Apollo FireWire

The Apollo has been quite stable and the sound is great. The Mixer interface is the first in it's class that actually makes sense to a musician like me. The ability to include these great plug ins on the input in the signal chain is somewhat revolutionary as it finally feels like I am recording into an analog console.

And if that weren't enough the prospect that this will be my Thunderbolt Audio system soon is better future proofing than I've felt in a while from competing manufacturers.

They also give you vouchers that make purchasing their plug ins less painful.

Apollo is the one for me.

Nice work!

Antonio Sage

Awesome audio interface !!!
really clean preamps and convertors
I rediscovered my synths and my tracks

thanks universal audio :-)

First the unit looks very sexy. The knobs however are cheap and crappy feeling, you'd think UA would put some better quality knobs - even something rubber coated or anodized aluminum would have a nice touch without them costing UA to much extra. Maybe, just maybe, UA will take note of this adjust it and send all the owners some better knobs? Yeah, I doubt that too. Sonically the unit sounds great! The drivers for the Mac so far have been flawless and the 'Console' software is very intuitive and designed extremely well. The mic pre's sound pretty good and on par with other units in this price structure. The DSP for plugin's works very well and when used in the Console software the latency is extremely low for tracking with effects.

I cannot be more pleased with this product. It truly is a game changer for me. I have been a UAD user exclusively for years and I can't think of a better way to record than through UA plugins. I bought it for my home mixing suite but cannot bear to use anything else in my mobile rig. I just sold my other interface and am going to move this one back and forth until I can get another. The Console app is great and has every feature I could want and is so user friendly. My congrats to Universal Audio for making probably the best interface around. If you don't have one already and are thinking about it - just get it ! You won't be disappointed (except for the wait-everybody else wants one too).

In Portuguese: Tudo funciona exactamente como publicitado. É muito bem construida, os drivers são super estáveis e os conversores são ao nível do meu Apogee Rosetta 200. As más notícias são que o nº de plugins que supostamente posso usar é muito menos que os mencionados na "instance chart".
O meu Apollo é o Quad e o número máximo de plugins que posso usar são 57. Parece que o problema é o da ligação Firewire. O meu computador é um Mac 8 core da última geração pelo que não percebo como poderia ser melhor. Outra má notícia é o ruído residual quando usado com external summing e as oito saídas em simultãneo. De qualquer maneira já me habituei e há muitos plugins mais ruidosos.

Fantastic but.......I'm just asking why just a stupid midi connection is missing.....

What I would wish and what I am dreaming......."APOLLO EXPANSION RACK", maybe a thunderbolt unit, blank, no frills, no controls, affordable price, with ads/ebu, madi, midi connections + e.g. other additional 4/8dsp to increase processing capacity, maybe just additional headphones......

Sound quality is stellar.

I already own 2192, I made "bastard comparison"....ok, different character but in terms of clarity Apollo is to me even better and in terms of absolute quality......challenging

I am overall happy of my investment in Apollo

I'm really in love with UAD2 plugins since a long time.. for me this apollo is one of the best audio interface. all you need is here with the UA experience and ingenuity.
thanks!

The Apollo is just what I was looking for. I'm coming from using a Mac Pro Tower with the UAD1 and UAD 2 Duo cards in it. Apogee AD8000 converters and Motu 2408 and 24i. I a simple singer songwriter and didn't like spending so much time on the technical recording aspect. Now, with the Apollo i can re-focus on the music. It was easy to install, hardware and software. The mic pres sound great but at this time I am using an Avalon 737 on my Neumann mic. Love being able to use the UAD plug ins on the front end of the process. i'm planning on getting rid/selling a lot of gear in the near future. The Apollo has replace it all and added to the quality of my sound. Cant wait for the thunderbolt.

Getting rid of my digital mixer and replacing it with Apollo has been great. I have it connected to my 2192 and I have found it enjoyable to bounce out virtual synths through the 2192 and back in again and then add plugins in the Apollo mixer. It reminds me of doing effects in my old 4 track. It's fun and hands on.

The mic pres sound great too. I have a Korby Kat Blue connected to pre 1 and it is awesome. I like having a low cut. I also have a Pacifica pre, but it is so much easier to use the Apollo pre - with the blue 1176 plugin!

I have it installed in a portable rack with the 2192 - so I can take it anywhere with a Macbook Pro do serious recording and mixing.

The only thing I would add is a second quad UAD-2

The only interface that made me change my mind from RME...that said, as an intro, is quite much for this piece of hardware!!

