Universal Audio Volt USB Audio Interfaces

[Kouioui]

Looking forward to a review on this line of devices, especially the ones with the built-in 1176 compressor.

Volt USB Audio Interfaces

 

[JayGilb]

Looking forward to a review on this line of devices, especially the ones with the built-in 1176 compressor.

Volt USB Audio Interfaces

I couldn't tell from the literature whether or not the 1176 effect can be added post or only when tracking. Since it has line level in, it should be able to be routed in/out of a DAW and used as a post effect.
The interface looks nice with the wood sides.

 

[jonljacobi]

It’s tracking only on the front inputs from what they told me. Like Focusrite’s Air, etc. And if I remember correctly. I’ll be reviewing one of the studio kits for Macworld and will report the results.

 

[jonljacobi]

Still waiting on this. Sorry.

 

[Music1969]

No specs on their website?

No user manual on their website?

@Dave Tremblay ?

 

[Trell]

No specs on their website?

No user manual on their website?

@Dave Tremblay ?

A very good reason to not buy anything from them.

 

[jonljacobi]

I'm supposed to get one this week. I'll open it up. But fair warning, I can barely tell the difference between any decent modern interface. Okay, replace barely with rarely. I will say that the Apollo Twin X sounds as good as my Clarett 4Pre, and I would expect any recent design from any vendor, including UA to sound good. Even the BL sounds good (if you can ignore the noisy preamps). I'll let ASR and Julian do the stats.

 

[Music1969]

I'm supposed to get one this week. I'll open it up. But fair warning, I can barely tell the difference between any decent modern interface. Okay, replace barely with rarely. I will say that the Apollo Twin X sounds as good as my Clarett 4Pre, and I would expect any recent design from any vendor, including UA to sound good. Even the BL sounds good (if you can ignore the noisy preamps). I'll let ASR and Julian do the stats.

Can you post a photo of the specifications page at the back of the manual , when you get it?

Assuming it even comes with a manual !?

 

[jonljacobi]

Sure thing.

 

[Dave Tremblay]

The Volt line of audio interfaces from UA is definitely in a different category than our Apollo interfaces. Due to the different market focus, I don't know if we'll officially list specs like SNR or THD. We do care about it, measure it, and it is very competitive for its class, but keep in mind that these products are less than half the price of our cheapest Apollo.

In general, analog inputs with high quality mic preamps are considerably more expensive than good DACs, and a large part of the budget of products like this. This really is the differentiator for Volt. As a clean Mic Preamp (no Vintage or Compressor), it is a good mic preamp. Probably class leading in that alone. But where something like the 2i2 has a simple/cheap high frequency boost EQ for the AIR circuit, our Vintage circuit is a pretty clever solid-state saturation circuit that closely mimics tube saturation. If you turn that on, and measure specs, you will see an increase in THD as expected from that kind of circuit. But it sounds good, and enables a musician to drive that front end into a subtle saturation without digitally clipping the input. That alone is pretty cool. But the compressor... Such a good feature in a device of this class. If you don't know much about Universal Audio history, you might not know that our 1176LN compressor is a staple in nearly every recording studio, used on everything from vocals to drums. One of the best studio compressors ever designed. Our team was able to derive a lower cost version of that circuit and slip it into the higher-end Volts. If you are into recording, you should get one with the compressor. It is such a good feature. But like the Vintage circuit, it is not designed to optimize for specs. Running an Audio Precision test suite through a compressor is non-sensical. Compressors are non-linear by definition. There are things we check like noise levels, but even those end up getting boosted by a compressor. It's what a compressor does.

Like I said above, I don't know what marketing and sales will choose to post as far as specs, but if a friend was asking me about it, I'd suggest ignoring them anyway. We're not going to ship something that is bad. And if you're using this device as it's intended, for recording audio, you'll likely never turn off Vintage. And rarely turn off the Compressor. And if those are on, the specs on the front end are not directly comparable to anything else on the market.

