Symphony couldn't do it-Could Apollo/PT11?

[Barry Johns]

For the Semi-Pro, you know, local home town studios, could a combination of PT11 or PTHD11 paired with the UA Apollo series units really be the new way forward for the aforementioned group of engineers?

I get that the serious studios and production facilities for film/voice, they simply will want and actually need HDX for obvious reasons.

For the first time in a lot of years, full blown PT systems are out of touch for the Semi-Pro facility, making a huge demand for alternatives. The home studio is not likely to posses a great collection of mic pres/compressors/mics/great sounding room, so there is still a need for now for the home town studio. A person can only go so far to get the results needed, for now.

I know there have been other threads similar to this, my goal is to be more specific.

I am basing my opinion on the thread over at GS. I have an Apollo 16 on its way, just as soon as the store gets them in.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-mu...eview-184.html

There have been some misleading comments at the DUC regarding latency when tracking.

I love PT and historically HD hardware! I just can't see me going with HDX, and see no real advantage to date with HD Native for trackng studios. On the surface, PT software with UA Apollo series I/O's is very compelling, especially when their plugins become AAX, which as far as I understand is soon.

Thoughts?

[Craig F]

really wont know anything until we get 11 in hand and try the combos

I think it also depend on your personal workflow

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by Craig F

really wont know anything until we get 11 in hand and try the combos

I think it also depend on your personal workflow

Fair enough, however for the sake if discussion, we can discuss PT9/10.

[Craig F]

best I can do is recommend Russ's test videos testing the Apollo
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...orld-test.html
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...ollo-thun.html

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by Craig F

best I can do is recommend Russ's test videos testing the Apollo
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...orld-test.html
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...ollo-thun.html

Those are are a big reason I am looking at this. I have one on the way, but love to hear other points of view.

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

For the Semi-Pro, you know, local home town studios, could a combination of PT11 or PTHD11 paired with the UA Apollo series units really be the new way forward for the aforementioned group of engineers?

I get that the serious studios and production facilities for film/voice, they simply will want and actually need HDX for obvious reasons.

For the first time in a lot of years, full blown PT systems are out of touch for the Semi-Pro facility, making a huge demand for alternatives. The home studio is not likely to posses a great collection of mic pres/compressors/mics/great sounding room, so there is still a need for now for the home town studio. A person can only go so far to get the results needed, for now.

I know there have been other threads similar to this, my goal is to be more specific.

I am basing my opinion on the thread over at GS. I have an Apollo 16 on its way, just as soon as the store gets them in.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-mu...eview-184.html

There have been some misleading comments at the DUC regarding latency when tracking.

I love PT and historically HD hardware! I just can't see me going with HDX, and see no real advantage to date with HD Native for trackng studios. On the surface, PT software with UA Apollo series I/O's is very compelling, especially when their plugins become AAX, which as far as I understand is soon.

Thoughts?

Ive Heard that The latency is noticeable with that unit

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by YYR123

Ive Heard that The latency is noticeable with that unit

I have "only" heard that here on the DUC. Take a look at the referenced link above to the discussion at GS where I ask that very question and I get a very different answer, by a lot of users.

[Oblivion777]

Barry,

I use the Apollo as my portable rig and I have used it to track vocals for a fairly big record in a small studio booth without any problems. You can see the details of what I used in my sig below. What I can confirm from first hand is that if your set up supports it use the Thunderbolt interface; it really does make a huge difference both when it comes to latency as well as stability. One more thing that I have noticed: we had to turn the delay compensation on the UAD Console/App to "Off"; if we set it to "Small" the latency was noticeable. With this set up you should have no problems whatsoever. I don't know if you intend to track with effects or not, but for me it wasn't a problem since I rarely track with effects on anyway, but in this specific case I did have the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor on and a reverb, both for monitoring only and still no problems with latency.

Hope the info helps. All the best,
Tomaz

[Righty27]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

For the Semi-Pro, you know, local home town studios, could a combination of PT11 or PTHD11 paired with the UA Apollo series units really be the new way forward for the aforementioned group of engineers?

Thoughts?

Coincidence but my thinking has just gone in this direction too ... just posted something along these lines (in the big CPTK thread) suggesting that Avid should address the middle-tier PT market with Apollo-like hardware instead of CPTK-like toolkits to unlock software functionality. Assuming appropriate performance/quality, an Avid USB/Thunderbolt interface with built-in AAX DSP would become the default hardware for many Pro Tools users allowing them to leverage their previous AAX plugin investment through DSP versions of their favourite tools.

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by Righty27

Coincidence but my thinking has just gone in this direction too ... just posted something along these lines (in the big CPTK thread) suggesting that Avid should address the middle-tier PT market with Apollo-like hardware instead of CPTK-like toolkits to unlock software functionality. Assuming appropriate performance/quality, an Avid USB/Thunderbolt interface with built-in AAX DSP would become the default hardware for many Pro Tools users allowing them to leverage their previous AAX plugin investment through DSP versions of their favourite tools.

Hopefully that will end up being a revamp of HD Native. I can't imagine that with the popularity of UA's Apollo Units, they are going to sit by and have this hurt their HD Native Market. I think most people could deal with just a Channel Strip, Average Reverb and Delay. Those could solve most people's needs when tracking for the sake of the artist. I don't think they even need to go as far as UA did with offering that many plugins to be able to track with or even the quality of plugs to track with.

UA was very smart to develop that box. I personally have never seen a thread as long and certainly as positive as the one over at GS about a piece of gear.