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Post by notneeson on May 3, 2022 10:54:04 GMT -6
First impressions of Desktop build and workflow are good. I’ll try to load a comparison file later: same mikes and guitar , into A desktop pre or my Daking and Aurora. Big price differential and first impression of Desktop playback by itself was favourable. I think it’s playback sounds very good, but I think the input linearity and detail quite different, ie, noticeably less of both. So, my first impression is that the desktop is good value for its price, but, you get what you pay for. I'm not so sure about the math, the Apogee is roughly half the cost of an 8 channel Aurora N, but a quarter of the channels. Shouldn't the Apogee be twice as good?
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Post by kcatthedog on May 3, 2022 12:03:00 GMT -6
$4500 vs $1495 retail: my Daking pre/Aurora N vs the Desktop.
I think the Desktop sounds good. I was seriously thinking about selling my better gear to free up so dough, but now doubt I will keep the Desktop.
I’ll work with it more and get to know it better and decide later.
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Post by din on May 3, 2022 13:49:34 GMT -6
The Apogee Quartet seems like a much better value to me.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 3, 2022 15:26:43 GMT -6
I was just curious about the desktop.
I knew I preferred real outboard pres and so far, have liked the Aurora N best of the different interfaces I have had, but wanted to try the desktop, just to see/hear first hand.
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2022 16:22:43 GMT -6
First impressions of Desktop build and workflow are good. I’ll try to load a comparison file later: same mikes and guitar , into A desktop pre or my Daking and Aurora. Big price differential and first impression of Desktop playback by itself was favourable. I think it’s playback sounds very good, but I think the input linearity and detail quite different, ie, noticeably less of both. So, my first impression is that the desktop is good value for its price, but, you get what you pay for. Apogee vs Lynx house sound. I like both a lot. Lynx has a slight bass boost, mud cut, and deadened treble ime. Apogee has warmth, width, shelved high end a bit, and a sheen but all the detail is there. Lynx loses stereo details imo. RME, which I'm not a fan of for the sound, grains the highs, deadens the low mids, and shrinks the image a ton. In contrast to these, Prism and Crane Song house sounds seem to ADD detail. Definitely some kind of airiness to the sound that's just not there on the source. I felt Crane Song was almost unnaturally good. Ever thought of the opposite approach in that your recording has that mud and isn't that detailed? A lot of commercial mixes sound spotless on Apogee. Others do not. Apogee, Dangerous, MOTU, Lavry, Burl show that mud in full glory or should I say gory while RME and Lynx and UAD tell you that you don't have have to cut it! But the moment you play it back on a speaker that accentuates the mud that is already there... you're screwed. It's like mixing on a monitor that doesn't show you the low mids but not nearly as bad as the poor monitor. It's all preference above a certain level but it's also about what your gear does and makes you do and that must always be kept in mind. None of these are perfect. Otherwise we would not try a lot of them!
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2022 16:24:55 GMT -6
The Apogee Quartet seems like a much better value to me. Only if you do not like detail and want a discontinued product. The Quarter, Elements, and Ensemble are gone! There are only the Duet 3, Symphony Desktop, and Symphony II. I'm guessing a new 8 channel interface and Symphony III with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 are coming.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 3, 2022 16:43:31 GMT -6
Perhaps people are misunderstanding that my little test this morning , consisted of playing the same simple acoustic part, once using my Daking pres and my Aurora, the second time, using the desktop using its pres, no plugs and it’s converters.
I slightly level matched the wave file levels and then just placed the desktop files behind the Aurora files and listened.
Anyway sound preferences are very personal: we’ll all use the gear we prefer.
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Post by the other mark williams on May 3, 2022 18:22:18 GMT -6
Perhaps people are misunderstanding that my little test this morning , consisted of playing the same simple acoustic part, once using my Daking pres and my Aurora, the second time, using the desktop using its pres, no plugs and it’s converters. I slightly level matched the wave file levels and then just placed the desktop files behind the Aurora files and listened. Anyway sound preferences are very personal: we’ll all use the gear we prefer. Matt, you should do another test back-to-back using the same pres for both, just so you can get a better sense of what the Apogee vs. the Lynx is bringing to the table. That would be interesting.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 3, 2022 18:38:42 GMT -6
I understand , but my sales plan , to maximize $, would include selling the Daking, so, at first, I was hoping the apogee pres would really impress me.
