UMC22 Muddy Sound

[spacewulf]

So I just recently started using my Behringer UMC22 as a headphone amp, I'm using the PC37X from massdrop. I recently noted that when I plugged in my headphones into the amp, all the audio seemed rather muddy. When I got into a match of PUBG it became very apparent, and the directional audio seemed to disappear and everything sounded as if it was coming from everywhere. I have confirmed that the audio was in stereo rather than mono, but I'm a rather newbie to higher grade audio equipment (compared to built in motherboard audio). Any suggestions would be very appreciated!

[TheScorpio]

I hate to break it to you but the UMC isnt really meant to be a headphone amp, I have the UM2 for my XLR mic and I'd never use its headphone built it, its really muddy as you said, I don't really think its meant to be used as a headphone amp, its more for direct monitoring your XLR input.

with that being said, even the UM2 had a horrible white hiss on the mic when I first plugged it in, turns out that was due to microsoft drivers that get automatically installed, I had to find a very old driver that was meant for this device and after that the white hiss was gone and the mic sounded much better.
Bear in mine BEHRINGER doesn't support these drivers anymore, they only support universal ASIO drivers that are meant to work on DAWs only and not "windows"..
I think your best bet is probably trying to find its actual drivers which are old, I doubt they exist but goodluck maybe that would help the amp part of it.

I use the Fiio E10k for reference as my amp

[The Flying Sloth]

Anything below the UMC202HD has relatively poor headphone performance (from Behringers line anyway) beacuse they don't have a dedicated headphone amp section (and volume controls), it's all tied in with the speaker outputs. Same goes for Focusrite gear below the 2i2, without dedicated headphone controls don't expect great things. Scorpio is correct in that you need to install the Behringer drivers on the music group website as opposed to the default windows driver and that will clean up your audio a tonne. I personally use a UMC1820 and couldn't be much happier with the headphone performance though I choose to use my studio monitors for everything except Discord calls.

Sloth

 

[shuri]

4 hours ago, The Flying Sloth said:

*snip*

Eh, even the bigger Behri interfaces don't have very good headphone amps (Low power, high output impedance, distortion shoots up above half volume).

Though with some specific setups they are fine (I'm using SE215 IEMs with a ifi Earbuddy on a 204HD).

Amazing interfaces for the money apart from that.

[The Flying Sloth]

1 hour ago, shuri said:

distortion shoots up above half volume

I mean, I've never needed to go above 25% so I wouldn't be able to comment on distortion above half volume.
Interesting you like the 215s though, had to use them for some stage shows a couple years back and I spent every second of that time wishing I had my KZs on.

Sloth

[shuri]

10 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

Interesting you like the 215s though

Their weakness is definitely the frequency response, but the even that's fine after some eq- they actually replaced my DT 880s job.

[spacewulf]

Okay, I seem to get what you guys are saying, although I am using the Behringer drivers from way back when, and the problem is with those drivers installed. Thanks anyways, I'll go back to my motherboard built in audio. That being said, which audio interface would you guys recommend for relatively cheap that could drive this headset and in the future the Sennheiser HD 6XX?

[The Flying Sloth]

4 hours ago, spacewulf said:

Okay, I seem to get what you guys are saying, although I am using the Behringer drivers from way back when, and the problem is with those drivers installed. Thanks anyways, I'll go back to my motherboard built in audio. That being said, which audio interface would you guys recommend for relatively cheap that could drive this headset and in the future the Sennheiser HD 6XX?

Try uninstalling them and downloading the latest ones from last year, it may make a massive difference.
If  user is looking for good audio from the headphone out of an interface I don't recommend anything lower end than interfaces with dedicated headphone amps like the Scarlett 2i2 and UMC202HD, though I can't vouch for the level these will be able to drive the 6xx I can say that if all else fails the MA400 has more than enough power to send even 600 ohm headphones to deafening levels. 

Sloth

[spacewulf]

Okay, so the drivers that I found were the ones directly from Behringer back when they made their own ASIO drivers, the only ones they support now are the ASIO4ALL ones, which many people say that they have issues with lowering the sample rate below 256 to reduce latency. 

