Apollo Duo vs Steinberg Mk ii

[vignesh.vijay]

Hi ,

Which one is better and has low latency ?

Apollo Duo or Steinberg Mk ii ?

Is there any other audio interface around $ 500 or $ 600 range or less which has low latency and can load a lot more ?

I tend to use a lot of midi plugins and fx plugins .

[wickfut]

PC or laptop?

Firewire? USB? PCIe?

[vignesh.vijay]

PC or laptop?

Firewire? USB? PCIe?

PC ..

I am ok with both firewire and USB . I want to know which would be faster and has less latency .

[wickfut]

if you have a full pc then get pci or pcie

RME, Lynx, Marian.

if not get a firewire as they're generally faster than usb,

[vignesh.vijay]

if you have a full pc then get pci or pcie

RME, Lynx, Marian.

if not get a firewire as they're generally faster than usb,

Can you suggest some model names ?

[wickfut]

can you say what your needs are specifically?

do you need a volume control? do you need mic preamps? do you need it rack mounted? do you need it to have spdif/aes/toslink? how many inputs and outputs?

otherwise we'll be here all day and you might as well pull up any store page and choose one at random.

pcie card:

RME HDSPe AIO PCIe - needs cables which cost another £30
Lynx Studio E22
Marian Seraph AD2

Firewire:

Focusrite: Saffire pro 24 or 40 - they're end of line so going for half price here in uk.

[vignesh.vijay]

can you say what your needs are specifically?

do you need a volume control? do you need mic preamps? do you need it rack mounted? do you need it to have spdif/aes/toslink? how many inputs and outputs?

otherwise we'll be here all day and you might as well pull up any store page and choose one at random.

pcie card:

RME HDSPe AIO PCIe - needs cables which cost another £30
Lynx Studio E22
Marian Seraph AD2

Firewire:

Focusrite: Saffire pro 24 or 40 - they're end of line so going for half price here in uk.

How much load does RME HDSPe take ?

I tend to use a lot of tracks and most of them are midi .

[Googly Smythe]

nm

[vignesh.vijay]

I heard Apollo twin - latest version ( i think version 2 ) has good reviews . Any thoughts on that ?

[rod_zero]

Firewire today is a terrible idea since computers no longer come with the port and finding a PCIe card with the texas instruments chip might not be easy in the future.

Apogee is an apple brand and I wouldn't trust their long term support for windows, they don't even have good support on the mac side.

If you can go RME, PCIe is the fastest and more stable but their USB interfaces work very well also, worth every penny. And they support their products for a very long time, 10 or more years.

And well Audio interfaces don't improve how many tracks you can have, that is done by your CPU, an interface with good drivers can provide lower latency and stability nevertheless.

[Stupid American Pig]

I heard Apollo twin - latest version ( i think version 2 ) has good reviews . Any thoughts on that ?

The Apollo may not be the best performing in terms of the lowest latency you can get, but they are made with good hardware and they are quality product. The plugins are among the best available, but maybe not the outright best you can buy. Ultimately, you need to decide of you want to get on board with the UAD plugin format. I use the Apollo 8 for my interface. I dont record at 96khz, so I see 3-6ms latency depending on the project size. If you only care about latency then RME is probably your brand. They seem to have their drivers down solid. I don't really care as long as it is sub 10ms so the UAD works for me. I really like the plug ins, and in general all of them sound really good, but Im starting to tire to the fact that they seem mostly interested in emulating channel strips, eqs, compressors and have not branched out into very many creative effects. They do have a few, but that isnt the bulk of the selection. I am guessing there is a technical reason that they dont do synthesis on the platform because theyve never even hinted at that being an option.