Behringer U-Control UCA202

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Behringer U-Control UCA202

Postby englishtim » 20 Nov 2017, 16:44

Hi Everyone,

After great success with RuneAudio on my first-gen Raspberry Pi Model B into a FiiO E10K (Compatibility report: post5484.html#p5484), I decided I needed another Rune in my life... :D

This one's a brand-new Pi 3 Model B (1Gb, Revision 1.2, code a02082), running into a Behringer U-Control UCA202 (http://www.music-group.com/Categories/B ... 02/p/P0484). I'm using the combo to drive the following:

  • My "man-cave" / office system: Denon M38DAB micro-system with ancient home-built KEF Cresta II / Caprice I speakers (http://international.kef.com/explore-ke ... ii-1970-72 ) - ancestors of the legendary BBC LS3/5A;
  • Pro-Ject Head Box S driving my wonderful Sennheiser HD 650 headphones.

The Pi 3's USB power output seems to be somewhat better than the first-gen Pi, so I've connected the UCA202 directly to the Pi instead of via a powered USB hub.

The UCA202's a real find - it's been around for years so is well-proven, the technical performance via Line-Out is properly excellent (see Nwavguy's review for details: http://nwavguy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/b ... eview.html), and all for well under £30 in the UK. I originally bought mine to do room measurements via Room Equalisation Wizard (https://www.roomeqwizard.com/), as it was one of the few low-cost USB sound-cards I'd found that handled Line-In.

The UCA202 seems to work absolutely fine with RuneAudio - I'm using v0.3-beta (23/03/2016), updated via Gitpull. I'm once again keeping things relatively simple:

  • AirPlay, Spotify and Last.fm are switched off;
  • All music's held on my old Synology DS212 NAS;
  • File-formats are mostly 16-bit/44k ALAC or 320k MP3, with a few AAC files here and there;
  • Network connection is via wired Ethernet;

As with my FiiO E10K compatibility report I had to resort to Alsamixer to increase gain from the UCA202 - setting it to -3dB / 88 works well. I also had to choose a different player hostname in "Settings", as you might expect. Apart from that the setup was really straightforward, and works well. I haven't had a chance to experiment with different Sound Signatures yet, but the default "RuneAudio" signature seems to work well enough anyway.

For the record, the UCA202 uses a Burr-Brown / TI PCM2902 DAC, and is specified to 16 bit / 48kHz.

Here's the Debug report on Pastebin:

https://pastebin.com/tL7MS1Lk

Once again, many thanks to the RuneAudio team - it's a great product, and is IMHO by far the best OS out there for DIY network music players. Keep up the excellent work!

Peace and friendship,
englishtim
Last edited by englishtim on 12 May 2018, 16:47, edited 1 time in total.
Synology DS918+ NAS >
  • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ > Behringer UCA202 >
    • Denon RCD-M38DAB > KEF Cresta II
    • Pro-Ject Head Box S > Sennheiser HD 650
  • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B > Behringer UCA202 > Sansui AU-317 > Celestion SL6
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englishtim
 
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Location: Always European

Re: Behringer U-Control UCA202

Postby rastus » 11 Jan 2018, 12:52

"...I originally bought mine to do room measurements via Room Equalisation Wizard..."

Yep, same here.... the Behringer U-Control UCA202, for the exact same reasons too... don't use it now though, I'm presently after one of those BOSS dac's...
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rastus
 
Posts: 353
Joined: 21 Aug 2015, 10:29

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