[The Flying Sloth]

12 minutes ago, spacewulf said:

Okay, so the drivers that I found were the ones directly from Behringer back when they made their own ASIO drivers, the only ones they support now are the ASIO4ALL ones, which many people say that they have issues with lowering the sample rate below 256 to reduce latency. 

They still make their own ASIO drivers, perhaps they're not releasing them on the UMC22 page,
Try the UMC Driver 4.59.0 (or 4.38) that released last year, though no compatibility is promised from the manufacturer it may still work as there are likely very few real differences between interfaces, also, don't worry about sample rates below 256 and latency stuff, they're all talking about DAW latency, IE, latency when recording which is completely different from latency inside windows. 

Sloth

[spacewulf]

26 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

They still make their own ASIO drivers, perhaps they're not releasing them on the UMC22 page,
Try the UMC Driver 4.59.0 (or 4.38) that released last year, though no compatibility is promised from the manufacturer it may still work as there are likely very few real differences between interfaces, also, don't worry about sample rates below 256 and latency stuff, they're all talking about DAW latency, IE, latency when recording which is completely different from latency inside windows. 

Sloth

I've tried both of these drivers, neither support the interface. Would there be any way to trick the driver into thinking this would be supported by the drivers?

[The Flying Sloth]

This is the last driver I see with compatibility. 

[spacewulf]

Just now, The Flying Sloth said:

This is the last driver I see with compatibility. 

Yup, that's the driver that I was using.

[spacewulf]

Alright, I moved back to my motherboard audio and was content besides the fact that I had a box that I wasn't using the full potential of. I plugged in my headphones to the interface, thought ya know, what if I changed the USB ports? By god, it worked. The audio was no longer muddy. The thing was working how I wanted it to. That was a couple days ago. I had been fiddling with the thing because I had been getting some crackling and popping in my headphones and I wondered what I could do to stop that. Being someone who knows a lot about technology, the first thing I tried, before looking it up for any troubleshooting, was unplug the 1/4" to 3.5mm adapter, and plugged it back in. I had been doing that several times recently. Today, I booted up my PC, and I realized that when I joined a discord call, it seemed like the frequency response had been cut in half, the highs had just been stripped from my headphones. This was what I had been having before, when I said it sounded muddy. It sounds as if there was a very crappy implementation of virtual surround sound. I was flabbergasted, as I had been in a new USB port and thought that that was my fix. I unplugged my adapter again, looking at the tip of it. After the second green ring, the tip of it had extended, as if it were popping out of the assembly of the adapter. I unplugged my headphones from it, and pushed it back into the assembly. Plugged them back in, put it back into the audio interface, and voila: it's working perfectly now. Thank you for the help and suggestions that you've given me, I can finally rest assured that the thing that was screwing me over was my 1/4" to 3.5mm adapter. 

[The Flying Sloth]

Glad that was fixed for you, unfortunate that we didn't think to check whether it was the adapter but I suppose this puts me at ease, I'm now still not aware of a dead Behringer interface.

 

Sloth

[spacewulf]

While you're here, would there be any way that you're aware of that would be able to minimize the popping and crackling from the interface? I just now thought about trying RTX Voice on my headphones as well, but have not been able to test it out properly yet.

[The Flying Sloth]

There shouldn't be any popping or crackling unless you're moving a dirty knob, try and isolate the crackling, is it just from the interface or is it also on the onboard audio, is it with any headphones on the interface or just your usual ones and most importantly is it on every computer the interface connects to. If it's only interface and the same on every PC and the below steps didn't fix it I'm not sure 

 

Check to see if the crackling is visible on the windows mixer, if it is it's a program being annoying, if not try setting sample rate in windows to 24 bit 44.1 KHZ if you're not on it already and disable all processing and enhancements. Increase the buffer size in UMC control panel too if you can. Also, if you have thermaltake RGB controller app uninstall that shiz, it tries to use audio to control lights and can cause crackling because of the strain it can put on audio chips (even when disabled).

 

If that doesn't do it I'm not sure how else to fix the problem but I've probably missed something that someone else can pick up from.