Review: Universal Audio’s Apollo
With on-board UAD powered plug-ins, combined with unique input routing, and the perfect combination of digital and analogue know-how, Universal Audio Apollo rockets to a new frontier for recording interfaces. Threatening to jettison previous generation gear as space junk.
By Greg Walker
22 June 2012
Universal Audio’s Apollo has been turning heads in industry circles and overseas markets for quite a few months now. More than just another high quality recording interface, the Apollo is UA’s bold attempt to corner the market. It seriously raises the stakes by incorporating eight cutting edge A/D converters and a software input mixer called the Console that can operate either independently or within any existing DAW environment providing hitherto unexplored routing and low latency monitoring options. Last but not least, the Apollo integrates the company’s UAD-2 powered plug-in processing chips in a choice of Duo or Quad configurations and allows the user to process audio either in traditional mix applications or en-route to your DAW during the tracking itself with negligible latency. All this is offered in a sleek and compact 1U chassis that seems destined to further blur the already fuzzy boundaries between bedroom recordists, project studios and pro setups. While not cheap, the Apollo’s feature list and price point is guaranteed to send shivers up the spines of many of UA’s competitors in the hotly contested interface market.
ALL IN ONE
The Apollo pulls together the various strands of UA’s previous technologies and expertise and is its first attempt at an all-in-one recording solution. As such I tried to evaluate each of the unit’s functions — preamplification, converters and digital processing — before coming to any conclusions about the unit as a whole. Suffice to say that with all the hype surrounding the Apollo, I was very keen to try it in some real world situations and to see how it would perform. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to work with the Apollo for an extended length of time in the studio but I did have about a week of tracking and mixing sessions, and by the time we parted I had a pretty good handle on its capabilities.
CONSOLE-ATIONS
Getting the Apollo up and running with ProTools 10 proved to be a very easy process. Once the software and drivers on the supplied disc were installed, I connected the Firewire cable between an Apollo port and my iMac and went through a simple authorisation routine to enable the supplied UAD plug-ins. The unit ships with the three basic Analogue Classics bundle plugs only — though the included 1176LN Limiting Amplifier, LA-2A Leveling Amplifier and Pultec EQP-1A Program Equaliser are not to be sneezed at. After that I was up and running, although the next challenge was to get my head around the Console application which was admittedly a little more time consuming.
The Console offers a whole new level of control over your incoming signals, and operates alongside your usual DAW mixer functions. Initially I found it a little confusing, especially when toggling back and forth between it and my usual ProTools windows (I’d highly recommend dedicating a keyboard shortcut to controlling the Console’s entries and exits from your workspace). The important concept to keep in mind here is that the Console is an input device, not an output mixer, and that’s where the real power of the application lies. Not only can you track and print with UAD plugs on the way into your DAW (i.e. print your vocals with compression, EQ etc.), you can make two additional headphone mixes in the digital domain, whack on some sweet reverbs and effects for the players that you don’t have to print, and do it all in the order of 2ms latency, which eats most host-powered DAWs for dinner.
NEED TO KNOW
The Console has dedicated input strips for the preamps that duplicate all the controls found on the front of the hardware unit as well as strips for the remaining four analogue inputs, ADAT and S/PDIF sources. It also has two auxiliary sends, four inserts per channel and a range of output metering and routing options. There’s a global toggle switch that selects between ‘Rec’ where any effects on the inserts are printed along with the source signals, and ‘Mon’ where the effects go through to the keeper as monitor ear candy only. This is one of the Console’s limitations as it would have been nice to select individual channels for either effects printing or monitoring only. The other big limitation is that you can’t create new channels, headphone mixes or auxiliaries. Hopefully UA will roll out future software revisions to extend the flexibility and performance of the Console as it feels like they have really just scratched the surface of what is possible with this application.
Having said that, there are several other thoughtful features in the Console, including auxiliary and headphone output monitoring options, a mono switch and real-time sample rate conversion of errant S/PDIF sources to avoid clocking mismatches. It’s also worth getting to know the Console UAD2 Recall plug-in which allows instant storage and recall of all Console settings by simply opening your favourite DAW project. By hosting a single instance of the Console Recall plug-in in the master bus of your Ableton Live project, for example, the next time you open that project, the entire setup of Console can be recalled (along with all the UAD2 plug-ins you have hosted in the inserts and auxiliary buses you may have instantiated).
