Interesting entry-level audio interface option

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Just a quick heads-up for those of us looking for a small and inexpensive option: I just received my Zoom AMS-22 and had a quick play with it. I just plugged it in instead of my RME Fireface, set the buffer to 128 samples and ran some of my heavier Cantabile setups - worked nicely at low latency!

This is definitely going to be my super-mobile option when I’m on the road with just a laptop - it’s super-tiny, but feels solid enough to just chuck it into my laptop bag. It also has an instrument level input port, so I can use my Cantabile setup for guitar as well. All that’s missing for the total all-round experience is a DIN MIDI port - but that can be covered with a simple MIO plug or similar…

Here’s some info on the manufacturer’s page:
https://www.zoom-europe.com/en/audio-interfaces/zoom-ams-22

Cheers,

Torsten

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Thaat seems an excellent option for many. Thanks for pointing it out.

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I hadn’t seen any of Julian Krause’s videos - lots of good information about the performance of popular usb audio interfaces in the link above.

EDIT: I thought Torsten provided the Julian Krause review link but I guess I found that on my own :grinning:

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Amazing that AD/DA pricing has become so commoditized. Heck even 20 years ago the conversion quality of such a pedestrian (by todays standards) device would have been considered bordering on upper end.

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Nice little device, thnx dor sharing this info. I was trying to find on the Zoom site whether the driver is ASIO compliant but no mention of it. Do you get decent performance (i.e. reasonably low latency) from it?

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Yes, the driver package installs an ASIO driver. Minimal configuration page - you can just set sample rate and buffer size, that’s it.

See my above post - pretty good performance at 128 samples. Not quite at the level of my RME Babyface and Fireface, but that’s a different price bracket…

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Great, thank you for your reply. I guess this is a very good deal indeed.

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Hi Torsten,

I was eyeballing this too. How did it measure up to the Behringer UMC series. As I recall you were familiar with them too. Thanks. :slight_smile:

Dave

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Didn’t really do any scientific testing - essentially “good enough is good enough”. I like the native ASIO driver (no ASIO4ALL needed).

And the form factor is just incredible - it’s soooo small :wink:

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UMC will do 192 KHz and the Zoom will do 96 KHz. Of course not very relevant for live performance. That said, it is indirectly indicative of the quality of converter. But like I said earlier, they’re all so good these days that a couple of decades ago we’d be happy to have them for studio use. Also the UMC is in a metal box, the Zoom plastic. But the Zoom is much smaller.

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