I’ll do another recording using the Daking pre with the Desktop and see.
As I mostly single and stereo track , I am mostly not using the other 6 channels of my Aurora.
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Post by notneeson on May 3, 2022 19:49:54 GMT -6
$4500 vs $1495 retail: my Daking pre/Aurora N vs the Desktop. I think the Desktop sounds good. I was seriously thinking about selling my better gear to free up so dough, but now doubt I will keep the Desktop. I’ll work with it more and get to know it better and decide later. Ah well, I would never sell a real preamp like that. Converters are much less precious, to me.
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Post by Martin John Butler on May 3, 2022 22:28:05 GMT -6
Keep the Daking, it sounds killer. With one great preamp, most any interface sounds pretty good.
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2022 0:45:11 GMT -6
I understand , but my sales plan , to maximize $, would include selling the Daking, so, at first, I was hoping the apogee pres would really impress me. I’ll do another recording using the Daking pre with the Desktop and see. As I mostly single and stereo track , I am mostly not using the other 6 channels of my Aurora. The Apogee pres are really good in practice vs other interface pres because with soft limit on, you can't clip everything and make them sound like shit. Daking is just cooler, less warmth, and higher headroom. They are not the cleanest but unlike many clean pres, they do not lie. They do not have the TI/Burr Brown sound all over them like Apogee either. If you like the Lynx sound, why not just sell or trade the Aurora (N) for a Hilo if you're not using the other channels as hardware inserts for your cool stuff?
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Post by kcatthedog on May 4, 2022 4:38:35 GMT -6
All good, the only reason I am considering this is to pay a very large tax bill. I was wondering how good downsizing the gear might be.
I hsve been lucky enough to have had a variety of interfaces, pres etc, and ended up with the Aurora and Daking combo and think it sounds great.
If money was no object, I like to try a Grace and Hardy m1 pre for really clean to compliment the Daking.
I am recording a guitar part for a friend today, so will try the Daking desktop combo and see.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 4, 2022 6:33:17 GMT -6
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2022 6:38:04 GMT -6
That's a nice sounding guitar chief.. I played the track on my MBP speakers not expecting to hear much difference but the middle one really stood out, rather interested in what that was.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 4, 2022 7:03:51 GMT -6
Agreed about the guitar: a nice larrivee, mahogany , spruce top, 1 week old strings and pick, wa84 and sa67. I’ll let people listen a bit for fun: then Id !
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Post by indiehouse on May 4, 2022 7:15:10 GMT -6
First impressions of Desktop build and workflow are good. I’ll try to load a comparison file later: same mikes and guitar , into A desktop pre or my Daking and Aurora. Big price differential and first impression of Desktop playback by itself was favourable. I think it’s playback sounds very good, but I think the input linearity and detail quite different, ie, noticeably less of both. So, my first impression is that the desktop is good value for its price, but, you get what you pay for. Apogee vs Lynx house sound. I like both a lot. Lynx has a slight bass boost, mud cut, and deadened treble ime. Apogee has warmth, width, shelved high end a bit, and a sheen but all the detail is there. Lynx loses stereo details imo. RME, which I'm not a fan of for the sound, grains the highs, deadens the low mids, and shrinks the image a ton. In contrast to these, Prism and Crane Song house sounds seem to ADD detail. Definitely some kind of airiness to the sound that's just not there on the source. I felt Crane Song was almost unnaturally good. Ever thought of the opposite approach in that your recording has that mud and isn't that detailed? A lot of commercial mixes sound spotless on Apogee. Others do not. Apogee, Dangerous, MOTU, Lavry, Burl show that mud in full glory or should I say gory while RME and Lynx and UAD tell you that you don't have have to cut it! But the moment you play it back on a speaker that accentuates the mud that is already there... you're screwed. It's like mixing on a monitor that doesn't show you the low mids but not nearly as bad as the poor monitor. It's all preference above a certain level but it's also about what your gear does and makes you do and that must always be kept in mind. None of these are perfect. Otherwise we would not try a lot of them! Hey, genuine question for you. How do you know? I read a lot of your posts, and they really come across as detailed informed opinions of gear. But I am genuinely curious as to your experience with these units as to have such a detailed description of them?
