Prior to this Zoom I was using an aging Mbox 2 with Pro Tools 11. I have since (finally) left the Pro Tools camp after over 15 years of far too many upgrades/crossgrades and over-charged nonsense. I have only recently begun to use Presonus Studio One. Running my Mbox 2 through Studio One would cap at a buffer of 128/44k and anything lower would seriously distort the signal. Some research showed that this is a known issue with the Mbox 2 on Windows 10 64. With that buffer setting I was getting noticeable latency. Presonus was reporting something like 10ms input and 10ms output. I’ve read that still wouldn’t be the true real-time latency (RTL) number that ultimately matters (it would be higher) so that wasn’t good at all. Especially since I couldn’t get the buffer down any lower. After countless hours of research, mostly on Gearslutz and DAW Bench, it seemed that I either needed to drop serious money on an RME device or wait until the situation gets better with all the other brands. Well, I got kids…and RME wasn’t going to fly with the wife. So that left me kind of stuck…I could get a firewire card and try out the Focusrite Saffire Pro series but I didn’t feel like adding more PCI cards to my setup and some reviews were mixed on it. What was key in my research was this…it’s not so much the interface hardware as much as the DRIVERS that matter. Apparently there are very few interface makers that actually develop their own drivers. RME, of course, is one of them and that’s why they are always at the top of the list of low-latency interfaces. Most use the same generic driver that may or may not be fully optimized for the interface. So on one of my research binges I noticed some forum posters on Gearslutz mentioning ZOOM this and ZOOM that. Now, I’m primarily a guitar player and I had heard of Zoom before from way back in the day and my initial impression back then was basically that they were the Walmart of guitar products. Cheap, made-in-China, knockoff and low quality stuff that I would NEVER put on my pedal board. So as I’m reading some users raving on the quality and most importantly, the low latency of the UAC-2, I was skeptical. There were even some comments about Zoom supposedly contracting a company solely for the purpose of developing their own drivers for this product and the theory being that THAT is why the latency was so good on this device. That’s how I ended up here. For $250 (vs. $750 for the RME Babyface Pro) it was a no brainer to check this one out. I’m very glad I did. I’m getting incredible latency numbers being reported by Presonus and most importantly, I can’t detect any delay when I’m tracking guitar loaded with amp sims and effects or synth VSTs. It’s amazing. Presonus is reporting something around 1.54 input latency and 4.04 output latency with a 64 buffer at 44k.. And again, yes I know that is not the true RTL number, but it sure is better than what my mbox was able to achieve and it’s noticeable to my ears and playing.

Lastly, the install was ultra smooth. I did not experience any issues installing the latest drivers or setting it up in Presonus Studio One. To summarize, if latency matters to the kind of work you’re doing with your DAW, it’s hard to beat the value this unit represents. FIVE stars.

I can only rate this based on my experience, which was excellent and is now zero, as it won’t work. If I could get it returned, I’d rate it a 3 (5 for the sound, 1 for the lack of support = 3).

6 months ago the channel 2 gain control started randomly changing levels and became unresponsive to any front panel knob adjustment — the gain would just max out and sit there. The only way to adjust it was using the mixfx software but it would not keep the adjustment. Then, last month the exact same thing happened to gain control on channel 1. It’s now unusable in any way.

Which is terrible because it sounded so, so good on my system.