It’s important for you to be able to see and read the meters easily. Setting it too low can produce excessive noise and make a recording more difficult to mix. If the level is too high, distortion (often called “clipping”) will result. These meters are critical for setting gain, or record level.

Meter design: One of the biggest differences among USB interfaces is in the way their signal-level meters are configured.A well-made interface, even if it’s made of plastic, should survive years of use. Build quality: We immediately dismissed any obviously cheap, flimsy interfaces that looked like they might not survive more than a few months of frequent use.