First of all, I mention that I am an amateur. I have no knowledge in sound engineering. I make rap/hip hop beats and I definitely needed a good sound card to connect my monitors, have quality, clear sound, and be able to make a decent mix. Occasionally, I record vocals through one of its two XLR inputs. It has a quality construction, sturdy, with very good buttons, ports, and volume controls. It provides several options for adjusting its inputs and outputs (which, by the way, are quite a few). It has a direct monitor with the ability to adjust mono/stereo, something that is missing from the previous Behringer model (which I initially intended to buy) and it definitely deserves the extra money. For my requirements, it is more than enough and it gives me additional capabilities to do other things in the future. Its sound is very clean and clear, there is no chance of having a problem with it. Surely, the sound card has the ability to meet the needs of someone who has many more requirements than mine and to adequately respond to them. As for the software, I read some bad reviews because the packaging does not include the drivers or because it is difficult for the card to be detected by the system as a device. Personally, I did not encounter any such problem at all. I downloaded the specific drivers for Windows 7 from Behringer's official website, installed them, made the necessary settings in Windows, and within a few minutes, I had a fully functional sound card for any use. It is a product that is worth 100% of its price. If anything negative arises, we are here to discuss it.

First of all, let me say that I am an amateur musician (not a professional), so I may not be able to provide a more detailed evaluation of the pros and cons of the card. I might unfairly judge the card due to my lack of knowledge. Let's continue.

I wanted to mention why I wanted this particular card and why I ultimately chose it instead of spending an extra 40 euros for the equivalent Focusrite (which costs around 95-100 euros in Greece). I mainly wanted the MIDI outputs because that is their main difference (at least on paper). Now, I am not the right person to say more about the Midas Preamps of Behringer, whether they are a gimmick or not.

Anyway, I wanted a sound interface to connect my electric guitar and play metal with my plugins, etc. Just simple things, to record some riffs, that's the extent of my knowledge.

One negative aspect I noticed and consider a downside is the documentation. Not only is it insufficient, but it is so incomplete that it doesn't mention any numbers regarding what the card can deliver, its general limitations, like all other serious manufacturers do. You basically have to blindly roll the dice...

However, you can find this information from more experienced sound engineers on the internet who have figured it out and shared these numbers.

Now, let's get to the main negative aspect, which is the reason for giving it 4 stars instead of 5, even though the build quality is very good and the sound is as desired, etc. Drivers... I believe this is the Achilles' heel of this product. Even before the 204HD came out, Behringer didn't provide its own driver, but instead directed you to download ASIO4all, which is essentially a third-party generic driver that can be installed for all sound interfaces. *There is even a relevant video on YouTube that shows Behringer didn't even have its own site back then to provide the drivers. So, you had to download third-party drivers from third-party sources. Now, they have their own domain and provide their own drivers.

To keep it short, I had glitches (cut-offs) with their drivers in various plugins I tried. I tested ASIO4ALL and had issues with some plugins, while others worked fine. But it clearly performed better than the UMC driver from the same company. Madness...

After many attempts and thinking, I decided to download the previous version of the UMC driver (version 5 instead of 5.12) and the problem was solved. I did notice that the output levels and everything that came out of my monitors were reduced compared to before, but I didn't have any sound cut-offs, so everything was fine. All of this was done on Windows 10, by the way. I don't have anything else to try, like a Mac or an older version of Windows, in any case.

In general, this has been my experience so far. The issue with the drivers is something that might potentially deter someone, as for me, the issue was resolved in the way I described, but for another user, for example, I can't guarantee that everything will be fine regarding the card's software.

If someone asks me now if I would recommend it, I read that even Focusrite sometimes has crashes and driver issues, so what can I say to someone? Should they just go for the most popular entry-level sound card?

That's it.
Update: It turns out that the issue I had with the "cut-offs" or "glitches" was from my system and not from the drivers or the card itself. I had to change the Power Plan/Management in Windows to High or Ultimate Performance from Balanced that I had it. Everything is fine.

I am a professional in the field and I have various expensive machines in my possession. I bought it 2 years ago to replace an old terratec that I used with my 2009 MacBook Pro for mainly DJ use (routing to a mixer or inline mixing) and for my home PC (gaming, music listening, home studio, although I also have a regular studio with other machines). So, in the first few days that I had it, I was happy because it worked very satisfactorily at home on the monitors, good latencies, relatively quiet. The sound is nothing special, but it doesn't ruin it either. It has a slight muddiness in the midrange and some muddiness in the bass, but overall it's clean. The headphone output is below average with a little headroom, but that's expected. I happened to play music in a venue at that time and the problem appeared there. While I checked it before I left for the venue (RCA cables to the mixer, etc., all the connections) at home and everything seemed fine, when it went into the PA system, there was a huge hum noise. Whether I had the laptop plugged in or not. Something that had never happened with the terratec. I haven't used it since then for anything else except at home where it's tolerable for Ableton and other phases. You get what you pay for, and for someone who just wants to have fun, it's good, but I wouldn't recommend it for a pro level.