Apollo 8p
Customer Reviews
Apollo 8p
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C. Lattimore
Fabulous peice of gear!
I sometimes need to work from my recording room so I needed a way to control both the preamps and the daw from both the control room and the recording room so I got 2 Apollo8Ps. They fit the bill perfectly! Also the UA plug-ins are second to none.
J. Cummins
WOW
Doing what it should very well. Very happy.
J. Poole
Old school meets new school
I needed a recording, mixing, mastering solution and when I dumped the Nuendo/PC/Waves combo for Logic Pro/Mac Pro/UAD I went from being embarrassed to legitimate overnight. I tried the Waves IOS and went into buyers remorse immediately. The Apollo has 80x the throughput. While the Waves IOS advertises 1 Gb's, Cat 6 cables only have a throughput of 250MB's. 4 x 20 = 80X. This unit is a winner.
G. Navas
Minus 2 Stars For Weak DSP Chips
The Apollo 8p is a great sounding audio interface with a very well thought-out accompanying software package. It also looks great and feels very sturdy. Unfortunately, its weak point is that you hit the DSP limit rather quickly while tracking at higher sample rates as the plugins take up more DSP resources. Having said that, i revisited some older mixes I had done prior to obtaining the apollo and sprinkled them with some uad-2 plugins and immediately noted that they made the songs sound noticeably better and at the end of the day, there's no price tag on the satisfaction of a great sounding mix. This recommendation comes with an asterisk so do your research and be warned about the dsp usage.
A. Burroughs
The Cherry on top!!!
20 years writing and producing, 16 years on the road at FOH, and I come back to this???!!! The 8P is a game changer for me. Pure butter!!! I love the old analog stuff so the Apollo 8P is perfect. And I can buy ALL of the plugins for the 1980's price of one effect. UA, Thanks for the hookup!!!!
R. Uvarov
Amazing sound and design
Apollo sound is incredible. It is different from mid-class audio interfaces and you feel this difference from the 1st second. Same for recording vocals and instruments - I was surprised how wide and juicy, so realistic they sound. It is definitely changed my workflow for higher level.
T. Chattaway
Handles my DPA 4011A microphones beautifully
I started a journey a few months ago, to record a grand piano, and it's been no easy endeavour. After months of research I invested in a matched pair of DPA 4011 microphones. When I first recording with them, they sounded so clear and capture the piano beautifully, but something was wrong on the top end (sounding a bit crunchy). After some advice, I soon discovered they needed decent preamps. After more research I took the plunge and bought the Apollo 8p. It's awesome! It's the perfect answer for my studio. The sound is true, clear and beautiful through the Apollo preamps and the DPA mics are now sounding flawless. I've found that the UAudio API Vision Channel Strip plugin seems to handle the piano frequencies best. It was a significant financial investment for me, but well worth it to achieve the high-end results I was hoping for. Very happy with the result.
M. Wilcox
Winning the Argument
Oh, how my dad and I could have argued about this! I couldn't tell you how many times we had the old 'digital vs. analogue' debate. I always said digital was coming, one day. 'It's just too convenient', I said, passing dad solder and wires and things I didn't even understand while he crouched over some piece of arcane outboard gear in a cloud of greasy smoke (I need to point out here I'm not a sound engineer, I'm a guitar player who loves tinkering with things). 'But it sounds crap', he replied. And it being 15-20 years ago, he was right. But now we're getting there, aren't we?
For one thing, dad always wanted a Neve desk but never got one together, so the first thing I did when my 8p arrived was demo the Neve channel strips- went for the 88RS in the end. I don't know what a real Neve sounds like, but I don't care, because this is by miles the best recorded tone I've ever had! Tape bundle next, I think.
Not to end on a grim note, but dad's got Alzheimer's now. His studio full of racks and desks and knobs and meters and interesting bits and pieces that fascinated me when I was a kid is long gone. But I'm still going to take my Kemper, the 8p and a MacBook pro to the home he's in one day and play him something through the Neve channel strip. Because it's so convenient. Bet he'd still never admit I was right, though.
M. Hagfors
OMG!!
I've had this baby for 12 hours now and I'm absolutely stunned and flabbergasted! I went from a 250$ Focusrite Scarlette 18i8 to the Apollo 8p and man.. The difference was jaw-dropping! The preamps are staggering beautiful and they makes my instuments, like the Nord Stage, Korg synths and guitars sound like completly new and improved instruments! Just amazing!
