Behringer UMC202HD

Common budget examples are the Scarlett 2i2 or the Behringer UMC202HD. If you have more money to burn then UA Apollo or Antelope Audio have excellent hardware. The better ones (especially the Apollo) have great built in Amps and DACs for your headphones, but don't expect to find speaker amps in these things. They'll pretty much only work with monitors that have their own discrete internal power units.

Behringer UMC22 and UM2 is great for the price, 16bit resolution is plenty especially since they actually are capable to nearly use those 96dB (that's what theoretically possible with 16bit resolution). The UMC202HD got better outputs (even better than the Focusrite solo), but at that point you will not hear any difference anymore if you use the outputs just to feed your speakers. 24bit is nice to have and one less thought that nags you when you're trying to sleep. Mackie Onyx Producer got equally good outputs as the UMC202HD and inputs on the same level as the Focusrite.

The Headphones i have: -Dt 990 Pro 250ohm with behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD on my PC. \- Audio Technica ATH M50x to use with my smartphone as the portable option. Im Thinking off buying a new Open One(because i notice a better sound in comparison to closed ones). From my like 10 hour research while watching youtube videos and playing osrs i find these Headphones attractive:.

Monitoring is a function that is enabled by the audio drivers on windows and mac, but apparently not on my android phone or when using a charger. The Rode AI micro doesn't list any noise specifications, but the UMC202HD has an EIN of -129.1 dBu. The micro's noise levels are not specified, which is never a good sign. (The micro's bigger brother, the Rode AI-1, has -127.9dBu, but going from reviews I'd expect the micro to have significantly worse noise performance.).