Desktop Audio Interface - UAD Apollo or something else?

[Sascha Franck]

If you are in Europe, the RME stuff is much more affordable.

Well, I planned on a 2nd hand first generation Babyface (they're quite affordable and still very, very decent, including years of driver support to come), but then I learned their Hi-Z input was only at 430kOhm. That ruled it out as I need to be able to use it just on its own on the road.
The Babyface Pro FS however is almost 4 times as much as the Motu M2 I bought. Might still be my next interface.

 

[Jarick]

I got a < $20 SPDIF to ADAT converter off Amazon to be able to run the Axe 3 in digitally. Was shocked to see it worked immediately without any issues at all. Easy to adjust the levels in console too.

 

[Jarick]

Fun use of the Apollo Twin - I listen to some podcasts that are not well produced. So I threw an LA-2A on my virtual audio bus and now I can get nice steady levels!

 

[Jarick]

Well the UAD Apollo stopped working yesterday. Possibly a bad Thunderbolt cable, because I was getting some weird digital noise when I used the same cable to connect my MOTU M4. Using a regular cable with the MOTU everything's working fine.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Thunderbolt cables can be very fussy, always worth having high quality ones and to follow the specifications for maximum lengths etc. Hopefully its an easy fix.

 

[Jarick]

Thunderbolt cables can be very fussy, always worth having high quality ones and to follow the specifications for maximum lengths etc. Hopefully its an easy fix.

If it's a bad cable I'm going to be annoyed...new cable from last fall that cost about $50.

Honestly I'm having second thoughts on the UAD in general...there's like 10-15 GB of space that the UAD stuff is taking up that I'm not using much.

 

[Jarick]

I'm experimenting with going back to the Motu M4 for a few reasons:

• Apollo goes to sleep with the computer meaning I constantly have to keep my computer awake to listen to audio coming from it (including playing guitar through a modeler)
• I've had pretty regular instances of the Apollo losing its connection after going to sleep and requiring a restart of the interface and/or computer
• I really miss the direct input vs computer mix knob to quickly adjust levels between modeler and computer
• UAD software takes up over 10GB of space on my computer (I only have 256GB on my Mac and nearly half of it is system files)
• UAD software takes up 1-1.5GB of RAM just to run in the background (I only have 8GB on my Mac)

For now I just shut down all the virtual software running in the background and using the MOTU instead. It's will say the analog volume knob does have more granularity than the digital knob of the UAD which is nice. The headphone amp is nowhere near as powerful which is interesting, I have to run it over halfway up where the UAD I only run it on about 1/4 volume on top of an internal volume pad. Generally the sound is a bit less crisp to my ears for both as well.

It's weird that modern interfaces have basically eliminated the direct blend knob. The only ones that have it are the MOTU M-series, the SSL 2/2+, and Audient ID4. All of the mid to high end interfaces all require software adjustment which is lame.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I'm experimenting with going back to the Motu M4 for a few reasons:

• Apollo goes to sleep with the computer meaning I constantly have to keep my computer awake to listen to audio coming from it (including playing guitar through a modeler)
• I've had pretty regular instances of the Apollo losing its connection after going to sleep and requiring a restart of the interface and/or computer
• I really miss the direct input vs computer mix knob to quickly adjust levels between modeler and computer
• UAD software takes up over 10GB of space on my computer (I only have 256GB on my Mac and nearly half of it is system files)
• UAD software takes up 1-1.5GB of RAM just to run in the background (I only have 8GB on my Mac)

For now I just shut down all the virtual software running in the background and using the MOTU instead. It's will say the analog volume knob does have more granularity than the digital knob of the UAD which is nice. The headphone amp is nowhere near as powerful which is interesting, I have to run it over halfway up where the UAD I only run it on about 1/4 volume on top of an internal volume pad. Generally the sound is a bit less crisp to my ears for both as well.

It's weird that modern interfaces have basically eliminated the direct blend knob. The only ones that have it are the MOTU M-series, the SSL 2/2+, and Audient ID4. All of the mid to high end interfaces all require software adjustment which is lame.

