FWIW, this is almost exactly my situation. I have a UR816-c (which replaced my MR816X), and for extra inputs, I use a Behringer ADA8000. For outputs, I have my main monitors, a mixcube, and for sending four cue mixes to the live room, I have a Behringer HA4700 headphone amp.
I haven’t noticed any difference between the pres in the UR816c as compared to my old MR816X, but I did do a “shootout” between the ones in the MR816X and the Behringer ADA8000 pres, and thought the Steinberg ones were better. The Behringer ones stood up surprisingly well, though. Neither holds much of a candle to my other four more expensive pres, though.
When you connect an “extension input” device via ADAT, the monitoring works the same way in the UR816c as it did in the MR816X, which is probably the same for any of their other devices. It shows up as its own input in Cubase and monitor / mains routing, etc. all work just like the inputs from the interface itself, whether in direct monitoring mode or not.
The routing in the UR816c is a bit fiddly, but I’ve more or less gotten the hang of it. Instead of connecting physical out buses to physical outputs, with the UR816c you connect “DAW Direct” outs (virtual output buses) to the physical outputs. So, DAW Direct out 1 to physical output #1, connected to the first channel in on the headphone amp, etc.
The drivers for the UR816c are superb. I can track 16 mono tracks and 8 stereo tracks (all just through a common input, but I don’t think that matters) at 48 samples (5ms round-trip latency) - all while playing a youtube video in the background, adjusting preferences, setting up key commands, checking and unchecking the “direct monitoring enabled/disabled” button - with no dropouts over about a 7 minute period.
The one thing that makes me crazy - and I hope they find a fix for it - is the routing with respect to the built-in FX. Let’s say you have a singer who wants some of the reverb in their phones. Fine… set up your input bus, enable the RevX reverb, monitor the singer in the control room… hear the singer and the Reverb… great. Nope. Singer says, “can you give me the reverb please?” The reverb (or whatever other FX, channel strip, whatever) - it seems - can ONLY be routed to a physical output - not a virtual output. That’s why I hear it in my monitors, but can’t route it to the phones.
At this point, I seem to need to do one of two things to employ a workaround, neither of which I never had to do with the MR816.
- Physically connect the headphone out on the UR816c to a headphone channel input on my headphone amp.
- Disable Control Room.
- Set up a talk-back channel manually so I can communicate with the singer.
OR
- Strap the reverb plugin into an insert on the channel. (obviously the easier of the two options, and surprisingly doable with the drivers and the shockingly small amount of latency that can be achieved.
Note:
Gaaaah! I mean, usually, singers are happy enough tracking without reverb. But geez…
As for “Behringer free zone…” I dunno. I’ve outgrown most of my Behringer stuff too, but I’ve had my share of it along the way and have almost zero issues with them. For bang-for-the-buck gear, you can’t beat it, and even at twice the price, it would be hard to beat for what you get.
Sure, my SSL Alpha channel beats the pants off of the Behringer Mic2200, but at 8x price, it should. It doesn’t mean I can’t make a usable recording without spending over a grand per channel, though.
CT