New Apogee

[mostapha]

Weird…I haven't heard anything bad about the Duet 2 except that it's a bit limited.

And the anlog sound comes from their plugins, not the interface. IMHO, there are better ways to spend that money that could go farther to achieve that if you wanted to, but it does fill a very good niche.

[greatwhitedope]

Just typical Lion issues, a bunch of people are experiencing it. It's like it has a mind of it's own, it will be picked up and work fine for days then bam, nothing until you un/reinstall Maestro and reboot. Strange, because everything else seems to be working fine. Other than that it's perfect for me. I don't have any real external gear so I use it mostly for guitar either direct or I might mic the cab or acoustic and occasionally some vocals.

[dope]

I will sound super noobie but what's that ? What do you use these expensive little boxes for ?

[greatwhitedope]

I will sound super noobie but what's that ? What do you use these expensive little boxes for ?

The Duet 2 is a sound card and the symphony is that and the ability for a whole lot more. Most of which isn't really necessary for people who mix soley ITB at home.

[JazZmutant]

The new UAD Apollo has got me more interested

http://www.uaudio.com/interfaces/apo...croll=features

Seeing as it will be pretty much the same price as the apogee ensemble, i know where i would be spending my money.

Maybe in 2 or 3 years when thunderbolt has been around for a while would be a good time to look into a serious thunderbolt interface. Sure these guys have "future proofed" it, but im sure better tech will come out in the next 3 years.

Having the firewire and thunderbolt connectivity is a really good aspect though!

[mostapha]

Seeing as it will be pretty much the same price as the apogee ensemble, i know where i would be spending my money.

Maybe in 2 or 3 years when thunderbolt has been around for a while would be a good time to look into a serious thunderbolt interface. Sure these guys have "future proofed" it, but im sure better tech will come out in the next 3 years.

Having the firewire and thunderbolt connectivity is a really good aspect though!

Comparing it to the Ensemble, it really does seem to win.

Comparing it to the Symphony I/O with an Avid HD card (or HDX when they release the right module for the symphony) isn't the least bit fair.

That price level is not where I'd spend my money, so I guess that's why it doesn't seem to appeal to me that much, but it is really cool.

The Apogee appeals to me because of 2 reasons:

1. I already like Pro Tools (and would buy HD if I had the money)
2. I'd love to have a Neve 8816 at some point, and the new Symphony IO module means that I can run one of one interface and still have 16 ins and 16 outs to run outboard gear as inserts in the software.

So…basically, pipe dreams. But really awesome ones.

I will sound super noobie but what's that ? What do you use these expensive little boxes for ?

They get audio into and out of your computer with low latency and do other stuff…some of them have mic pres, which mean that you can actually use microphones.

The Apollo mentioned on the previous page contains DSP chips, which are little IC Chips that do signal processing on their own. UAD makes plugins–that run inside a DAW–that actually make the DSP chips do the math instead of making your computer do it. DSP chips can do that kind of stuff faster and more reliably than modern computer processors because that's all they were designed to do.

It's competition for Avid's HD (now HDX) DSP/Interface cards, which do the same thing and have been the backbone of good recording studios since they were introduced and aimed at people who don't actually need 0-latency monitoring for recording but want better/faster processing than modern computers can do reliably on their own.