Why not remove the unnecessary plugins? I made a .txt file of the plugins I want to keep on my computer and then used a script to delete all the plugins and formats I dont need. It means after any update, I just run the script again and it's all trim and proper. ChatGPT got that one right within a pass or two. I've deleted every DSP based plugin that has been ported to native as I always just use the native option. If you dont update the UAD software too often, it's not too bad to delete things manually (especially if you only need one format).

I remember some connection issues with the Apollo and Mac, I can't remember how I specifically solved it, but it was a combination of using the right thunderbolt ports, as well as setting some permissions correctly. Maybe UA's support can help (if you haven't tried that already)?

 

[Jarick]

Why not remove the unnecessary plugins? I made a .txt file of the plugins I want to keep on my computer and then used a script to delete all the plugins and formats I dont need. It means after any update, I just run the script again and it's all trim and proper. ChatGPT got that one right within a pass or two. I've deleted every DSP based plugin that has been ported to native as I always just use the native option. If you dont update the UAD software too often, it's not too bad to delete things manually (especially if you only need one format).

I remember some connection issues with the Apollo and Mac, I can't remember how I specifically solved it, but it was a combination of using the right thunderbolt ports, as well as setting some permissions correctly. Maybe UA's support can help (if you haven't tried that already)?

I didn't know if that was an option, but that would only solve the disk space issue. The other is that UAD Console takes over 1GB of space to run.

At some point I may end up getting an M4 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM which should solve some issues. However, I'm really not using anything in Console outside of adjusting levels of inputs vs system. And the MOTU does that right on the interface with a physical knob. So it feels like there's a lot of overhead that adds no benefit.

Also like you I really only use the Native plugins, so the Apollo hardware isn't doing much. I did mess around with a bunch of different channel strips and preamps but for electric guitar it doesn't seem necessary or impactful.

I really don't think the UAD stuff is bad by any stretch, but it may just be overkill or unnecessary for what I need.

 

[Jarick]

I wonder if the headphone amps on these small units that are bus powered are all going to be underwhelming? The headphone volume on my modelers is always really strong, like the Fractal I have to run it no more than at 9:00, same with the Kemper Player I had. MOTU I'm running halfway up which is high for me as I listen at pretty low volumes.

At some point it would be interesting to try the RME Babyface Pro as I hear nothing but good things, and I think you can set up input monitoring levels right from the unit. But probably not necessary at all for me.

 

[laxu]

I wonder if the headphone amps on these small units that are bus powered are all going to be underwhelming? The headphone volume on my modelers is always really strong, like the Fractal I have to run it no more than at 9:00, same with the Kemper Player I had. MOTU I'm running halfway up which is high for me as I listen at pretty low volumes.

At some point it would be interesting to try the RME Babyface Pro as I hear nothing but good things, and I think you can set up input monitoring levels right from the unit. But probably not necessary at all for me.

Julian Krause's audio interface reviews on YouTube are a great source as they have quite detailed info about the headphone outputs and there are differences even between generations of the same range from the same manufacturer.

It will depend on a number of factors. Headphone impedance, the audio interface in question and how loud you want to go. Some headphone amps are designed to drive a particular impedance range so they might work poorly with very low impedance headphones, or they might not get loud enough with very high impedance headphones.

Note that volume knob positions mean nothing as they can have very different tapers. For example my Audient EVO8's "output level 50%" as reported by the operating system shows up as 1/3 way up in the Audient mixer and hardware. So the other 50% is mapped to 2/3 of the knob's travel.

Several years back I compared the Fractal FM3, an old 1980s Marantz stereo amp and the (mains powered) Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 2nd gen for headphone outputs. I used the 300 ohm Sennheiser HD6XX headphones, so a fairly tough thing to drive.

The FM3 and Marantz were about the same - capable of going way louder than I'd ever want and both sounded great. The Focusrite could not reach volumes like that, but it still got plenty loud. I didn't notice any particularly relevant difference in the output sound though. Similarly Focusrite vs my bus-powered Audient EVO 8 seem about the same. Focusrite might've gotten louder.