Thoughts on the Apollo QUAD

[albee1952]

What about putting the quad card in a TB chassis?

[propower]

The Apollo system is an interesting alternative to low latency recording with plug ins. The downside is that this workflow will ONLY work with UAD plugins. For everything else the latency may actually be worse. Regardless - it is a good working option and UAD are known for being great plug ins (though I have never owned their stuff).

[jauk]

Albee1952- Something like this? http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpress3d.html

Propower- When you say "only" would with UAD plugins. You mean for audio coming in, correct. As far as applying plugins as an insert that would stillwork as normal?

Thanks so much.

[jauk]

I built a Windows machine as my current studio machine before. Not that I wouldn't do it again. My thinking was that the Apollo (should that be the prevailing route) worked better on the Mac platform. If I went with another interface, it may make just as much sense to stay Windows.

The Mac Mini tricked with 16 gig of RAM would be about a grand. With today's components and pricing, can a killer Windows box be had (or built) for that?

[YYR123]

Yeah pro power meant inside the Apollo.

you can still track normally with the Apollo just like any other interface

I built my 6 core for $1500 - it's a Hackintosh - I ended up Mac b/c of the Focusrite problems from 2011or so - audio interface cannot connect to system - whatever those errors were -

I've had no issues since Mac but I think they fixed the win side as well

[propower]

I meant that all that great low latency recording with plug ins only works with UAD -- once you want to use a different plug like Waves for example - your recording monitoring latency will now be much worse than many other products - like UFX or HDN. With HDN I can really do 1.7ms latency monitoring all day every day with everyones plug ins - well - except UAD - LOL

I think the hardest part of these decisions is first deciding what is priority 1, 2 and 3. For me it was Latency, no fans, thunderbolt. That made my choice of HDN + Dangerous source for monitor + imac for computer (would have been a nMP if they were out then).

Put down your priorities and then people can be much more on point. There is no best - only best for ones uses.

[jauk]

I had to think about this one.

1. Stability

2. Low latency monitoring
(Not sure really how to measure latency in ms but tracking at 128 buffer size seems fine to me on my current machine.)

3. I track mostly everything live. Drums can take 10 mics sometimes depending... I have a digimax LT (adat) that I use for that. As well as some Studio Projects VTB1's.

4. Would like the interface to have some nice mic pre's. (4 xlr's at a minimum)
(needs to also have monitor outs and headphone outs)

4. I am moving some towards VI's (for Keys, Steve Slate Drums). But don't want to lose the ability to track up to 16 tracks at one time.

My current sessions typically are in the vicinity of 50+ tracks. May be going higher depending on the sessions.

Not to get too side tracked but here is a recent quote I received (Monday):

Product ID Description Sell Qty Total
P-21959 Apple Mac Mini: 2.3GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 Late 2012 1 $799.00
P-24415 Crucial M500 480GB 2.5-inch Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $309.99 each= 2 $619.98
P-21151 Crucial Mobile 16GB Kit (2x8GB) DDR3-1600 SODIMM Memory 1 $189.99
P-19885 Universal Audio Apollo Interface w/ QUAD Processing With 1 $2359.99
Thunderbolt
P-21139 Avid Pro Tools LE Crossgrade Activation Card 1 $399.00
P-16848 Pace iLok 2 1 $49.00
P-24654 Glyph GPT50 - 1TB 7200RPM Desktop HD USB 3.0,FireWire, 1 $189.00
eSATA
P-14688 Gold to Platinum Native upgrade 1 $282.00
P-19407 iZotope Ozone 5 - Complete Mastering System 1 $189.99
P-18330 Antares Auto Tune 7 Native - Electronic Delivery 1 $275.00
P-13106 Steven Slate Drums Platinum 1 $175.00
P-25044 MTS APPLICATION INSTALL (REPAIR INSTALL) [3x Licenses] 1 $60.00
Total Qty 13

Quotes are valid for 7 days.
Signature Total $5974.91
GA $386.96
Subtotal $5587.95

[propower]

Excellent thinking there--

For stability many would say stay at PT10
My general thoughts on stability is all one companies product will be the best integrated. One of my main reasons for having AVID hardware.

Since dropping the 003 line AVID really has no ready to use ($2K to $3K) solution for the 16track home studio market. Mbox is too little in every way. HDN + OMNI is almost the solution but 8 input tracks max - then HDN + 16x16 but then you loose monitoring and have no built in preamps (if that matters) so then you end up with either

- HDN + 16x16 (~$5K if you hunt) + monitor solution lets say $1K
or
-HDN + OMNI (~$4k if you hunt) + 192 or 8x8 or any digilink box for the rest of your inputs. ugly ....

Comparing this with what Apollo does at half the cost hard not to find that pretty compelling (on paper - I have no direst knowledge of PT11 Apollo integration and any of the not so great parts)...

FWIW - I went Metric Halo ULN8 + PT10 at first - then PT11. Everything was great until I wanted to track something through ProTools (instead of the built in MetricHalo foldback mixer). Then it was a FW interface with latency that was just not acceptable to me. You can see my current system in my sig. I also had a 2012 Mini i7 with 2 SSDs that once I wanted to track at the lowest buffers in PT11 - did not perform well.

But - For a system based around keeping buffers high and letting Apollo and UAD console doing all the heavy lifting I think the mini can work fine. How this works for VI's would be a question I would want to know if I were you.

There is one solution that is brand new that I am very curious about and that is PT11 + Lynx Aurora TB. I have yet to see any latency measurements in use but If this performs comparably at low buffer settings in PT to HDN I am very much attracted to it as an alternative...

Best of luck!

[jauk]

Thanks so much for the reply, Propower.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Going the route of the Mini/Apollo, how well will it perform with track count, VI's, heavy use of (non UAD) plugins, etc.

Thanks for pointing that out. Going the route of the Mini, this is the unanswered question. How did yours do at those?

I will ask around at the place who provided the quote. Apparently, there are a few "Pro" studios here in GA, (Southern Tracks being one) that use the Mini/Apollo set up in their main room (I have no real way to validate this claim, though).

[propower]

For 256 buffer and up I think the mini would do fine. For low buffer stuff - 96kHz and 64/128 it was not cutting it for me. But with Apollo doing the heavy lifting - you shouldn't need low buffer. But also if your sessions run 25%CPU load get ready for 4000+rpm fans on the mini. My imac stays at base level fan (1 dBA above background noise in my room) all the way to 50% CPU load.