secondly in terms of the noise floor both of these interfaces performed pretty
similarly but the UM 2 was slightly louder and it also had some additional digital interference
or RF interference and if I had to speculate about what causes that I'm gonna go ahead and guess it's
the plastic chassis which likely is not going to block as much RF interference as a metal chassis
does then third when we measure the latency of the interfaces the output latency was identical
for both of the interfaces but when we looked at the round-trip latency there was actually a 1 to
2 millisecond favour for the UM 2 and lastly for the DI instrument inputs I think both of these
interfaces really underperformed I should have had about 9 decibels of gain to increase the input
before I started clipping but when you go back and listen to that raw input source you can tell that
there's clicking throughout the entire recording so I don't think either of these interfaces
are really ideal for any kind of di use so to summarise why I selected the um C 22 over the
UM 2 it really comes down to two factors the first one being the build quality I think if you pick up
the um C 22 it will be immediately apparent that this interface will last quite longer than the
um 2 which feels like a plastic toy but equally as important in my opinion the um C 22 did have
a slightly quieter noise floor because it didn't suffer from that RF interference or that digital
interference from the UM 2 and that's actually gonna do it for the vs. series today but I do want
to hear from you guys on a couple of different things first and foremost do you agree with the
conclusion of this versus series do you think the UMC 22 is worth the extra $20 or do you think you
should just go with the UM two and secondly let me know what pieces of gear you want me to compare in
the next verses series so if you guys got anything out of this video thumbs up if you hated it thumbs
down want more videos go ahead and subscribe click the logo beneath me or click that little
Bell button and I will see you all next time thanks for watching thanks for listening bye