Quote:
Originally Posted by Southsidemusic
Hey
It must be old stock as all new Apollo interfaces comes with Tbolt card installed.
We bought our first of 2 Apollo Quads when they came out and it has FW and then we bought the second Apollo Quad with Tbolt card and its a difference in plugin instances. I would say about 20-30% better plugin count and less latency all around so if the DUO is Firewire you really should stop and think this over.
As I see it thats strike 2 against UA. First the 2 shark processors and now FW card only which all new units comes with today.
As far as what you thought regarding the Quartet - Who said it had better convertors and preamps? Thats just not true at all so ..
If you want a great sound and with DSP look at a used Apollo QUAD with Thunderbolt or get the DUO now and invest in a Tbolt card down the road.
As you said, You would have to be sparse with the plugin count with the DUO but if you want the best you can get the DUO now and instead of getting a Tbolt card you could get a Satellite box like the Quad Core later with 4 X Shark Processors. We have two of those aswell and 2 of the Apollo Quads and one of the Apollo 16 and would never ever look back.
The sound is Awesome and now with the Unison you can actually get all the best preamp sounds from Neve, Api, UA 610 A/B and you would be very good to hear the difference of the outboard gear compared to the UAD-2 plugins.
We have the outboards aswell and we can barely hear any difference so its up to the wallet for you this time around 
I know what I would do no doubt! |
I actually just bought the UA Apollo Duo w/ the Thunderbolt card a couple minutes ago from Sweetwater. Yes, I would have preferred the Quad, but that extra $500 is $500 more than I have to spend. I think I made the right choice over the Quartet. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm not going to be involved in sessions with an insane track count, so although there will inevitably be some tough decisions on which plugs to use and which to leave out at the end of sessions, I'm sure that I'll be more than happy with this unit.
I want to thank everyone, again, for the amazing amount of help you've given me in such a short amount of time.
Happy New Year!
-Adam