The Best Audio Interfaces of 2025: Universal Audio and More

While open source crusaders and techno-libertarians applaud Universal Audio’s recent efforts to move away from its “walled garden” approach to plug-ins, the truth is that most good ones still require the presence of an interface or processor core to load and run in your DAW of choice. As we mentioned in the Apollo Twin review above: “good” is an understatement to describe UAD’s most popular plug-ins.

Its digital recreations of optical mix bus compressors, legendary reverbs, and warm, vibrant tape decks are unmatched by any other prosumer manufacturer, and the fact that its hardware powers the CPU-intensive algorithms that apply high-end magic sparkle to your mix makes the expensive leap into the UA universe worth it.

Direct monitoring on the four included XLR unison preamps is crystal clear, with almost no latency and plenty of headroom for whatever you plug into it. A wide array of inputs, like a pair of ADAT I/O and eight line-level 1/4″ jacks, can handle sessions of any size, and the UA Console app makes routing, monitoring, and plug-in management easy. If you go to a large studio, this is the most common interface you’ll see, often with several stacked together for even more channels, which you can do with just one cable between devices. —Pete Cottell