The UA-25EX from Edirol is a USB Audio/MIDI interface designed to offer premium sound quality, rugged durability and complete portability to the computer-based audio engineer. The unit is compact enough to travel anywhere and is housed in a high-grade aluminum chassis, an excellent shield against high-frequency interference from other electrical sources. A ground lift switch is provided in the event that hum is still an issue.
Although the interface is USB powered, it still manages to power condenser microphones with 48V phantom power and outputs audio at +4dBu from the balanced 1/4" outputs. Also included is a power set of direct monitor controls that allows one to route audio directly from the inputs to the outputs and the headphone jack, making latency a non-issue. Direct monitoring can be turned on or off, relative volume of the input signal adjusted compared to the audio playing out from the computer, and even have the signal set to monitor in mono.
The UA-25EX includes an onboard variable compressor/limiter with adjustable attack times and threshold. 24-bit/96kHz audio performance, MIDI I/O, S/PDIF optical I/O, Neutrik XLR/TRS inputs with high-grade microphone preamps make the interface everything needed to get superb audio to and from a computer. With ASIO 2.0, WDM, MME and CoreAudio support, the unit offers a wide variety of support for both Mac and PC.