Impedance (measured in ohms) is a measure of resistance to the electric current. Low-impedance headphones have less electrical resistance, allowing more current to flow through them for a given voltage. High-impedance headphones restrict current flow more, requiring a higher voltage to drive them at the same loudness level.
Maya wrote:I want to drive my DCA Aeon 2 Noire and wondering if the UCX II can handle the low impedance of 13 Ohm with enough current.
Always wanted to buy the ADI 2 Dac for my studio monitors and headphones. But just recently the demand increased to also have one or two mic inputs for an condenser mic.
So I'm debating if the ucx is the better choice, knowing that their headphones amp is a little weaker.
When talking about an UCX, then you mean a device from used market as it is not being produced anymore.
Taking the UCX would be a fully budget driven choice.
In contrast to that UCX II (from 2021) offers much more in terms of features and improvements over the much older UCX which was designed and came to market 2012, which is already 12 years ago.
If you are unsure whether to take a recording interface like the UCX II or a reference converter like the ADI-2 DAC or Pro FS, then the answer is to get both to get the best of both worlds (in terms of features).
As you mentioned that you want to record with a microphone, etc, I recommend you to get a good recording interface with TotalMix FX first as a solid basement. The quality of those headphone outputs is also superb and can drive any "normal" headphone well enough.
At any time later you can integrate an ADI-2 DAC FS or ADI-2 Pro FS R BE or ADI-2/4 Pro SE easily into the setup.
Advantages I see here with the ADI-2 Pro FS R BE and ADI-2/4 Pro SE because they have the richer feature set.
Very useful is that they also offer analog inputs, more digital I/O IN and OUT.
Especially useful is the AES I/O (which btw the UCX doesn't support). Then you can integrate the reference converter by using AES, which also delivers galvanic isolation.
Then you still have the ADAT port of the UCX II free for other purposes, like e.g. connecting another 8-port Mic Preamp.
Or even another reference converter for the HiFi corner, if Studio and HiFi corner are not too far from each other.
ADAT supports officially around 10m, but 16m also work reliably for me up to 192 kHz, maybe even 20m would be possible.
More information ...
BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14