New Universal Audio portable interface

[Drew Mazurek]

https://vintageking.com/blog/2018/01...l-audio-arrow/

Pretty impressive little box IMO. Perfect portable overdub solution for me.

[appledude]

Nice to see it being thunderbolt 3. Hope to see all Apollo’s update to TB3.

[EGS]

Wow. Looks great. Are there ANY other Thunderbolt 3 (not 1 or 2) audio interfaces?

[appledude]

I have not seen any TB 3 interfaces. Some TB 1 and TB 2s. The round trip latency for TB 2 is generally less than 4 ms. I don’t know if TB 3 will be any better but the speed is twice that of TB 2 than it would b nice if TB 3 would have a round trip around 2 ms.

[Drew Mazurek]

TB3 also offers more power which allows for the buss powering this unit has. Not possible with TB2 apparently.

[Drew Mazurek]

https://www.uaudio.com/audio-interfaces/arrow.html

UA's product page for those that are interested.

[VRW]

Universal Audio Arrow. Thunderbolt 3 audio interface. Apollo converters.
Bus-powered. For $499.-.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Arrow

https://www.uaudio.com/?___store=def...ode&setsite=en

Looks like a really great quality yet affordable kinda interface for Pro Tools.
Converters, software, drivers all taken from the Apollos. And these are simply
high end quality.

At first view only the 2nd pair of Analog-Line-Outputs and the 8-Channel-ADAT-
Inputs are missing which might be no serious problem in this price range.

Further it´s Thunderbolt 3 and bus-powered via Thunderbolt. No adapters needed
with current MacBooks etc. (TB3/USB-C connection) and no external power supply
needed. Still 48V Phantompower for 2 Mics available and all kinda Unison preamps
are working perfectly as supposed to. This for $499.-. Not bad at all!

1 DSP might not be a lot of power for UAD plug ins but its definitely enough to
start out recording with the included Unison preamps and use a couple of these plug
ins even in some mixes. If one starts needing more of it later he always can expand
the system by one of the Quad/Octo-satellites which will offer tons of DSP power.

Yet it´s not the UAD plug ins which make this little box interesting but the audio quality,
the super stable drivers and software, Thunderbolt 3 (fast as hell/super low latency)
and that it is even bus-powered finally (great for mobile applications).

Well, I forget to mention that the Arrow can be used on Macs (macOS 10.12 Sierra, 10.13
High Sierra+) and PCs (Win 10/Anniversary Update 64-bit) with Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports.

Good job again, UA.

Very nice indeed imo.

[Drew Mazurek]

Thanks VRW!!

This forum isn't on my watch list and is a much better place for this thread. So I moved and merged.

[Southsidemusic]

The converters are NOT taken from the Apollo interfaces, they are "derived" from them which is again not the same as "taken from" and yes the Arrow sounds good for what it is and we will surely buy one for travel purposes but as we already just bought the Twin Quad for that maybe te Arrow will be too small. One core is about 5-7 plugins with the ones we use and thats way too little DSP power for 500 dollars and here insweden it cost about 750 USD with Mr Government taking his share

We have tried one demo unit here that asn't finished but that was just cosmetic stuff and the AD/DA is better thanthe first silver Twins but not near the MK2 quad conversions.

Will have an Arrow on loan and do a real A/B test within a few weeks or as fast as our dealer gets the finished product here.

VRW / Do you own one as your post looks like you have tried this box with statements like super Stable and great sound etc??

My opinion is it sounds Good but not like the Apollo MK2 interfaces at all. Not the same headroom or crisp vigh end or low end like the Twin MK2 or the Apollo MK2 Interfaces.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by VRW

... with Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports...

Help me understand the difference. It seems they use the same cable, but are different in operation and speed. So, if a computer has a USB-C port, it cannot run this Apollo I/O. It MUST be a Thunderbolt 3 port. Is that correct? Here's some info: https://thunderbolttechnology.net/bl...-thunderbolt-3