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Post by doom3crazy on Sept 22, 2018 20:31:05 GMT -6
I am curious with these new rack style interfaces if they're going to be announcing some smaller apollo twin-like interfaces soon.....
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Post by bigbone on Sept 22, 2018 20:36:22 GMT -6
Agreed. I’m quite convinced that converters are no different in that you should listen to their sonic signature and get what suits your tastes and maybe even the desired sound. In the aforementioned BF8 vs Apogee Element 88 test, we found that for a modern heavy metal track, we easily preferred the darker AD of the Apollo, even though for everything else we tried the Element won every time. The Apogee Element 88 is surprising good all the way.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2018 23:04:10 GMT -6
I'll repeat my other findings here for good will:
Cool, so it seems Logic is generally around 0.2ms out compared to Oblique RTL tester.. I switched off input latency and went to town finding the lay of the latency land because there's much more to performance than RTL's.
First thing to become abundantly clear, the less I use Kontakt the less chance I have of running into issues. @96khz 32 samples I was getting 1.8ms, although with only six instances of Kontakt I was in pop / crackle city. I kept an eye on the CPU monitor and on a 2018 MBP 2.6Ghz it was barely peaking over 10% utilisation, so I suppose it's a little disappointing in comparison with RME especially over Thunderbolt 3 but in terms of practical every day use not the end of the world.
Another interesting little test, I removed Kontakt and spun up 20 tracks of standard audio running loops I found in the apple library, I ran 40 plugs (NI / ST's VC-2A and 1176 equiv) and it seemed fine until I added TDR limiter (which isn't a "real-time" plugin really)..
What's even more interesting is at 96/64 samples (2.6ms RTL) it didn't help all that much, I'd still be getting the odd glitches / crackles. You have to take the console latency into account when tracking at 44.1Khz but I did try it with 32 samples and the RTL was (if I can remember properly) around 4.2(ish) ms? Although it was no better quality wise than 96/64.
The home run for me was 96Khz / 128 samples, I got an RTL of 3.8ms and I ran an entire session with 10 instances of Kontakt / 35 audio tracks (with a little over 85 plugins) and a FULL mastering chain. You could even overdub with amp sims at that latency, whilst the UAD "eco-system" is cool and all it's nice to know you can use the interface for it's designated purpose.
Nothing to complain about here.
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Post by Quint on Sept 24, 2018 18:13:55 GMT -6
Well this would be purely for HP monitoring by the band. It's what the Motu Monitor 8 is designed for. It's basically just a rack mount digital mixer that readily interfaces with other Motu interfaces. It can also be used standalone though by using it's analog inputs. Given that the Monitor 8 would be just for HP mixes for the band, any quality loss from the second round of conversion or inferior specs on the Motu isn't really a big deal. My only real concern in this scenario is total latency, hence my questions about latency. The 8 flex routing outputs on the Apollo plus mults from my patchbay should get me whatever analog channels I need to feed the Monitor 8. So the Apollo would be for getting into and out of the daw and feeding the Motu. The Motu would be just for allowing the band to control their own HP mixes. I just need to make sure that the total latency from going through the Apollo AND Motu conversion process doesn't create too much latency or tbat I'm not overlooking something else. Hmm, quite the predicament actually.. You'd be absolutely fine if you can feed the HW monitoring console mix to the MOTU 8 via something like ADAT (it's not difficult either as just an output) there would be minimal latency too, issue is the X16 doesn't have ADAT and I've never used the Apollo console. I could look into it tomorrow though if you'd like? (As I have the Apollo X6 + Motu 1248). Like John said you could just go MOTU with AVB, you can even just CAT5 two interfaces back to back. In terms of need It's worth you testing that path, see if you can demo an MOTU 16A again the conversion is great and it's flexible at least. Did you ever check out the total latency in this scenario?
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Post by Quint on Sept 25, 2018 9:18:54 GMT -6
So I just heard back from Motu and they were able to point me to the location on their website where it stated that the internal input to output latency of the various AVB units is only 14 samples (0.15ms @ 96k). So that's basically nothing.
That's great news on the idea of running the analog outputs of the x16 into the analog inputs of the Motu Monitor 8. That's a total of only 1.25ms @ 96k from AD on the x16 to DA on the Monitor 8.
It does beg the question of why the same trip through the Apollo is so much longer (106 samples vs 14)?
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Post by Quint on Sept 27, 2018 13:27:22 GMT -6
Well I went ahead and bought a x16. It should be arriving next week. I look forward to seeing what it can do.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 27, 2018 13:30:32 GMT -6
Did you guys see that new Presonus Quantum 4848... pretty intriguing
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 27, 2018 13:41:41 GMT -6
Well I went ahead and bought a x16. It should be arriving next week. I look forward to seeing what it can do. Congrats! What do you currently use? I’m on a 16mkii and I’d lovevto know how the two compare sonically.
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Post by Quint on Sept 27, 2018 13:49:01 GMT -6
Well I went ahead and bought a x16. It should be arriving next week. I look forward to seeing what it can do. Congrats! What do you currently use? I’m on a 16mkii and I’d lovevto know how the two compare sonically. I was on an Apollo 16 Silver, clocked to a 2192. The Apollo also had upgraded opamps. I'm looking forward to giving the x16 a spin. It will be a bit before I really get to play with it though, as I'm still trying to wrap up a rebuild/remodel of my studio.
