I need a good audio interface for guitar playing. Not impressed by UCG102 anymore.

[Nachtwesen]

Greetings,

I play and practice guitar with the Behringer UCG102 on my PC via Ableton Live and AmpliTube. I do record sometimes too. It worked for a while but now I am not impressed anymore. It was ok but...

I start to realize that this audio device gives me what I paid. The main problems are...

1. noise
2. flat sound (digital)
3. low output (only compression helps lil bit)
4. dirty sounding and not clean

Ok my guitar is just a 300 dollar thing and could be a problem too. But I start to wonder if another and better audio device would give me improvement too?
I heard about the lexicon alpha... some say that it is a great audio device. I wonder if it is better than my behringer? It´s at least my price area. (EDIT: I could even spend up to 130USD)

Or do you have any other suggestion in that price area? Would another audio device make me happy? Happy to hear your opinion.

(Btw. I do not expect to get a sound like if I would plug my guitar into a sexy amp... it´s all about neighbours... cant do that. Simply want to get the best tune out of my pc and headphones)

 

[mjbphotos]

Any number of audio interface with instrument input are available under $150 new selling price, if you shop around you may find a used one in your price range. Any of them are going to do a better A-to-D job than that Behr inline unit, but you will still find that the A-to-D conversion does make your guitar playing 'flat' as you call it - what typically gets robbed in recording this way is the dynamics. You'do much better to plug into an amp, mic the speaker of the amp and record that.