UMC1820 : Excellent sound quality for the price

I use my UMC1820 for recording music and speech and for playing back surround sound. I use it as a USB class-compliant device on Linux - it was easy to set up and runs under JACK very reliably with no dropouts.

I can't fault it in terms of audio quality - the inputs and outputs are very quiet. The dual headphone outputs and monitoring controls work well for recording with one or two musicians, and it seems to drive "difficult" headphones (e.g. HD650s) happily.

The unit as a whole seems solidly built. Inputs are on balanced XLR/jack combos, which are plastic but are bolted to the panel so they seem reasonably robust; outputs are on balanced jacks.

There are some minor downsides, as you'd expect for the price. The gain controls are a bit fiddly so it's difficult to set levels exactly and it's easy to knock one control while adjusting another. There's isn't quite enough gain to use an SM58-style dynamic mic (although it's quiet enough that you can boost it in software afterwards).

The monitor mix is just a straight sum of the analogue inputs - there's no built-in DSP mixer. The power supply's an external brick, which isn't very neat in a rack. And the channel numbers are right at the bottom of the panel, so they're impossible to see unless the unit's at eye height - I've added some labels to the top of mine!

But overall for the price this is excellent value, and I've been very happy with mine.