Behringer ADA8200 Ultragain Reviews

Simple, professional, cheap.

The ADA8200 is a fantastic way to expand the inputs and outputs from an existing interface (provided you have ADAT in / out on your interface already). I'm using mine paired with a Behringer UMC1820, which brings me to a total of 16 XLR inputs and 18 outputs, the pairing works exceptionally well and i'm yet to discover any flaws.

The Midas pre's are really really clean and have plenty of headroom. There is no colouration to the sound, so you get a nice transparent signal straight from the mic. Some sound engineers prefer a more textured preamp to get some character in the mix, but personally I prefer working with a clean unaltered signal. These pre's leave you with a blank canvas to cultivate any sound you want from the signal source. They provide ample gain for my RB500 ribbon mics without any unwanted noise.

Very simple to set up, currently working flawlessly in Windows 10 with Reaper, Just plug it in and and play! Syncing to my interface's clock was easy, I just set the clock source to ADAT In and the two units sync automatically.

If you already have an interface with ADAT and you want an easy and cheap way to get a few more channels, I would highly recommend the Behringer ADA8200. Please don't be put off by the brand... Behringer are good now!

It just works.

I feel like it's not even there and that is the highest praise i could give it.

Using this to record line level signals and with external effect units. Sounds much better than expected at just over 20 euro's per channel!

Don't listen to the bad reviews!

I wish people would understand that this is not designed for single channel preamp stuff like lead vocals!!! Yes, it's flat sounding, but that's what I like about it. I don't care for hyped bass or mid range etc., everybody EQ's later anyway so I don't understand the fuss about having a coloured sound right out of the box. I use my Audient for single channel stuff and the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 + Behringer for drums and multi tracking. For loud sound sources like drums and cranked amps, I can't hear the difference between these midas preamps and the Saffire ones. Maybe on a quiet intimate vocal or subtle strings etc. you can hear differences but it's all about choosing the right tool for the right job. Why blow thousands on something which only gets used on extra toms etc. when you can't hear the difference anyway? It's disingenuous to do an A/B test on something it was not designed to do. The fact that it's ADAT and needs a host interface to piggy back off means that people only buy this because they need more channels for drums and multi-tracking. Nobody is buying this as a single channel preamp for vocals, so comparing singing tracks or solo instruments is pointless. This is an inexpensive expansion purely for when you need more tracks, like tracking a live band or recording drums.

Pros: Easy setup, flat uncoloured sound, quiet preamps, separate line-in inputs on every channel

Cons: There are none at this price point. Anyone who has issues with this has misunderstood its purpose.

Works like a charm.

I use it with RME FireFace - both live and in studio. it's stable, preamp quality is unbeatable at this price point, no noise, clean gain, functional. Would prefer Phantom power per channel... but other that that, no complaints.

Handy add on for 16 channels

I got this to use as an ADAT add on to my UMC1820, giving an overall 16 channel recording interface. It all worked together with minimum effort in set and it sounds good. There is a couple of things that I'm not totally happy with, but can live with.

There is no pad on the channels, a pad for each channel would have been great. The other is phantom power. Phantom power is all channel or none, would like to have the option to not have phantom on everything at once. Also the LED for Phantom power, for some strange reason this is Green when Phantom Power is Off and it is Red when Phantom Power is On.

Other than that I would have given it 5 stars. Dont forget to get two ADAT cables when ordering this as an add on.

Must have

Very good item when you need more inputs or outputs or both. Nice Midas preamps. Solid unit. Very good price and you can connect via adat and everything work correctly. Ada8200 have nice place in my rack.

What can I say, does exactly what it says it does.

This worked perfectly with my umc1820 as soon as I plugged it in.

I use this in my home studio along with a umc1820, and the reaper DAW. Also using the behringer asio driver (will check what version I use) on a windows 10 PC.

No issues at all.

The preamps have a lot of headroom so the lack of built in pads does not prove to be too much of an issue. The preamps were virtually silent and very clean sounding.

Perfect addition to any small home studio looking to record drums or any other multi mic instrument.

Would recommend highly.

