Best audio interfaces of 2025: world-class audio and more

While open source advocates and techno liberals applaud Universal Audio’s recent efforts to move away from a “walled garden” approach to plug-ins, the reality is that most good plug-ins still require an interface or processor core to load and play in your DAW of choice. As we mentioned in Apollo Twin’s write-up, above: “Good” is a huge understatement when describing the most popular UAD plugins.

Their digital re-creations of optical mix bus compressors, legendary reverbs, and warm, soulful tape machines are unparalleled by any other consumer-level manufacturer, and the fact that their hardware runs CPU-hungry algorithms that apply cutting-edge magic sheen to your mix makes the expensive leap into the world of UA well worth it.

Live monitoring on the four built-in XLR amplifiers is crystal clear, virtually latency-free, and has clean headroom for whatever you plug it into. A wide range of inputs such as a pair of ADAT I/Os and eight 1/4-inch line-level jacks can handle sessions of all sizes, and the UA Console app makes routing, monitoring and managing plugins a breeze. If you go into a large studio, this is the most common interface you’ll see, often with several interfaces stacked together for more channels, which you can do with a single cable between devices. —Kotel House