apogee duet v. motu ultralite mk3 — what to listen for?

[merges]

i'm upgrading from an old edirol ua-700. i'd -like- multiple outs, which the edirol had, so i'm considering the motu ultralite mk3. however, i was convinced to also try the apogee duet. both seem pretty good for my recording needs. i am able to get good sound from both the motu and the duet with my mic and guitar with pickup.

however, i'll be honest and say that i can't -really- tell the difference in audio quality amongst these devices. i -think- the duet may have an edge, but it's honestly very hard to tell. so, in reading all those threads, what i wanted to know is how do you know which interface sounds better? what are you listening to? what are you listening -for-?

i have these babies for a couple of weeks so i'd like to do some appropriately guided listening to see if i can actually HEAR a difference... thanks!

fwiw i've also been getting lots of pops, clicks, and glitches when recording in ableton with the duet, even at ridiculous (500+ sample) latency on my reasonably decked out MBP.

[leedsquietman]

The Duet has slightly better pres and converters but the Ultralite has the advantage of much more I/O (and still good quality pres and converters), so you have to weigh up which suits your workflow and needs best.

Are you doing things like disabling wifi and any background programs ? This can impact a lot on latency, which causes clicking and dropouts etc.

Also coming soon is the RME Babyface (just announced) which is similar to the Duet in terms of functionality, but has some nice additional features such as the new Totalmix software which comes with it and is about the same quality as the Apogee Duet in terms of pres and converters - but it's not available for a while yet.

I would personally go for the Ultralite, because sooner or later, even as a solo bedroom studio artist, you'll find a need for the extra I/O - maybe buddies coming over to record with you, or maybe a potential client wanting you to record their band or whatever. The Ultralite still sounds very good and better to have more I/O than you need than not enough. IMHO.

[The Landwhale]

If you can't hear the difference I'd say go for the Ultralite. I've owned both, the Ultralite is a great interface, very stable, flexible, etc.

I wonder what the issue is in your setup with the Duet, because I can run mine at 96 samples buffer size (44.1khz sample rate) with about a dozen or so audio tracks, guitar rig and quite a few more plugs, mostly ableton plugs but a few 3rd party as well. I also have Airport running since I use touch osc on the iPad to control Live. I get some audio dropouts here and there, but it seems mostly related to Looper.

I can also run the same size session using the apogee GIO running at 64 samples.

My mbp is 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, 500gb 5400 rpm HD. Everything runs off the internal drive.

I was able to get consistently lower latencies with the ultralite than with the duet. I could run the ultralite at 64 samples easy, even 32 samples if it was a light session.