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Post by ragan on May 4, 2022 7:30:34 GMT -6
I dig the guitar and sound, but the differences we're hearing here are a lot more than conversion. The stereo images changes a lot on the middle clip and on the third clip it's being picked more towards the bridge. There is also some music playing in the background of the third clip, slightly skewed towards the right channel. The stereo image changing around is almost certainly your sitting/strumming position, since you've got two mics up. Interesting and fun to hear but if the goal is to compare signal chains, I don't think we can really do that. It's really hard with different takes anyway, but with shifting positioning and picking, it's impossible. To compare converters with guitar, I'd track some clean DI electric and then reamp it through the different chains. That way the take and the distance to mics can stay exactly the same.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 4, 2022 7:36:52 GMT -6
Agreed, was just keeping it informal!
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Post by jcoutu1 on May 4, 2022 7:50:40 GMT -6
Agreed, was just keeping it informal! How's the work flow with the symphony? Is the integration with the plugin control cool (so you don't need to use the separate software to manage cues)? Any issues using it?
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Post by Guitar on May 4, 2022 7:59:20 GMT -6
Nice recording of arms and shirt and stomach rubbing all over the guitar top and back LOL!!! Sounds like the first clip is compressed a lot and has the transformer gear, the last clip maybe the clean IC preamp, just a guess.
Also, it MUST BE SAID, that if you're doing a sighted listen, with the pre-conception, mental formation, that the "Lynx is way more expensive" than the Symphony (I agree with notneeson on this one,) guess what: that's what you're going to hear, when you "listen" to the sounds. This is not foo-foo, this is actually how the ear/mind consciousness combination operates.
I'll tell you what I would do. Ignore the Lynx for about a week. Just use the Symphony all day. Listen to music on the DAC for fun (most important!!), record a couple things, forget what you're listening to. After a few days, after the shock of price/change has faded, you'll have a "real" judgement. Do your ears hurt from this thing? Or is it way better than you thought?
Anyway there's my two potatoes on the dance floor.
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Post by ragan on May 4, 2022 8:10:29 GMT -6
And, as has been pointed out, the Symphony is more expensive than the Lynx anyway.
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Post by Guitar on May 4, 2022 8:41:06 GMT -6
And, as has been pointed out, the Symphony is more expensive than the Lynx anyway. Another way to say it is, "people hear what they want to hear." The facts and opinions will be adjusted to suit the desired result/expeirience, even if they're not "literally" true. This is not a knock on any one person, just how things often seem to work.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 4, 2022 9:20:06 GMT -6
Remember this is the apogee desktop not the symphony mkii, same converters but different chip and chassis and psu too, I would think.
I like the desktop da, but I also listen back to a recording done with the Aurora but then playback through it and then the desktop.
I wasn’t trying to do a pristine recording, just wanted to hear the two interfaces , recognizing the inconsistency of the pres. When I had my symphony mkii I thought about buying its 4 pre module which includes converters but held off, so was interested to hear the apogee pre.
Anyway:
1 is Daking, Aurora n 2 is Apogee desktop 3 Daking and apogee
I think they all sound good.
Jesse, I had trouble getting the plug in authentication to work, it’s sorted now, but I haven’t tried them , other then opening the channel strip to have a look at it. You touch the screen and use the rotary control for adjustment, works fine, very immediate.
I’ll play around more with that and let you know.
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Post by kcatthedog on May 4, 2022 9:24:04 GMT -6
If you were doing a head to head Lynx to apogee 2 channel battle of the titans, think you’d need to use the apogee se 2x6 module as that is its mastering grade box or advertised that way.
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