Apollo Twin with Live 9 Suite

[andrewj]

Hello I am thinking of buying a Universal Audio Apollo Twin as the interface for Live. I wanna record in great quality while being on the road, so this might be a good choice, because of the converters and the DSP pluggies you can buy from UA. PLUS you can later buy a Satellite for more DSP power to mix your stuff with more pluggies.

Has anyone used the Apollo with live? Has anyone tips or more info about the latency of the dsp driven pluggies and how I have to deal with it???

I would love to get some tips here.

Thanks in advance,

Andreas

[theswiftone]

Hi Andreas, Ive got the Apollo Twin Duo. Personally I think its a great interface. Havent used it for much live recordings only some vocals. But I really liked being able to use the DSP pluggins that came with it while recording the vocals. With the option to record it dry, but have say the reverb it the headphones. Its a shame you didnt buy one before the end of 2014 cause you got some free plugins with it!

[andrewj]

Thanks a lot for the information. Yes my timing wasn't that good on this one.

[jlgrimes]

Hello I am thinking of buying a Universal Audio Apollo Twin as the interface for Live. I wanna record in great quality while being on the road, so this might be a good choice, because of the converters and the DSP pluggies you can buy from UA. PLUS you can later buy a Satellite for more DSP power to mix your stuff with more pluggies.

Has anyone used the Apollo with live? Has anyone tips or more info about the latency of the dsp driven pluggies and how I have to deal with it???

I would love to get some tips here.

Thanks in advance,

Andreas

I have the full blown Apollo and I recommend it. The preamps are the best preamps I had so far for an Audio Interface. The sound quality is great as well. The preamp emulations are great as well and allows you to record with different colors and also record with a bit of UAD compression.

I've been in the UAD system for so long that I don't know what plug-ins it comes with but I guess you would get their legacy UAD compressors (the LA2A, 1176, Fairchilds the UAD-1 versions) and the UA-610 B preamp emulation to emulate a tube preamp. UAD usually give people a voucher when they get new hardware so at minimum you should be able to grab another plug-in or plug-ins. When I got the Apollo, UAD threw in like $1000 worth of plug-ins (of my choice).

Here are some Cons though:

1. I think you can only get a dual processor card with the twin, I would not recommend the Solo unless you don't plan on buying any UAD plug-ins in the future and you are happy with the included plug-ins. UAD plug-ins are known to be quite hungry. On the UAD-1 system they became almost unusable and I could only use a few plug-ins on that card. The Solo is supposed to be like 2-4 times better (I can't remember which). But with a UAD quad card, it can handle a good amount of plug-ins before running into your CPU limits. But I think the wisest choice is to supplement UAD plug-ins with Native ones.

2. Latency. the Apollo has a fairly high roundtrip latency compared to other cards. Firewire had me at about 15 ms. I went with Thunderbolt and it got me like right under 10 ms. I will say though that softsynth playback seems pretty instantaneous and even recording with UAD plug-ins feels realtime, I didn't notice any gaps. I think the performance is probably a lot lower than what it will report to your DAW but I still would recommend Thunderbolt. Also some plug-ins aren't designed for realtime use (or at least chaining multiple plug-ins). You should be fine with most legacy plug-ins and even most UAD-2 plug-ins in general if you only use one, but chaining two UAD-2 plug-ins could cause latency and the Ampex tape (and like one or two others) were designed for real-time recording.

[andrewj]

Ah thanks a lot, the issue that you can only get the twin with solo or duo DSPs is the only thing that bothers me rightnow

[fishmonkey]

i was asking about an open-box Solo in a shop the other day, and they told me that lots of people who buy the Solo come back and want to change to a Duo...

[andrewj]

Yes of course, the SOLO is a joke to me! Maybe if you only use these DSP for tracking it might fit, but for mixing it gives you way too few instances!

[taoyoyo]

Apologies for the semi-shameless plug... I'm currently selling my Twin Duo.

( see: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7#p6005467 )

Not sure if you're interested (as it comes with quite a few extra UAD plug-ins) but thought I'd mention it.

I really love this interface but am needing to sell for financial reasons.

[headquest]

Can I just clarify how the UA plugins work?
Am I right in thinking that they appear as VST or AU plugins within Ableton?
And are also available within the UA “Console”..?
So does the UA Console run simultaneously with Live, and how do they relate?

[Monkey Mouse]

I have an Apollo Twin and run Ableton Live (not the suite) and it works perfectly.

They do have a special until 12/31 - but an Apollo rack and get a quad DSP box free of charge. With the duo, it gives you 3x the DSP power of the interface alone - you just need to get a Thunderbolt cable to hook it into your system (or FW if you go that way).

[RadioApe]

Can I just clarify how the UA plugins work?
Am I right in thinking that they appear as VST or AU plugins within Ableton?
And are also available within the UA “Console”..?
So does the UA Console run simultaneously with Live, and how do they relate?

I would like to know that as well...
i watched some official uad videos... but so far, i do not understand everything.

The video(s) i watched was, i think, very much, focused on using the interface to record and monitor and/or record with the plugins directly.

So, i guess you can load a uad plugin either in to the console or direct in to live.

But if i load them in to live, are they taking the same cpu power, as if i use them in the console?

(i think the whole routing to console and back to daw is a little bit complicated... and while i seldom or never record something with the amps, i`m only interested in using the plugins directly for my live set)

Sorry for my bad english... hope some uad user can drop a line to that...

[musiklover]

Can I just clarify how the UA plugins work?
Am I right in thinking that they appear as VST or AU plugins within Ableton?
And are also available within the UA “Console”..?
So does the UA Console run simultaneously with Live, and how do they relate?

I would like to know that as well...
i watched some official uad videos... but so far, i do not understand everything.

The video(s) i watched was, i think, very much, focused on using the interface to record and monitor and/or record with the plugins directly.

So, i guess you can load a uad plugin either in to the console or direct in to live.

But if i load them in to live, are they taking the same cpu power, as if i use them in the console?

(i think the whole routing to console and back to daw is a little bit complicated... and while i seldom or never record something with the amps, i`m only interested in using the plugins directly for my live set)

Sorry for my bad english... hope some uad user can drop a line to that...

If you load them into Live and use them while Mixing, thus not using the Console for Tracking at the same time, they will use the same amount of UAD DSP. Many people Track and Print while using Console, and separately Mix in Live such as to maximize the DSP.