Apogee Duet & Pro Tools 9?

[bradweeks80]

I'm looking to buy some new gear for my mobile recording rig. My full rig will remain the same for now.

I have a Macbook Pro and I'll be purchasing Pro Tools 9 (currently running Pro Tools 8 LE) within the next few days. I'm looking at hardware options that are compact and reliable and that provide at least 2 preamps.

The one that seems to stand out the most is the Apogee Duet. Reviews are strong and it's a reasonable price.

Is anyone else using Pro Tools 9 and the Apogee Duet?

What are your thoughts?

What other options can anyone suggest?

I like the MOTU Microbook but with only one pre, it's a bit of a turn off.

I've had a number of Mbox's over the years and I'm not interested in getting another one. It's not that I have an issue with the Mbox, in fact I love them but it's time to find something new.

Thank you in advance for any advice/suggestions.

Cheers
Brad

[KingFish]

Hey Brad, just a note that none of the other 3rd party sound cards have built in "ProTools compatible " Low Latency monitoring circuits, or on board DSP that you can use directly with ProTools

I don't own one, but sounds like the new MBox's are definitely in a different league then before, with better pre's, converters, DSP, and LLM I think it's price point is fairly close to an Apogee Duet, which doesn't give you any of that stuff.

There are alot of threads on here, from frustrated 3rd party HW owners, asking Avid to include the ability to "Switch off Software monitoring" in future versions of ProTools - If they do this in the future, there will be no real "Advantage" to Avid HW, but until then, if you want to record with this rig, and monitor, (Especially with a laptop that may not do 32 or 64 buffer), you're going to want to take advantage of the Avid, Low Latency integration.

Just my 2c

[bradweeks80]

Thanks for the reply, David. Very much appreciated. Certainly something I will keep in mind when making my final decision.

Cheers
Brad

[legacygone]

RME Babyface is worth a look.

[huzzam]

I have a Duet and a Macbook, and PT9, and it works great. The preamps & converters in the Duet are excellent, far superior to any Digi interface I've ever used (though I haven't used this latest generation of Mboxes). Just sold my Mbox 2 Pro, in fact, because I was so happy to be able to use my Duet.

As for what KingFish was saying: the Duet has direct monitoring, which works fine for me. You do have to mute the corresponding tracks in PT, so it's tricky to use quick punch and the like. But you can record without monitoring latency. And since you have more tracks available in PT9, you can approximate quick punch by just making a new track & recording on there.

enjoy
~peter in oakland