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Post by jtc111 on Sept 27, 2018 14:02:42 GMT -6
Well I went ahead and bought a x16. It should be arriving next week. I look forward to seeing what it can do. I'm looking forward to hearing about this. If I'm going to upgrade from my Apollo Firewire it's going to be to the X16.
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 27, 2018 14:14:58 GMT -6
That’s two gens:, 2 converter upgrades, a new fpga and internal design, clock , 6 sharcs etc, can’t imagine you wouldn’t be pleased !
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Post by Quint on Sept 27, 2018 15:20:49 GMT -6
Did you guys see that new Presonus Quantum 4848... pretty intriguing That's a LOT of i/o for not a lot of money. If I was looking to record and send a bunch of channels out to a console for cheap money, I would definitely be giving the 4848 a look. I also like how it is remote controllable by a mobile device. UA, are you seeing this? wink wink.....
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Post by guitfiddler on Sept 27, 2018 16:59:36 GMT -6
Well I went ahead and bought a x16. It should be arriving next week. I look forward to seeing what it can do. Cant wait to hear your analysis
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Post by Quint on Sept 27, 2018 17:01:46 GMT -6
Well I went ahead and bought a x16. It should be arriving next week. I look forward to seeing what it can do. Cant wait to hear your analysis Well, like I said, it's going to be a bit before I really get to play with it properly due to my current studio build going on. So there will likely be other x16 owners who will beat me to that.
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Post by Quint on Sept 28, 2018 16:32:15 GMT -6
John,
Have you tinkered around any with the new +24dBu setting? I've been curious about this feature and how much difference it might make.
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 28, 2018 16:34:05 GMT -6
Well isn’t it really for level matching with a real console ?
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Post by Quint on Sept 28, 2018 16:41:34 GMT -6
Well isn’t it really for level matching with a real console ? Well that and just outboard gear in general. I have a console and a good deal of outboard gear, so that feature piqued my interest, at least in theory, but I was curious what real world difference it might provide over other interfaces or what the practical difference would be between using the +24 setting on the x16 and just adjusting the gain on some other interface? I get that the +24 feature technically gives you more headroom on the Apollo, but there are theoretical improvements and then there is practical use. Do any other converters/interfaces have this feature? What about the Symphony?
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 28, 2018 16:44:55 GMT -6
Ya, I think it’s the sort of gain staging set and forget idea: right?
And if the x16 specs are true you want all the signal you got hitting those converters!
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Post by Quint on Sept 28, 2018 16:57:06 GMT -6
Ya, I think it’s the sort of gain staging set and forget idea: right? And if the x16 specs are true you want all the signal you got hitting those converters! I would agree. I'm not sure why I would ever NOT use that setting since I will have it available on all channels. That begs the question though, why wouldn't converters/interfaces all just be made with that much headroom in the first place, and in what scenario would you NOT want that extra headroom? I also haven't seen if this is a global feature on the Apollo or if you can toggle this on and off on a per channel basis.
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 28, 2018 17:15:19 GMT -6
Bet it’s global?
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Post by Quint on Sept 28, 2018 17:26:42 GMT -6
I'm thinking so too. So I guess the incorporation of these features is kind of like a Console 2.1? I'm still cautiously optimistic that the new FPGA will allow further improvements for a future Console 3.0 down the road.
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Post by kcatthedog on Sept 28, 2018 18:04:54 GMT -6
Drew has been asked a few questions about the possible development implications of the new fpga, but he hasn’t taken the bait , although he has said things like not at this time or not able to talk about now! Given UA’s strict no pre announcement policies, I nonetheless found Drew’s choice of words interesting. I honestly think now is a really good time to be in UA interfaces as I think there is lots more OS and software tweaks to come.
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Post by Quint on Sept 28, 2018 18:17:12 GMT -6
Drew has been asked a few questions about the possible development implications of the new fpga, but he hasn’t taken the bait , although he has said things like not at this time or not able to talk about now! Given UA’s strict no pre announcement policies, I nonetheless found Drew’s choice of words interesting. I honestly think now is a really good time to be in UA interfaces as I think there is lots more OS and software tweaks to come. I'm hoping so too. The relatively inflexible routing has been my biggest complaint about the Apollos for a while now. I'm hoping the new FPGA will allow improvements in that regard. One would like to assume that the new FPGA wasn't chosen to provide just enough throughput and actually does have some leftover headroom to accommodate future routing upgrades to Console. I guess we'll see. Regardless, the new conversion quality does have me really excited. Assuming that these new converters live up to the specs and preliminary reports, I'm thinking/hoping that this will be an interface I use for the next 5-10 years. I really want to stop thinking about conversion. You're not thinking about making a switch to the Apollo X from your Symphony are you? Haha
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Post by Guitar on Sept 28, 2018 18:20:21 GMT -6
I guess you mean the new 6X SHARC chips. UA has not moved to FPGA. It's all DSP, yeah.
EDIT: this is all very much above my head, I might add.
I think what apollo X has offered is basically more of the same as what it had before.
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Post by Quint on Sept 28, 2018 18:24:56 GMT -6
I guess you mean the new 6X SHARC chips. UA has not moved to FPGA. It's all DSP, yeah. EDIT: this is all very much above my head, I might add. I think what apollo X has offered is basically more of the same as what it had before. No, I mean FPGA. I'm just talking about the routing that takes place within the FPGA and not the DSP which takes place on the Sharcs.
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