We recently ran a survey asking our community which brand of audio interface they used. When we published the results a lot of our assumptions were confirmed. The highest profile manufacturers enjoy the biggest market share - big surprise! Brands Like Universal Audio, Avid. Focusrite and RME are very popular, and deservedly so. Their products are excellent.

There was also a significant cluster of brands which shared the middle ground in terms of popularity. Brands like Audient, MOTU, Antelope, Apogee, Presonus and Metric Halo all occupy this space. Well established brands who make excellent products.

Something which caught our attention was the brands which occupied the next level down in terms of popularity. What we noticed was brands who make great products and we’d maybe have expected to be more popular than they are. The reasons why we won’t speculate on too much. The survey didn’t ask which models were being used, just which brands so we can’t make assumptions based on price. Some of the brands are relatively new to the interface business and this definitely would influence their showing based on a poll which asks which interface people own. After all interfaces tend to have a relatively long life in a studio.

Regardless of the precise reasons why, here are five interface brands which the data suggests aren’t as common as they perhaps should be. If you’re looking for a new interface maybe these brands should feature on your list of potential purchases.

SSL

Hardly a new brand. Solid State Logic have reinvented themselves over the last few years from a strictly Pro brand manufacturing high end consoles with which all of us are familiar, but to which most of us can only aspire to, to a brand who still do all of those great consoles but now also make accessibly priced controllers, outboard, plugins and audio interfaces.

SSL’s trio of interfaces were only launched in 2020 making them relative newcomers to the interface world. Their range of compact USB interfaces feature reassuring build quality, impeccable design heritage and users have reported very positive things about the 4K button which introduces “analogue colour enhancement inspired by the 4000-series console”, with some suggesting that you’ll just never turn it off!

Find out more about the SSL interfaces using the button below

Heritage Audio

Spanish brand Heritage Audio surprised us with their decidedly Neve-esque i73 interfaces back in 2022. What we found was a trio of usb C interfaces with classic Neve looks, all the way down to the RAF blue paint, Marconi knobs and 1073 style transformer based mic preamps with 70dB of gain and DSP powered plugins also available in native form for the best of both worlds when it comes to low latency tracking or maximising use at mix down.

Heritage Audio also make some very appealing outboard, for example check out our test of the HA609A compressor.

Find out more about the Heritage Audio interfaces using the button below

Lynx

Lynx are not newcomers to the audio interface market but they have always concentrated on quality, a fact reflected in their popularity in mastering applications and other demanding roles. Impeccable conversion quality and transparency aren’t easy strengths to market in an environment where so many people are presenting mojo and analogue colour as selling points. And transparency and quality are hard to do.

Lynx have been offering an upgrade to conversion quality since they reverse engineered the digilink connection used by Avid for connection to their proprietary converters and open up the Pro Tools market to aftermarket conversion. Their Aurora n interface is the current iteration of a quality studio workhorse and offers a choice of swappable IO analogue and digital modules and their Hilo 2 interface is distinctive for its form factor, touchscreen and the Lslot system of swappable USB, Thunderbolt and Dante cards allowing the pro user to invest and then maintain that investment as needs and technology change.

Find Out more about Lynx using the button below.

Cranbourne Audio

Another relative newcomer. Cranbourne Audio have been one of the most inventive audio brands around, with some clever and innovative analogue products. From preamps to equalisers and more. But here we’ll highlight their take on the 500 series rack. 500 series gear is very appealing but can be awkward to incorporate into an in the box workflow. The 500R8 is a USB interface designed specifically for 500 series modules. Whether used principally for tracking, mixing or both it offers all the facilities you need to get the most out of your modules. When gear is quick and convenient to use it see more use and it couldn’t be much easier or more flexible than this.

With monitor control, headphone amps, analogue summing and expandability it’s a great way into 500 series and if you want to start slowly you can use this with only a couple of modules installed and the other slots blanked off until you are ready to invest more. Cool device!

Steinberg

We principally associate Steinberg with software and with good reason, Cubase has after all been around for as long as sequencing software has been around. However Steinberg were bought by Yamaha 20 years ago and with that came serious muscle to design and manufacture hardware.

Steinberg’s interfaces are unusual in that they offer a 32 bit sampling option. Their high end ARX4 offers 32-bit integer resolution and a sample rate of up to 384 kHz and their more accessible UR-C offers the same 32 bit sampling up to 192kHz. But there’s more to Steinberg’s interfaces than transparency. They collaborated with Rupert Neve Designs for the UR-RT series of interfaces which feature preamps with custom designed transformers as well as DSP powered effects.

Which interface brand do you think doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves? Share your thoughts in the comments.