Pros:

Very clean quiet preamps

Easy to setup

Very wide gain range

Cons:

Lack of built in pads

It's a mains lead

Delivers around 240 volts in an alternating current all the way from the wall to my amplifier - quite clever really

solid

Definitely not the best, but much better than it's price. Brought to compliment RME babyface pro. Works well.

Unbeleivable for the money

Use this to extend my RME UFX for analog synths and FX returns, completely transparent with nice headroom. Use ADAT light pipe and word clock to sync with RME. Not sure how it would fare on layered vocals or acoustic instruments, but for my application its perfect. Nice one Behringer

Great entry level device

This is a great entry level mic preamp. You shouldn't expect nothing spectacular, but it works as intended. Connected to my Audient id44 it offers a great way to record drum set, sometimes even the smaller bands. Sound leaves a bit to be desired, really nothing special, but it is usable. Also, 8 line outputs is great way to route the signal to a headphone amplifiers (4 x CUE mixes from Audient id44).

It is really good!

I don't know how Behringer does this, but, for this price, this is a blast.

Works like a charm, quality is really good! Unbeatable!

New life for old(er) kit!

I've been using a MOTU 828mkII for years now and I love it, but I never really explored really how much it can do. I added the ADA8200 to the MOTU and now have and additional 8 inputs and 8 outputs on my interface which opens a whole load of opportunities for my studio - I now have the drum kit fully mic'd up.

The ADA8200 doesn't have a lot to setup - I literally plugged in the optical cables between the MOTU and ADA8200, set the clock source (I've tried slaving the ADA8200 from the MOTU with both Word Clock and ADAT Optical and haven't found there to be any difference between them), and away we go (you have to tell the MOTU to use the ADAT channels).

The audio quality of the preamps is great though I'm not using any gain, and the phantom power (which is a single selection, common to ALL inputs) is very helpful for driving a Behringer DI800 at the other end of the Snake 164.

The improvement to workflow was instant - I spend time recording now, rather than messing around plugging and unplugging bits for kit!

Good quality for prize

It's a good pre amp, considering the relation quality/prize. I've buy one for me and one for the electroacoustic laboratory in my School. Perfect for live. Maybe for recording depending to the quality you like. A note: there are no VUmeter, just a lite for signal/peak. Is a very good expansion for audio cards with ADAT lite pipe.

Works Perfectly with the UMC1820

Great little partner for the UMC1820. Everything works well, my only gripe is that it would be nice if there was a separate stereo out to send to a mixer so that inputs could be heard without having to fire up a DAW.

Im running mixerless so this would be ideal rather than having to send indv mono outs to a mixer.

Other than that, for the money it's a no-brainer.

All good!

Took it as extension for Focusrite 18i20 sound card, so total I have 16 channels now. That's perfect for recording mid-bands at rehearsals. Very portable, easy to use, quality is very very nice for that price. Probably there is a not-super-hi-end noiseless quality, but you probably won't hear any noise that will be bad. Pretty good for draft-recordings. Quality of potentiometers could be better but it is what it is.

This thing just works.

No hassle and quite acceptable sound.

No brainer purchase.

Gets the job done

I use the ADA8200 with a RME sound card in my homestudio.

I've been using it for well over a year & in all that time it has never given me any trouble really reliable easy to connect.

The pres maybe aren't the cleanest but for the price it really gives you decent results without busting the bank.

I only use 8 channels so I haven't tried to connect another unit for more inputs so can't really comment on how it handles that.

Overall I am very happy with the results I get on my recordings & would recommend it to any one looking for a cheap reliable unit to get started recording.

Very satisfied

Im very satisfied with this product. It fits my purpose perfectly. Good price for an excellent product. It does its job perfectly.

I needed 8 more inputs to properly record my drums on top of my existing 8 on my UMC1820, and having the same preamps on both my units felt like a good idea. I've been very surprised at the quality Behringer have been delivering over the past few years and this product is no exception!

Very solid construction, the MIDAS preamps are very natural sounding and have little to no noise.

My only gripes with this product is that it seems to create a bit of a his/hum when I turn up my monitoring volume to max. Barely noticeable 90% of the time, but sometimes it can be a bit annoying. That and I WISH it had inputs on the back and dropped the whole LINE OUT thing on the back.

Still, very much recommended!