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Behringer Guitar Link UCG 102 USB audio interface review

Features 10/10

With UCG102 you get pretty much everything that you need. Hi-Z guitar input, ASIO driver, headphone output, guitar amp simulating software that allows variable-speed playback of MP3, WAV, AIFF audio files and has built-in tuner and metronome.

Features:

• Hi-Z guitar input
• Stereo headphone/speaker output with volume control
• LED clip indicator
• Input level selector HI/LO
• Ultra-low latency ASIO driver
• Native Instruments Guitar Combos software
• USB powered

Sound quality 6.5/10

It sounds decent despite the fact that its converters are 16-bit. The only complaint I have is hiss. Fortunately it's noticeably quieter than any guitar hum. I guess UCG102 lacks some internal shielding.

Minimum roundtrip latency of UCG102 is 8 ms and that's a very low value for an overall latency. Do not compare this value to often marketed 1-3 ms because these are only buffer size latencies that don't include hardware input and output delays. E-MU 0202 USB offer minimal round trip latency of 10.4ms. I had some trouble getting it to work at the lowest buffer size on an Intel i3-2100, however a friend of mine says it works flawlessly on his older Intel based PC so I assume it was USB controller incompatibility issue.

I haven't tried the included software, but I assume it doesn't offer that much with its three guitar amps. Fortunately there are numerous free guitar plugins that you can use with UCG102 and a DAW software such as Reaper:

Check out an article on free guitar plugins

Ease of use 10/10

Plug in and play. ASIO buffer size adjusting is easy.

Price 10/10

You can buy this interface for around 30 euro or less which I consider a very good price.

Technical specification

• Guitar in - 1/4" TRS, impedance - 400 kOhm (LO), 250 kOhm (HI)
• Phones out - 1/4" TRS, output impedance 50 Ohm, max. output -2 dBi, 2 x 3.7 mW @ 100 Ohm
• Digital processing - 16-bit converter, 32/44.1/48 kHz sample rates
• Power supply - USB connection, 5 V DC, 100 mA max.
• Dimensions (H x W x D) - approx. 1" x 3 3/4" x 2"
• Cable lenght - approx 5 9/10" (15 cm)
• Weight - approx. 1/5 lb. (92 g)

System requirements (PC / Mac)

• OS - Win XP (works with Windows 7)/ Mac OS X
• CPU min. - Pentium 700 MHz / Athlon XP 1.33 GHz (PC), G4 733 MHz / Intel Core Duo 1.66 (Mac)
• RAM - 256 MB (PC), 512 MB (Mac)

Advantages

Price

Ease of use

Features

Low latency

Size

Drawbacks

Sound quality (hiss)

Difficulties in achieving lowest latencies even on a modern PC (USB controller incompatibility?)

Behringer Guitar Link UCG102 on www.behringer.com

Related articles:

• How to choose an audio interface for recording guitars
• Audio interface round trip latency database
• The lowest round trip latency audio interface for PC