Ableton Forum

From my research it appears everyone hails the Apogee Duet as the best sounding audio interface under $500.

Would anyone disagree? Are there any other products around this price range that would compete? (for electronic music production)

danke schoen,

I love my Duet. The detail is fab. The headphone amp ain't too shabby either.

Rave wrote:I love my Duet. The detail is fab. The headphone amp ain't too shabby either.

yep,same here.it just sounds amazing,you can hear every little detail.
plus it's built like a tank.

Motu Ultralite.

the Duet is fantastic, as well the Ultralite.
I've got both of them, and choose according to what I have to do.
If you need more in/outs then the Motu is perfect.
If you only need 2 in 2 out the Duet is killing.

Looks like apogee duet is very mac-oriented though, isn't it ? What about the motu ultralite ??? Is it working well on PCs ?

dinaiz wrote:Looks like apogee duet is very mac-oriented though, isn't it ? What about the motu ultralite ??? Is it working well on PCs ?

i can only speak for my own experience and motu is also a very OSX orientated brand... we had a lot of trouble with motu cards under windows XP none ever under OSX. the hardware itself is however great and if you run a mac most certainly to recommend.

also if you are satisfied with the I/O options another big thumbs up for the duet, a hell of a good card.

Apogee only support mac too, they withdrew support for windows a while back (and most products released in the last few years were mac only).

The Duet has slightly better converters and pres than the Motu but suffers from a lack of i/o.

What SF says is also true in my experience re MOTU on PC. MOTU on a mac is a solid combination.

In comparison my Ultralite was dead stable under XP, as are most of my friends.

The Ultralite on PC can be totally stable, but it's drivers on Core Audio have given better low latency performance than on PC (If you don't require ultra low latencies, then it's not a big deal). This is also the case generally for Core Audio under Mac OSX lately, RME's Fireface UC can run as low on 14 samples latency on Core Audio Mac OSX, which is better than the lowest windows figures (32 samples for XP and 48 samples for Vista and win 7).

Put it down to the typical ten million pieces of hardware on windows to cater for against a couple of dozen on the Mac - there will always be more PC users who have issues with hardware and drivers because of this. However, RME, Echo, Presonus all seem to have fewer problems overall with their windows drivers, again, subjectively, in my experience from friends, and the various fora I pollute.


MOTU are a Mac centric company. They release products which are Mac only, not least Digital Performer. They also have a 'seemingly' poor record at customer support of not answering emails or telephone calls, taking weeks or months to respond to issues. My personal belief is, that as good as some of their products are, that you should at least investigate alternatives if you're on PC.

fwiw I've got a MOTU UL on a Vista 64 system but I wouldn't buy it again given the choice.

RonaldDumsfeld wrote:fwiw I've got a MOTU UL on a Vista 64 system but I wouldn't buy it again given the choice.

why is that? because of the card itself or because of the performance of the unit under vista?

Very poor reputation for reliability and performance under Windows and a cynical disregard for for customer communication and support on all platforms.

RonaldDumsfeld wrote:Very poor reputation for reliability and performance under Windows and a cynical disregard for for customer communication and support on all platforms.

OK thanks, yes exactly my experience, well the performance of motu under windows, customer care i don't know, never needed it.