Behringer ADA8200 Ultragain Reviews

Great DA for mixdown

Clean and quiet. Ok, not the best DA on the market but ideal for grabbing the Adat output and getting another 8 tracks into my mixing desk (old school analogue mixing). Sounds good and doesn?t colour the sound. Unbeatable price.

Very noisy outputs. Poor for monitoring / playback of quiet sounds

For its price, you get a lot of stuff with this unit. It's easy to set up, too. I made several recordings with the Midas preamps and they sounded fine.

Originally I had bought the unit as an ADAT breakout box from my RME card in order to play back multichannel material. Unfortunately, the outputs are so noisy that it did not work out. Very disappointing.

Great budget preamp but has few flaws

Overall it's a good preamp, sounds as good as it should, nothing extraordinary, it gets the job done, the only thing it's missing are pad/"-XdB" switches on individual channels, individuall 48+V phantom on each channel but then again, it's so cheap that it's hardly a flaw, more like an cost cutting measurement

Does what it says on the tin

Seems to have some trouble syncing up with my Tascam interfaces, but once they're in sync this item works great. One downside is the gain knobs are a bit close to the sockets when there's leads plugged in.

Great audio quality

Running this with a Focusrite Scarlett, the pre amps on this unit stand up against it fine.

Would recommend as as a budget extension to record live drums.

Ridiculous

This thing is amazing, it's practically free compared to other pres.

Great sound for the cash, highly recommend.

Surprisingly great

Used to expand studio setup, adding ins and outs to MOTU 828.

Very impressed right off by the quality and clarity of playback from the outputs.

Inputs just as good. Individual gain/trim pots for each input too which is a handy feature to this minimal piece of kit.

Easy to setup and reliable.

Running for long days at a time without glitching or popping.

One downside is that there is only one for all phantom power, whereas each input does has an individual gain/trim pot, the phantom is either on or off for all. Depending on the use, this may or may not be bothersome.

Great to find Behringer upping their game so significantly and providing MIDAS quality preamps for such a competitive price.

At this price you can't go wrong

Ideal if you need a couple of extra channels and quality doesn't have to be stellar.

I found the preamps to silent enough and there's plenty of gain.

built quality is just fine, especially for this price.

What's to complain about?

I upgraded to the ADA8200 from it's predecessor the ADA8000 and I use it to expand my RME multiface and never once have I had cause to doubt it. I use it to connect my DAW to my outboard gear and synths, including send return loops. I clock the device from the RME, and they cooperate flawlessly. (Although I do need to replace one ADAT lead which has a habit of popping out whenever I go at the back of my rack).

Perhaps if was recording acoustic instruments I might notice issues with the preamps but if thats was the case I wanted to step up to the next level of improvement I'd need to spend five times and more the cost of the ADA8200.

I've never been able to identify the devices 'sound' so I take that to mean transparency which is exactly what I want.

works great, easy to use.

I use this as an extension of my scarlett18i20 interface, allowing me to record my full drumkit with 16 lines simultaneously or downsized kit + guitar and bass for tracking demos.

Very easy to use, just hook it up to your interface, tweak the settings in your DAW Using reaper as my DAW, i had to set up channel 1 as 1st input and channel 18 as my last input. ( 1-8 input on my interface, 9-10 is SPDIF inputs and 11-18 is the ADAT inputs from the ADA8200.)

Super easy to use and does exactly what it is supposed to do, also it sounds great.

Great piece of gear

Great features added since it's predecessor. Don't really hear the difference tbh but it's durable and functions well.

cant really fault this

got this thinking that i could use it to get more inputs on my interface but then discovered that my interface dosn't have the optical input to do this however it has come in handy as 8 individual pre-amps by using the XLR out put on the back and just patching them in individually giving me the option to use these pre-amps or the interfaces built in pre-amps however i find now that i just use this instead plus its 8 pre-amps in one rack unit so for how many pre-amps there is its really compact, it would however be nice to have instrument inputs on it as well as the XLR and Line Level inputs

Nice surprise from Behringer.

So Behringer has a bit of a reputation, but then so does this AD/DA so I thought I'd give it a go.

Well. First off the build quality is far more sturdy than I was expecting. I thought I'd have to treat it like glass until I got it racked up but the thing seems more robust than some stomp boxes I've seen.

