Apogee or SSL?

[musikwerks]

I am about to upgrade the converters in my room from the well used MOTU 828mk2 to something with a little more class. I've been looking at the Apogee Symphony system with a Rosetta 800 attached and also the SSL alphalink which, as I understand it, can give me 24 analog i/o's converted to MADI and then into the mac. I use Logic and Pro Tools. Any ideas or suggestions on how the better solution for me?

(btw... I have looked at and discounted the Lynx...sorry.)

[tunetown]

The apogee Rosetta is nice but the Apogee AD / DA 16x's are better. If you have the budget, connect these to the Symphony and you'll be glad you did.

Cheers

[heathen]

The apogee Rosetta is nice but the Apogee AD / DA 16x's are better. If you have the budget, connect these to the Symphony and you'll be glad you did.

Cheers

Yeah ditto what Pete said. I've been running the rosetta 200 on firewire for 2.5 years with not 1 issue, the rosetta 800 is running on an rme card.

If your budget allows I'd get the 16x's but if all you need is 8 i/o then the rosetta 800 sounds almost as good. I used to have one of those motu ones, best thing I ever did was ditch it and get the apogees.

[Dominic]

Just out of curiousity, how come you discounted the Lynx?

[musikwerks]

Client recognition factor. Most know Apogee and almost all know SSL. Even if they do the same job it all comes down to what the clients think is "good" gear. For me, as long as we're comparing apples and apples then it makes little difference.

[OzDrum]

we have an Apogee 16XAD and also a Lynx Aurora 16, giving us 32 ins to ProTools HD2 (we aren't using a Digidesign interface). There is a difference in the sound of the two different AD but it is a
good difference and we use each different AD to round out different sounds/pres as we need.. The Apogee is clocking everything and also has a bit more hyped top end than
the Lynx. Prior to this we had an Apogee Rosetta running with our PT Mix system.

[NYMo]

Hi there,

There are other reasons for using a Lynx over the Apogee...

The Lynx has sample accurate latency within Tools in advanced routing mode(it was reverse engineered to behave exactly like a 192) whereas the Apogee still has a latency (using external outboard thru its A/D and as
an insert in PT)

Cheers
N
YM
O

[musikwerks]

Hey Nymo, was that with the Apogee Symphony system? How much latency are we talking about?

[NYMo]

Hi there,

No...that is with the Apogee AD 16X and PT HD software.

There are a few threads over @ GS about this.

This of course applies to PT HD only...the software is coded for the fixed latency of the 192 ad/da .
The Apogee latency is 80 samples (I think...don't quote me on that...but its something like that!)
Not something that Apogee really want you to think about !

Anyways...that is a major difference if you are using outboard inserts in PT.

Cheers
N
Y
MO

[NYMo]

Hi Kristian,

I see you are talking about Symphony....my apologies.
(That bloody Absinthe is still doing my head in after last nights BBQ!)

Cheers
N
Y
M
O

[heathen]

When I'm processing with my analog gear I usually just do everything and print it back in to other tracks, then theres no latency after processing all the tracks, they will all sit in phase unless of course you change your latency setting before doing all the tracks. Also if I only need to process a few tracks I'll print them back in also and then just slide them back into place, takes about 10 secs.

So yeah all this processing takes time but in my opinion is 100% worth it to avoid plugin comps & eq's as much as possible. Though I still think it's faster than endlessly tweaking plugs and slowly driving myself mad.

You'd think protools would have auto compensation sampling for hardward inserts no matter what converters you're using, Nuendo does it very well. Anyway usually I only use hw inserts if I'm subgrouping a mix into say 4 groups in the daw and mixing straight down from there, which would rare.