Pre-amps super clean, only 4 (Mic/Line), the other 4 un-amplified ins. Could have been also only line, that would have helped much in many occasions.

Front panel clean, visually simple but effective, i don't really need much more info. Maybe a visual display for the actual Frequency and Resolution.

Software now is the weakest part, i think it is in it's childhood. Very few routing options makes the Console app only useful for live monitoring.

The big part comes when you add to that a UAD-2 inside. That blows away any competition. Plugs are really the best on the market but Analog bundle is very short for the price

Bought the Apollo, and cannot be more pleased! Both traveling and in my studio. Everyone got to have one! :)

Hi,

after using this for a some days now I think this is my favorite piece of equipment. It is a wonderful combination with hardware soundcard and DSP power that I look forward to bringing on the road with a laptop.

I have had some technical problems that I hope will be resolved in the future. The two things that I have found is that there are interrupts in the sound when bouncing to disk from digital performer. This has not happened when only using the PCI-card. Maybe there is problem with having other entities on the FW-bus. The second problem is that other soundcards on the same FW bus stops working when the Apollo is turned on.

But I hope this will be solved with updates to the software. But in general a wonderful piece of equipment.

Purchased this to be my mobile rig and to mix with on my main HD rig.

I love this thing. The UA plugs are amazing and the Apollos console interface is easy and fun to use. The converters are great for the price point.

For my needs it's been a God send. I'm newer to ua plugs and now I'm in love with them.

Very early days but setup has been problem free with an iMac (2011) and Logic 9.
Operation is very straight forward.
Early recordings with 2 x Neumann KM184 of acoustic guitars have greatly impressed.
Depth and clarity from the pre-amps and convertors is beyond what I expected at this level.
New to UAD plug ins but again impressed with the supplied ones, guess I will have to get my credit card out again at some point. Used my 100.00 voucher for Little Labs® IBP Phase Alignment Tool Plug-In which is invaluable to me and works intuitively.

So far very impressed.

Don't know if we get the opportunity to review again at a later date when I have run a greater variety of material through it, if we do I will.

Cheers,
Terry

OUTSTANDING !!!!!

I've managed 5 of NYC's top recording studios, and there is no doubt, this is the best I/O I've used. The convertors are stellar, along the quality of the Apogee Symphony & the Avid HD I/O........... You guys really did your homework.

I've had the unit for 1 week and every time I work I'm really impressed. There is no need for any Apogee Ensemble's or RME's. You'd be crazy to buy anything else.

The Sound Quality wasn't overlooked in the design process, just because it came with lots of other features to make it attractive.

The UA Plugins are stellar, and to have the power of a Quad UAD2 is amazing.

THANK YOU UA, JOB WELL DONE !!! (Please bring Nigel to UAD2)

Glenn Swan, Director, Premier Studios New York

the apollo quad card is the best card ever build !! just "Monstruoso" !!
the best product since 10 years ... thank you universal for your work and support

I use the Apollo Quad now for two weeks and I must say, this is the best recording tool I ever used. Switching from an Apogee Ensemble, I think the converters are even better on the Apollo. The plugins are absolutely amazing, the new 1176's make it hard for me to choose which one to use. The drivers are flawless, the Console is working great, just what I was looking for.
One thing I don't like is the ease of buying new plugins, which makes it so hard to resist!!! I hope the prices are dropping a little in future...

The amount of money that it would take to make a rig for live sound or a studio would be 1000% more then what you can get out of this KILLER interface by Universal Audio. Never did I think that recording with 5 different 1176's or having Harrison, SSL and Neve all on tracks being heard by the audience and print the sounds to my DAW! I do have to say that this unit is a game changer for the music world, world class emulations of all the gear that has been used for years. UA Cheers to you!

Just got this thing up and running, love the crisp sound. The monitoring is amazing as well with the processors! The interface software has a very easy learning curve and great integration into pro tools. I would recommend this for any studio big or small.

The sound quality of this unit is great. But the digital mixer is poorly designed and bug-ridden. Mixing elements (volume, mute, link) would stop working on random channels without an error message for no apparent reason. The DSP module failed almost constantly. The mixer is 'form over function'. Very poor functionality (unacceptably so) when compared to competitors. Monitoring through plug-ins is not useful if you can't set up flexible routing options for real world tracking.

The Apollo simply wasn't fit for purpose. This is the second Universal Audio product that I have returned (the other being a Solo610 which was fried from the get-go).