Can't comment on the mic inputs but the line inputs on my unit offer clean gain through most of its range. I really had to get near to max before any noticeable noise came through at a SPL of around 70dB.

Clocking? Well I'm on RME and its slaved to the Behri so I can't really comment there either.

The inputs on the front could be a pain but then I couldn't suggest where else to put them soooo

At £20 a channel this thing was a fantastic way to make use of my spare ADAT ports.

Solid

Difficult to say anything about this kit that has not been said before, but I'll give you my opinion.

It's great in a multitude of roles. Extending an interface with more physical inputs. Breaking out more outputs from a DAW into a analog desk. Works well. Currently I have it set up like this to sum mixes with my ZED r16 (I have no firewire on my current PC - Inputs are going via ADAT also to a UMC 1820...all works beautifully).

As an input device, it's also easy to use and solid. The MIDAS preamps on this updated model are clean, quiet crisp. The box is almost worth it for these alone. It would be nice to have some further options, like to split phantom between groups of 5 inputs. Possibly an impedance switch per channel. But for this money, I'm not complaining.... also considering my current application is outputting at line level.

There's a reason why this kit is almost a standard, even in quite professional environment, and this new version with better preamps is just even better.

good price/performance

The features this unit has are great. DA usually cannot be found on other even much more expensive mic-pres. So very good for mix returns + clock sync over ADAT (no need for BNC cables although they can be used also)

Noise floor could be better if you are hooking more then 4 units in a recording system since noise floor really builds up when you open gain to usable levels on dynamic mics. It is better with condensers which are usually louder and you need less gain there. But it is perfectly usable with only one or two units. I am using 6 of these + 2 others for an inexpensive 64 ch recording rig - which is really great for the price. Just have in mind that noise floor buildup (not noticeable on other 2 units that I have - yes they are a bit pricier)

There is a lack of individual phantom power which is not really that big of a problem. And it would be nice if there were some gain level indicators.

Just one more thing if you are using more than one unit in a rack - inputs are in the front to accommodate for outputs on the back - so when inserting cables there is a bit of a problem to reach for a gain knob. Use a larger rack with space between units for that.

Other than that the unit is really perfect and easy to use.

Great unit for great money

I use it as input/output extender for MOTU 828x. To connect I've used two optical and one BNC cable. After switching on both 828 and 8200 units they've just started working together without any issues. The only problem I've found at this point is that it can't be synced via ADAT (or probably I don't know how to do it properly with 828). Anyway, I'll have to find solution when I will decide to get second unit.

The only serious issue (personally for me) I've found with this unit (and that's why I've put 4 stars for handling) is global phantom power switch located next to power switch on the front panel. I use unit only for line inputs, so there's a big chance to burn all hardware just by pressing it occasionally. The solution was to remove the switch cap and replace it with plexiglass cap. Now it looks like power indication.

well worth the money.

nice expansion, reliable ie, no drop outs, great to have control of all the inputs from the front. works very well with a fca 1616, the only con i can give this unit is that if only 1 optical cable is used between this and an external interface, it allow the expansion to become clock source" master", if the same cable is reversed, ie from output interface to input ada8200 it wont sync, a second optical cable is required to go from output ada8200 to external interface to make external interface clock source"master". all in all compared to my octopre its half the price and does what it says on the tin.

good value, good looking, non expensive.

Price/quality -> can't beat it

An affordable ADAT that fits perfectly in every home studio.

I use them together with an RME Raydat and that works perfectly.

Quality ADAT converter.

I've used this for about a year now with no problems at all. Front access for connection inputs means its quick and easy to change what goes in where. Input signal and clipping leds are useful and the audio quality is very good. Very happy with this product!

Surprising Unit

I only use and can value the A/D conversion in this unit, I don't use the D/A.

I use it to add 8 analog ins more to my Steinberg MR816 CSX. I set the Behringer as slave & the MR as master clock. Connected the ADAT out from the ADA8200 to the ADAT in of my soundcard and added a short BNC cable to synch both on the fly. Just works. The ADA8200 seems well built, and the quality of conversion surprised me (being a cheap Behringer product)! I use synths only, so after calibrating the input levels, I tried to compare the same sound from the Virus TI, one coming in cubase by the usb interface of the Virus (straight digital, no conversion required), the other from the 1st Virus TI analog out straight to the ADA8200...well...my ears can't spot the difference. This unit really surprised me.