If you're not going to ever use the analog inputs, I don't know why you'd be looking at this class of device over just a simple USB DAC. That class of devices doesn't incur the costs that we incur on the analog front end and can spend every last dime on the DAC. If you look at that singular spec, you'll often get more performance for your money going that direction. That said, our ID is pretty nice looking if you value that, especially with the wood sides.

Keep in mind that I'm not in sales/marketing, and I participate in this forum as an individual, not as an official UA spokesperson. As such, I'd politely ask that you don't quote this post in other forums.

 

[jonljacobi]

All good points, and what I've heard over YouTube sounds good (all but the very worst do), but this is a forum pretty much obsessed with numbers so you will hear about it. ;-) The 276 (kit) will be sitting right next to an Apollo X and Clarett 4Pre when I review it for Macworld. I'll be going completely off of my impressions and let JK and ASR deal with numbers. I'm not a numbers guy, but said impressions almost always fall in line with the numbers. To a point. As I said, I can't really tell the difference between any top (or even most -mid-tier) interfaces when EQ'd to match. I often wonder how many people can. Our resident audiophiles are always the worst in blind testing!

I will say that with the kit being aimed at the podcast crowd, I will be also taking a run with an SM7B and some 58's along as well as the included microphone.

 

[Dave Tremblay]

All good points, and what I've heard over YouTube sounds good (all but the very worst do), but this is a forum pretty much obsessed with numbers so you will hear about it. ;-) The 276 (kit) will be sitting right next to an Apollo X and Clarett 4Pre when I review it for Macworld. I'll be going completely off of my impressions and let JK and ASR deal with numbers. I'm not a numbers guy, but said impressions almost always fall in line with the numbers. To a point. As I said, I can't really tell the difference between any top (or even most -mid-tier) interfaces when EQ'd to match. I often wonder how many people can. Our resident audiophiles are always the worst in blind testing!

I will say that with the kit being aimed at the podcast crowd, I will be also taking a run with an SM7B and some 58's along as well as the included microphone.

I'll be curious to hear what your opinions are when you've finished!

 

[Trell]

The Volt line of audio interfaces from UA is definitely in a different category than our Apollo interfaces. Due to the different market focus, I don't know if we'll officially list specs like SNR or THD. We do care about it, measure it, and it is very competitive for its class, but keep in mind that these products are less than half the price of our cheapest Apollo.

In general, analog inputs with high quality mic preamps are considerably more expensive than good DACs, and a large part of the budget of products like this. This really is the differentiator for Volt. As a clean Mic Preamp (no Vintage or Compressor), it is a good mic preamp. Probably class leading in that alone. But where something like the 2i2 has a simple/cheap high frequency boost EQ for the AIR circuit, our Vintage circuit is a pretty clever solid-state saturation circuit that closely mimics tube saturation. If you turn that on, and measure specs, you will see an increase in THD as expected from that kind of circuit. But it sounds good, and enables a musician to drive that front end into a subtle saturation without digitally clipping the input. That alone is pretty cool. But the compressor... Such a good feature in a device of this class. If you don't know much about Universal Audio history, you might not know that our 1176LN compressor is a staple in nearly every recording studio, used on everything from vocals to drums. One of the best studio compressors ever designed. Our team was able to derive a lower cost version of that circuit and slip it into the higher-end Volts. If you are into recording, you should get one with the compressor. It is such a good feature. But like the Vintage circuit, it is not designed to optimize for specs. Running an Audio Precision test suite through a compressor is non-sensical. Compressors are non-linear by definition. There are things we check like noise levels, but even those end up getting boosted by a compressor. It's what a compressor does.

Like I said above, I don't know what marketing and sales will choose to post as far as specs, but if a friend was asking me about it, I'd suggest ignoring them anyway. We're not going to ship something that is bad. And if you're using this device as it's intended, for recording audio, you'll likely never turn off Vintage. And rarely turn off the Compressor. And if those are on, the specs on the front end are not directly comparable to anything else on the market.