It feels like upgrading from a 1989mod Toyota Carina II to a 2017mod Lamborghini Avantador! It's my best buy EVER! And I can't imagine ever stop using it. Worth every cent!
I'm lost for more words.. Just thank you Universial Audio!!
N. Ryan
BADASS DAD!
This unit is a bleeding powerhouse. The converters are lovely (night and day improvement in comparison to my Focusrite Clarett 8preX), the standard pre amps are dope, but pair them with a unison enabled plug in and it will rock your world. My room for tracking isn’t that great, but I’ve sent drum tracks I’ve done through the Apollo, and my clients think it sounds like “billions and billions” of dollars worth of equipment in a perfect room. The dsp is more than capable to run all eight unison pres, with compression inserts and tape, plus verb on the aux, before capping out. If you ask me, that’s more room than anyone could ever need for tracking. The only thing I wish I had access to, would be separate buttons for dim and mono, rather than have to choose between one on the function switch, and use the other one in console, but that’s a minor thing. Outside of that, this is an incredible unit, the design is gorgeous, the workflow is quick, and the amount of flexibility on every channel, plus virtual inputs in console is outstanding. Fantastic piece for anyone looking to record drums, produce, or mix just about anything.
G. Johnson
All in!
I have recently gone from having an API, NEVE, an SSL G+, a Studer, ATR and house full of phat classic compressors and outboard effects. I know what all the different tape formulations sound like. Day one of this all Apollo session I was like the dog hearing his masters voice. When you dial in the gear exactly as you would in hardware world [ as in an 1176 does more than just 4 buttons in "smash" ] the response is is very satisfying. I still have a control room full of gear but I just haven't heard the need to plug it in yet. When my ears start lying I"ll let y"all know.
t. appert
Amazing
Does exactly what I was hoping. I'd been using an otari mx 5050 but was growing concerned with keeping it up. Since I've purchased the apollo 8p it has become my main recording rig.
H. Engelke
There's always two sides...
I guess there are always two kinds of persons in a company. The cheaters and the upright ones. Those who proudly create great things and those who want to squeeze money out of customers. UAD beware! It seems your promo sharks are taking over. The facts:
Apollo 8p sounds good.
Works instantly on a mac.
The routing is a nightmare.
Getting all channels to work with pro tools takes ages because of poor documentation or missing presets.
"Dreamstudio promo" is a joke, just a list of shelf warmers.
It is said several times in the promo videos: "multiple units run as one". No, they don't. No way to freely route.
N. Loris
Great converters!
Great converters on this unit! Thanks UAD!
J. Westra
Processing POWER
I can finally do the works I had planned to do with PT-(3 yrs later). I have 600 songs w/lyrics, every genre in music (pop to rock to classic jazz techno and more). My CPU thanks you.
UAD User
APOLLO 8P!!!
PERFECT PIECE OF GEAR!! DONT GET ANY BETTER THAN HAVING 8 PREs!!!!
S. Gough
Cheapest way to an Analog Sound
Bought a pair of these for 16 Unison Pre inputs. The recall-ability allows for a very efficient session setup. Also, the unison pre's sound ridiculously close to the originals at a fraction of the cost. Beats the maintenance costs of having a console. For working out of my place, this was the perfect option.
L. Kenward
Thunderbolt on PC, no problems
I was initially worried about trying to get thunderbolt to work on my pc, but this works like a dream. The unit itself is really well made and well finished, drivers seem solid and the sound quality is noticeably better.
People seem to be complaining about the monitoring and i could see if you need more than 2 headphone mixes this could require a workaround, however for me tracking drums with a bassist or guitarist is absolutely perfect. Dialling in the sound on a channel strip and track what you hear or add it later.
Everything integrates with pro tools nicely, no latency that i can notice.
The main reason I chose the 8p was for the 8 unison preamps, not disappointed they sound really nice though if you have a unison plugin on each one you might not get much more cpu to play with.
D. Bishop
Big Moves
I recently started researching the UA technology after I saw some clients came to my studio and was using the plugins. I was sold out totally on the sound one was able to achieve on the way going in to the DAW. So I went out and bought the 8p, so far so good!!
M. Venli
Poor DSP, poor routing and no AES.
Im dissapointed in this device and i should have tested it before buying it. I was planning to use my twin as a volume control but the 8p Is lacking AES out so i cant use my genelec SAM monitors with the sub (aes only) and the volume control wont woork with the mirror routing option. I dig the pres and the plugins but the sharks wont deliver many plugins before maxing out. Im on the werge of going back to RME