UA Interface at NAMM?

[MatrixClaw]

Anyone else see this from Sweetwater?



And the link to buy it:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ApolloDuo

Looks pretty cool. UA Firewire interface, with Thunderbolt coming later this year, 4 mic inputs and a built in UAD-2 DUO card which can apply plugins coming into the interface, as well as running them separately in your DAW. Could actually be a decent contender to the RME stuff if the conversion and preamps are any good.

Discuss!

 

[PhilTheBeard]

Looks fucking dope!!! And the thunderbolt interface option is going to be a big seller for them on this interface! Also glad that is will have windows support and not be a mac only interface!

 

[Charlie E.]

Yup saw this. Looks really nice. Reminds me of my Ensemble but with the extra perks of course.

 

[Melodeath]

The Thunderbolt connection is an add-on card, not built-in. Anyway, pretty cool, but of course, I was hoping for a Native UAD announcement. I can dream.

I might get one of these and sell off one of my 8-pre interfaces

 

[Adrian Warren]

I'm glad I didn't buy the RME UFX yet. I'm going to get the Apollo just for the functionality alone and if the preamps and converters are good I don't even need to buy them separately. This thing is really, really cool.

 

[JonWormwood]

It's a bummer because with my current projecting having 22inputs....

 

[jipchen]

Yeah seems like a well-thought interface. The most important thing will be the quality of the drivers, though.. that's where RME is ahead of the others imho. I have no doubts conversion and preamps will be at least on par with RME's stuff.
I don't get why they didn't include two ADAT ports, though.. so you could either use 16 channels with 44.1 / 48 kHz or 8 channels in 88.2 / 96 kHz

 

[PhilTheBeard]

Yeah seems like a well-thought interface. The most important thing will be the quality of the drivers, though.. that's where RME is ahead of the others imho. I have no doubts conversion and preamps will be at least on par with RME's stuff.
I don't get why they didn't include two ADAT ports, though.. so you could either use 16 channels with 44.1 / 48 kHz or 8 channels in 88.2 / 96 kHz

It does have two adat ports on it

 

[phisk]

World's first thunderbold dongle

 

[PhilTheBeard]

wow 1999 for the uad 2 duo card and 2499 with the quad! great pricing

 

[Jaymz]

Or £2200 for the Duo

 

[MatrixClaw]

wow 1999 for the uad 2 duo card and 2499 with the quad! great pricing

Oh man! I didn't even see you could get it with the Quad in it

This looks like it could be pretty epic. Hopefully UA puts their full support in it and the drivers come out solid!

 

[PhilTheBeard]

yeah them putting in a build in quad card totally sold me on this interface! i was looking to get another rme ff800 for my bedroom rig. I might have to get this instead after we get more word on how stable the drivers are! But i don't think UA would put their stamp on it if it didn't kick total ass!

 

[phisk]

I hope you all read in the FAQ that you can only have 4 uad-2 cards per account.

If the apollo is your 5th then you have to buy your plugins again or scrap another uad2 card from that account.

 

[PhilTheBeard]

I hope you all read in the FAQ that you can only have 4 uad-2 cards per account.

If the apollo is your 5th then you have to buy your plugins again or scrap another uad2 card from that account.

Most of us on this forum either have none to two at most. So i think we will all be fine

 

[phisk]

I think the limit of 4 cards is fair. (but should be taken into account while planning )

 

[jipchen]

It does have two adat ports on it

Yeah I thought so, too but as far as I can see it's only for S/MUX so you can not use more than 8 channels over ADAT (in both 48 and 96 kHz, though).
So while it has 2 ports you can still only connect 1 ADAT unit to it.

Audio Interface
- Sample rates up to 192 kHz at 24-bit word length
- 18 x 24 simultaneous input/output channels:
- Eight channels of analog-to-digital conversion via mic, line, or high-impedance inputs
- 14 channels of digital-to-analog conversion via:
- Eight mono line outputs
- Stereo monitor outputs
- Two stereo headphone outputs
- 10 channels of digital I/O via:
- Eight channels ADAT Optical I/O with S/MUX for high sample rates
- Two channels coaxial S/PDIF I/O with sample rate conversion
- Two FireWire 800 ports for daisy-chaining other FireWire devices
- 32-bit and 64-bit device drivers

That aside I really like the features. I hope RME sees this and will offer more built-in DSP plugins and effects for the UFX and coming interfaces as well

 

[phisk]

Having the uad-2 live plugins (nearly) latency free on stage is cool. But while tracking wouldn't you want a dry signal beeing send to the daw, too. (just in case..) Thunderbold should be broad enough to send a dry copy the the daw.

 

[C-Martin]

It does have two adat ports on it

It does but it is only for S/MUX. From what i read, you cannot use them separatly to have 16 channels. This is a deal breaker for me because i need to have at least 24 I/O for the setup i'm building. Shame because it looks like a solid unit and the ability to use the UAD plugins while tracking and then turn around and use them while mixing seems like a nice feature. This would be a nice all-in-one mobile rig though.

 

[C-Martin]

jipchen beat me to it, i type way too slow lol