If you're not going to ever use the analog inputs, I don't know why you'd be looking at this class of device over just a simple USB DAC. That class of devices doesn't incur the costs that we incur on the analog front end and can spend every last dime on the DAC. If you look at that singular spec, you'll often get more performance for your money going that direction. That said, our ID is pretty nice looking if you value that, especially with the wood sides.

Keep in mind that I'm not in sales/marketing, and I participate in this forum as an individual, not as an official UA spokesperson. As such, I'd politely ask that you don't quote this post in other forums.

So you won’t publish specs for the Volt devices. I could not find a manual either to download that could contain any specs either.

Your competition does so, most of them anyway. If I where to look for a new audio interface this Volt series would not be considered for that reason alone.

 

[Dave Tremblay]

So you won’t publish specs for the Volt devices. I could not find a manual either to download that could contain any specs either.

Your competition does so, most of them anyway. If I where to look for a new audio interface this Volt series would not be considered for that reason alone.

To be clear, that isn't what I said. It's not my role in the company to determine what we do or don't publish.

I understand where you're coming from, but personally, I don't heavily weight manufacturer specs when making a purchasing decision for music gear. Independent reviews are better. Often times, the worst performance of a device is hidden away from published specs. For example, look at the ASR review of the 2i2. Decent ADC/DAC performance, but a weak headphone amp. That is something I notice in practice, due to my headphone choices. And that isn't an attack at Focusrite. Products in these budget categories need to make compromises and specs won't usually tell you where they made them.

All of that said, I'm not trying to change your mind. If published manufacturer specs are a top criteria for your purchasing decision, we may or may not end up in your consideration.

 

[Blumlein 88]

There's no reason not to publish specs except to hide something for the chance to put one over on the buyer.

 

[Trell]

To be clear, that isn't what I said. It's not my role in the company to determine what we do or don't publish.

I understand where you're coming from, but personally, I don't heavily weight manufacturer specs when making a purchasing decision for music gear. Independent reviews are better. Often times, the worst performance of a device is hidden away from published specs. For example, look at the ASR review of the 2i2. Decent ADC/DAC performance, but a weak headphone amp. That is something I notice in practice, due to my headphone choices. And that isn't an attack at Focusrite. Products in these budget categories need to make compromises and specs won't usually tell you where they made them.

All of that said, I'm not trying to change your mind. If published manufacturer specs are a top criteria for your purchasing decision, we may or may not end up in your consideration.

Publishing specs, that is also accurate and useful, is part of the transparency and honesty I want to see from a company I buy a product from. If the company has a reputation for fudging the specs as seen by third party tests (like on ASR) that will count against them.

On this site there are several companies whose published specs matches what is tested here on ASR and other places, and that gives me some confidence to trust their specs of products not yet tested by third party reviewers.

Like all products there is a trade-off of price versus features/performance/support/etc, but it's still up to me as buyer to see if that is a trade-off that suits me. Here your company needlessly shoot themselves in the foot by not [edit: fixed typo] publishing accurate and useful specs.

 

[JayGilb]

I do understand that this is a device that is not meant to compete with your Apollo interface, but I think that basic specs like like mic gain, frequency response (+-), EIN and impedance should be published.

 

[Dave Tremblay]

Understood. It's worth noting that Volt is not yet available. We'll see what happens.

 

[Dave Tremblay]

There's no reason not to publish specs except to hide something for the chance to put one over on the buyer.

That might be the case, but I'd like to believe that most companies don't have an adversarial relationship with their customers. Again, I can't speak for UA as a company, but I've been developing audio products for over 20 years. As a product developer, if there is a good chance that someone would be unhappy with something I developed, I'd prefer they buy something else, even if it isn't something I worked on. An unhappy customer is a worse outcome than a non-customer. You can only "put one over" on a customer for so long...

 

[jonljacobi]

We'll see RSN. (Real Soon Now). The YouTube videos I've seen are pretty neutral and non-committal. More like previews really. I kind of wonder if they were dealing with beta hardware/firmware etc. or under some sort of review rules.

I do like the concept of just providing the two FX most users will need. That said, with devices like the M2 and M4 out there, best in class audio performance is certainly a bold claim. Looking forward to kicking the tires.