Review: Apogee Duet

After plenty of fanfare during the last few years, the partnership between Apogee Digital and Apple Computer is finally yielding the ‘totally integrated’ hardware that’s been promised. The Ensemble interface reviewed this time last year, was (and still is) a very nice unit. The preamps and converters are all of a quality you’d expect from a company that trades solely on the back of its audio conversion expertise. This technology has now trickled down into a smaller audio interface from Apogee, the Duet, or to fit in with the Apple nomenclature, the very unassuming lower-case ‘duet’.

The Duet is Apogee’s travelling – and highly portable – desktop audio interface, which utilises the same design ethos, and no doubt much of the internals, found in the Apple-oriented Ensemble interface. Aesthetically, the Duet will look and feel snug alongside your MacBook or otherwise Mac-centric audio devices. The finish is remarkably similar to the finely granulated surface of a MacBook Pro and, to be honest, looks pretty darn sexy – a bit like an oversized iPod. The underside sports the typical Apple-esque rounded edges and corners, with the top panel retaining square edges. There’s but one control on the top surface of the Duet, a large shiny chrome rotary encoder. We’ll investigate the encoder’s multiple uses shortly, but first let’s go through the Bauhaus-like set of I/O the Duet offers.

Connection to the host Macintosh is via Firewire 400 and the unit is completely bus powered. Some would contend USB connection to be ample for the Duet’s two in/two out topology, but Firewire is definitely a better choice for isochronous audio I/O, both for achieving minimal latency figures and a more desirable level of jitter. [See box item for more on isochronous design]. Besides which, the Duet will deal with sample rates up to 96k – both in and out – a feat virtually impossible via USB 1.1.

Toward the front of the Duet is a single headphone output, the output level of which is linked directly to the main outputs. The headphone output can be muted (or left open) when muting the main outputs, but, even so, this shared volume control makes it impossible to set up a separate monitor mix in the headphones. According to Apogee this has been a necessary dictate of economics – another set of D/A conversion could have sent the Duet into the $1000+ range (AUD, of course). As it stands, the Duet seems attractively priced, especially when combined with Logic Studio or Logic Express. With Logic Express you’d have your DAW and interface needs licked for around a thousand bucks. Not a bad proposition at all.

Meanwhile, back at the connectivity ranch… The rear panel sports the single aforementioned Firewire 400 port and a 15-pin D-sub connector. This attaches to the supplied breakout cable and provides two instrument 1/4-inch jack inputs, two XLR mic inputs and two unbalanced 1/4-inch jack outputs. The entire breakout cable concept does make me shudder slightly, as breakout cables are inevitably of the injection moulded plastic design, and thus highly susceptible to breakage; usually right where the cable meets the moulded plastic connector. As some consolation, Apogee actually includes the breakout cable in the Duet’s warranty, so you’re not completely lost if your cable goes south during the first 12 months. Supplying such a cable does strike me as odd though, especially since Apogee sells high quality cables for their other more upmarket systems. My guess is that they’ll have a superior option available soon.