Steinberg UR44C

Great grey* box

You get onboard DSP (very low latency) effects (EQ, Compressor, Reverb, some Amps) essential for recording, live performances, or podcasting (it has ingenious special features for that). The REV-X reverb has manageable set of parameters. The dspMixFx mixer app is quite nice, so is the iOS version. It can be bus powered, or with the included power supply. It remembers last settings, so it can even be used without any USB device. * Also comes in red. But would you pay a premium for it to look like an inferior competitor product? I certainly wouldn't.

Top Quality Audio Interface

Solid quality for on-the-move as well as in the home studio. Works flawlessly with Steinberg's Cubase (versions 11 and 12). I use it mainly in my home studio with a microphone, bass guitar, electric guitar, 12 sting guitar, acoustic guitar, Nashville guitar, and a Yamaha P-125a digital piano. Monitors are Yamaha HS5 MP, cables from Cordial - there's nothing to complain about - great results every time. Having two outputs is often very useful. The MIDI I (rarely) use for some old, old, old Yamaha gear (FM synth and Drum Machine). I can highly recomment this bit of kit.

Quality and Stability

Before this sound card I used, Steinberg UR24 MKII, I like this line) I decided to make an upgrade, the perfect solution for this money.

Driver and software issues still...

It took us 2 days to get the device working correctly - only in USB 2.0 mode and with an older driver from Yamaha ... nothing we would have expected from a Steinberg Product...

Now that the interface is finally working all is OK - Sound Delay and not too often to be reinitialized like the Tascam interfaces.

Nothing special

This interface does not give you anything special.

Perfect with a fatal flaw

I upgraded to the UR44C (which really is a UR64C, but that's beside the point) since I liked the UR22C I had but needed an upgrade. I like that its bus powered and I can connect it to my iPad. It's easy to setup, even without a driver. However, if you want to make use of all the software, you'll need to buy into the whole Steinberg software ecosystem (eLicense, Driver and dspMix UI). That's ok, but could be streamlined for sure. My MacBook is bloated already and I'm happy for every piece of software I don't need to install. Anyway: The UI is pretty basic but does its job. If you have a DAW you most likely won't use it that much anyway.

Getting to the fatal flaw:

I have it connected and powered through USB-C (one less cable to worry about). Every one in a while the interface crashes my MacBook. The mouse becomes unresponsive, the fans speed up and then boom, the screen goes black. The worst part is, that it causes my speakers to "pop" and I'm a bit afraid it will damage them. I've tried several ways of connecting and several use cases and it seems to happen most often, when connected through a dock or hub and then streaming video off the internet. Which is really annoying if you're in a Zoom call and your MacBook keeps crashing every 15 minutes.

I'm in contact with the Steinberg support but they seems to be unresponsive so far (~2 weeks). I'm hoping this will get resolved soon. In that case it's a pristine interface and a total recommend. Up till now I'd be a bit careful.

Steinberg UR44C : Quality

Good quality for both recording and monitoring.

Huge disappointment

I bought this card for a couple reasons...I wanted more than 2 inputs, I liked the steinberg branding which meant better interface management, I loved the loopback function and the USB-C self powering connection.

Well, I've got the inputs thankfully!

The steinberg integration seems to...not exist :/ I don't know but even though I installed the steinberg extension there is no sign of additional buttons when opening an audio track.

The loopback function is a half joke, they sponsored it as a way to loopback the daw to inputs 1&2, which is true except, it's looping the whole pc, not the daw (which I assumed was Cubase only), and this means that if you are on a videocall and want to loopback your project the person will also hear his voice back, unless you route the pc listening to somewhere else.

Plus...inputs 1&2 are the only hi-z inputs so yep, no loopback and playing guitar at the same time.

The USB-C power is another joke. The cable the soundcard came with is not enough...when you turn it on it blinks the main knob light, meaning there is not enough power (and I'm using a usb-c Gen3 port).

Don't buy it, it's not yet ready and the usb 2 models are still great and working the same.

In the price range it is unbeatable

PROS Solid construction. Good sound quality, rather complete software supplied, very simple software interface.

CONS limited routing possibilities, but at this price I don't think you can ask for the moon

I switched from UR22 to UR44C

The ''new design'' is not so new. Just different hull color, VOLUME KNOW Led light and absolutely the same ergonomic.

Most interesting things are inside this new box.

The headphone amp has plenty of gains and a good bottom end, two headphone outputs same time(wow). Feels like studio monitors sound little bit louder and cleaner with this soundcard.

I hope to test it with 3-way sound studio monitors.

Always grateful when I buy something, plug it in and it works as expected. If you're looking for stability, this is your interface.