Audio Interfaces for Mac Studio

[jtkiley]

1. Yup, sure does! You can choose between having the system volume control affect the main output or a specific headphone output.

2. No strange issues in Zoom or Discord specifically, but see below...

3. Haven't used the optical outs yet. I use a pair of Output Frontiers with a Presonus T10 sub. I'm trying to find a good solution to add another 4 channels over ADAT / SMUX in and out, probably will end up with a Focusrite Clarett OctoPre.

4. I think it's really useful, I rarely open Apogee Control and I use the touchscreen instead most of the time.


Generally, I really like it. It replaced a Presonus Clarett 4Pre (with a 2-day detour trying out an Apogee Duet) and I feel like the sound improvement was drastic. Before the Presonus I had a UAD Apollo X4, and an 8P before that, but I went away from the UAD platform after getting frustrated about how much time it took for them to support new OS' and how slow they were at getting Apple Silicon support, so I wanted to get something that was class complaint. It also has onboard DSP for some mic preamp, compressor and EQ emulations that sound really good (and they work on the optical ins now, too.) The control plugin is good, too, but the direct integration with Logic like the Ensemble has isn't out yet.

All that said, it has one big bug. There's an ApogeeGlue process that seems to have a runaway, and the longer you have it up the more CPU % it consumes, until it craps out - which for me takes about 36hrs. When it does things that try to use audio get very weird and freezy, the system volume control starts to lag, and eventually it stops being able to pass audio altogether. To fix it you need to restart the Symphony, and if you do that while it's crapped out it'll freeze your whole system for about five minutes. There are multiple reports of the same on GearSpace, and it seems like the people with Apple Silicon Macs generally can resolve it by re-arranging how things are plugged in to get the Symphony on a dedicated USB bus. On my Intel iMac the controller puts devices on buses dynamically, and it won't go on a bus by itself. Right now I'm just hoping when I get my Mac Studio the issue doesn't follow me.

Apogee's aware of the CPU runaway issue with ApogeeGlue but haven't connected it to the freezing, and are still in the "we need engineering to look at it" stage. I've sent them a bunch of process dumps, logs, etc. and I'm staying on them as much as I can without feeling like I'm being annoying. I'm sure they'll fix it eventually, but no idea how long it'll be.

Huge thanks for a detailed reply!

I'm kind of in the same place with UAD. I'm not an audio person or a heavy plugin user (one channel strip, really). I just need to get my live spoken audio sounding good, and I want to monitor with the effects on, so I know exactly what's going out to people paying to hear me. I think it's not an accident that Apple keynotes and promo materials consistently show Apogee gear, and UADs software is a big part of that.

I'm going to keep an eye on this while figuring out what else I want to do. I've actually considered the Duet 3 for what I do, since the channel strip is probably fine for me (no gate, but I think I can live without it on a dynamic mic). Though, I'm not sure how they made such an ugly dock for a nice-looking device, and the Symphony has optical out that I think can be adapted easily to feed AES to some Genelecs (if I got 8330s).

Follow up question: does sleep on the Mac work with Symphony Desktop (and not require power cycling the interface after wake)?

Thanks again!

 

[deuce sluice]

I don't generally put my iMac to sleep, but I just tried it now and it seemed fine.

As dumb as it sounds, I switched from my Clarett 4Pre (which was totally bombproof) to the Duet because I have all of my stuff on a very small desk, and the front-facing mic inputs impacted my mousing area whenever I had something plugged in - but the Duet plus the dock was even worse! It sounded great, drastically better than the Focusrite, but was just too physically awkward. The Duet itself has a nice anti-slip bottom and the dock lifts all of it off of contact with your desk and it slides around! But I was so amazed by the sound improvement and Apogee Control I just said F it at that point and got the Symphony.

(Does UAD have a standalone gate yet? That was something I always wanted them to come out with...)

 

[aurora_sect]

I don't generally put my iMac to sleep, but I just tried it now and it seemed fine.

As dumb as it sounds, I switched from my Clarett 4Pre (which was totally bombproof) to the Duet because I have all of my stuff on a very small desk, and the front-facing mic inputs impacted my mousing area whenever I had something plugged in - but the Duet plus the dock was even worse! It sounded great, drastically better than the Focusrite, but was just too physically awkward. The Duet itself has a nice anti-slip bottom and the dock lifts all of it off of contact with your desk and it slides around! But I was so amazed by the sound improvement and Apogee Control I just said F it at that point and got the Symphony.

(Does UAD have a standalone gate yet? That was something I always wanted them to come out with...)

I used a Duet 2 for about ten years, it was great! I never cared for the breakout cable etc. but mostly was able to tuck it away and forget it. I switched to a UAD Apollo rack because I use a lot of their plugs, knew my UAD Satellites wouldn't be compatible with Mac silicon and I wanted to incorporate some outboard into my mix setup and thus needed more i/o from an interface.

I think then new UAD Volt interfaces just have one or two preamp/comp plugins baked in but not entire processors. They're relatively inexpensive and assume your Symphony's converters are way higher spec'd.

I love UAD plugins but I think the dongle model is getting especially old in 2022. I'm in deep but not sure I would adopt if I were starting fresh with all the fantastic native plugins available now.

 

[slainbabyyc]

Huge thanks for a detailed reply!

I'm kind of in the same place with UAD. I'm not an audio person or a heavy plugin user (one channel strip, really). I just need to get my live spoken audio sounding good, and I want to monitor with the effects on, so I know exactly what's going out to people paying to hear me. I think it's not an accident that Apple keynotes and promo materials consistently show Apogee gear, and UADs software is a big part of that.