SMALL STEPS
After working my way through the intricacies of the Console my feelings about its strengths had changed quite a lot. Where at first I was intrigued by the idea of overdubbing with and printing UAD processing and effects, the reality here is that they are introduced after the A/D converters and so aren’t actually that different from just processing things at the mix stage. Unless you’re very sure you want that level of compression on the lead vocal in a standard overdub session you’re really better off to play it safe and tweak to your hearts content after tracking. One plus is that you can audition and track with an effect without committing, and then copy the plug into your mix for fine tuning when the tracking is done. Then again you may want to utilise and commit to some plug-ins during tracking and free up CPU at the mix down stage for further processing. What is really attractive here is the ability to work up complex digital headphone mixes for live ensemble tracking and take the artists into interesting places sonically at the gestation phase — something that my current digital setup is sadly incapable of for reasons of extreme latency. I think it’s very possible that a lot of headphone-mix sidecars will be biting the dust once people get their hands on this software and realise its creative potential. There’s also the option to use the Console in its stand-alone mode and have access to the whole UAD-2 universe for live applications, as well as opting out on the Console and running the Apollo as a more traditional hardware interface.
I honestly wasn’t prepared for such a radical difference in tone and I had to reluctantly concede that the Apollo delivered a superior musical image
COMMENCING COUNTDOWN
Once I had everything up and running I did one of my usual preamp tests with the Apollo — tracking a whole song with a good number of overdubs just using the inbuilt pres and a few different mics. My first impressions were very favourable; the pres have a solid tone that has good clarity without being harsh and also a nicely tailored bottom end. Transients were captured well without being overtly spiky and the track held together easily without any EQ or compression. All in all I found the Apollo’s preamps had a good sonic footprint to them and after playing with them for a few days I was totally confident taking them as my main tools for a remote overdub session and was very pleased with the results. The other part of this equation of course is the converters, and I was also impressed by their performance. UA is claiming the Apollo converter’s distortion specs are an improvement on their previous stand-alone flagship converter box, the 2192. There’s a lot of intense debate on the internet forums about the quality of the Apollo conversion versus various other high and mid-level contenders. My own two cents worth is that I liked the sound of them a lot and had no reason to change my mind during my time with them. Firing up some sessions recorded on my ageing Digi 002/RME rig that I know back to front, I was immediately struck by the difference in the soundstage. The Apollo gave the mixes a more focused, forward midrange and top end clarity without being in any way strident, while on a few tracks I was hearing bottom end anomalies that I hadn’t picked up on before. Panning depth and placement also seemed to be subtly enhanced. I honestly wasn’t prepared for such a radical difference in tone and I had to reluctantly concede that the Apollo delivered a superior musical image. I did ask myself a few times if the Apollo’s tone was ever so slightly over-hyped in the mids and highs but as I did more tracking I found that this was not really the case, and it was more about mic and processing choices going forward with the Apollo’s slightly more ‘modern’ sound (for want of a better term). As someone who does quite a lot of mobile recording I also couldn’t help comparing the Apollo’s svelte 1U frame to my current 3U 2-box rig. Sometimes you just gotta hate progress!
YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT GO GO GO
Universal Audio has really stepped up to the plate with this latest offering. They’ve always made great preamps, have got a whole corner of the plug-in market to themselves with their impressive UAD-2 powered processing systems, and are no slouches at the converter game either. It should come as no surprise then that they have wrapped up all this goodness and technical know-how into one attractive bundle, but I have to commend them on going a step further with the addition of the Console which opens up another avenue of inquiry for the vast majority of us who record in the digital domain. The whole package looks great and adds space age smarts to a range of sonic treats unavailable to the rest of the field. Most importantly the Apollo delivers great sound via excellent preamps and A/D conversion. UA has delivered a classy product here while also cleverly getting itself a steady earner given that many new Apollo owners will be cueing up for extra UAD-2 plug-ins and Thunderbolt expansion cards. It will be fascinating to see how the other big players in the interface market react to UA’s new trendsetter. In the meantime, expect to see a whole lot of Apollos populating your orbit of studios and bedrooms in the next couple of years. Sadly this means that a lot of the first and second generation digital recording gear may finally become space junk — maybe there’s a song in that.
RESPONSES