I'm going to keep an eye on this while figuring out what else I want to do. I've actually considered the Duet 3 for what I do, since the channel strip is probably fine for me (no gate, but I think I can live without it on a dynamic mic). Though, I'm not sure how they made such an ugly dock for a nice-looking device, and the Symphony has optical out that I think can be adapted easily to feed AES to some Genelecs (if I got 8330s).

Follow up question: does sleep on the Mac work with Symphony Desktop (and not require power cycling the interface after wake)?

Thanks again!

i wouldn't use the optical to xlr adapters to feed genelecs, they might screw with the clock

 

[jtkiley]

I don't generally put my iMac to sleep, but I just tried it now and it seemed fine.

As dumb as it sounds, I switched from my Clarett 4Pre (which was totally bombproof) to the Duet because I have all of my stuff on a very small desk, and the front-facing mic inputs impacted my mousing area whenever I had something plugged in - but the Duet plus the dock was even worse! It sounded great, drastically better than the Focusrite, but was just too physically awkward. The Duet itself has a nice anti-slip bottom and the dock lifts all of it off of contact with your desk and it slides around! But I was so amazed by the sound improvement and Apogee Control I just said F it at that point and got the Symphony.

(Does UAD have a standalone gate yet? That was something I always wanted them to come out with...)

I think I'm about 90 percent of the way to talking myself into getting the Duet 3 and the dock. Does it not have the same software issue with the runaway ApogeeGlue?

I'm not sure about the standalone gate. I've been using the API Vision channel strip plugin which has a gate built in (and compressor/eq). So that's the only thing I think I'd lose on the processing front (and the flexibility of getting whatever plugin I want, but I don't actually do that).

 

[hugodrax]

I used a Duet 2 for about ten years, it was great! I never cared for the breakout cable etc. but mostly was able to tuck it away and forget it. I switched to a UAD Apollo rack because I use a lot of their plugs, knew my UAD Satellites wouldn't be compatible with Mac silicon and I wanted to incorporate some outboard into my mix setup and thus needed more i/o from an interface.

I think then new UAD Volt interfaces just have one or two preamp/comp plugins baked in but not entire processors. They're relatively inexpensive and assume your Symphony's converters are way higher spec'd.

I love UAD plugins but I think the dongle model is getting especially old in 2022. I'm in deep but not sure I would adopt if I were starting fresh with all the fantastic native plugins available now.

UAD interface and plugins make no sense if you are working in the box. I make heavy use of UAD Apollo X racks because I track live with them, replaced a lot of outboard equipment. This is where they shine. Nice to be able to recall entire setups in one swoop etc. not messing with cables, chasing down ground loops,noise issues etc.

UAD sells quite a bit to Studios for this reason.

 

[jtkiley]

UAD interface and plugins make no sense if you are working in the box. I make heavy use of UAD Apollo X racks because I track live with them, replaced a lot of outboard equipment. This is where they shine. Nice to be able to recall entire setups in one swoop etc. not messing with cables, chasing down ground loops,noise issues etc.

UAD sells quite a bit to Studios for this reason.

My main use case is processing live audio for workshops over Zoom, and I want to monitor what's going out, so that's why I went with UAD.

But, there are more options now than there were two years ago. Since I just use a channel strip, something like the Duet 3 can do almost everything I'm doing now, without all of the UAD Mac friction (they're making progress, like the big Apple Silicon update, but things like system volume control integration and issues with sleep are still problems). At a much lower price point, the Presonus io24 has all of the channel strip stuff I do and Apple Silicon support.

 

[aurora_sect]

FWIW there are no apparent issues with my Apollo interface when my Mac falls asleep. Back in the day my iMac would crash on waking if my Satellites were running, or if I shut them off while the computer was on. I'm running in Rosetta right now but everything is working very nicely. That said, with UAD adopting a subscription model last week I feel like they continue making poor business model choices and honestly, if I were not already in deep with them I might steer clear and stick with native plugins like Soundtoys, iZotope, and maybe explore Fabfilter which looks very appealing. And to come full circle and give credit where its due, there are several UAD plugins that have become essential to me over the years, and at least now I have my dongle built into a very nice interface. But if you aren't using UAD plugs and outboard and two inputs are enough, I think the Apogee Duet is an exceptional choice and great value.

 

[enricoclaudio]

My RME Fireface UCX-II works without a single glitch with my Mac Studio. However, I had to change the Startup Disk security policy from Full Security to Reduced Security allowing Kernel extensions from identified developers so RME software could get installed. After that, everything is working fine!!

 

[quynhtrang]

I used to have an Firewire Apogee Duet that I used as a DAC. I've had many DACs including some far expensive ones and the sound quality of the Duet was unmatched by any of them. I had it running Adam A5 studio monitors with a Sub7 as well as a Burson HA-160 headphone amp driving Sennheiser HD-600. I could tell the difference between Apple Lossless and AAC 256 with the headphone setup. The sound with both set ups was absolutely stunning.

I travel far lighter these days but picked up an Apogee Duet 2 USB recently. No longer have any audio stuff apart from Phillips SHP9500 headphones and another pair of Adam A5 that I never use out of consideration for my neighbours. It works well with my 2019 iMac and 2020 MacBook Air but I had to download the Apogee Control 2 software and restart for it to be recognised.

It seems to sound as good as the Firewire Duet.

 

[haralds]

I have an Arturia miniFuse 2 on my Studio for driving audio monitors, additional midi out, and input from synths.
I have a miniFuse 4 and 2 on my older Mac Pro in my study.
I own several keyboards and the microFreak & miniFreak from Arturia and I am happy with their long-term support with updates, feature sets, sound, and value for the money.