You sacrifice physical controls and a display for metering on the box, but Apogee makes up for it with slick Mac and iOS apps, integration with Logic, and a new separate remote accessory… That means they’re now the best value in the lineup in terms of the number of ins and outs you get versus the company’s less expensive One and Duet products, and the more expensive Quartet, and Ensemble products.
These new Thunderbolt audio interfaces for Mac represent a sweet spot in Apogee’s lineup, using the best technology from the company’s higher end machines while stripping out some of the bells and whistles to bring the price down drastically.
The company has also dipped into the home/portable market with a series of fantastic boxes that bring Apogee’s professional mic-pres and D/A converter tech to a much more affordable price point with the One, Duet and Quartet. Its premium Thunderbolt Ensemble and flagship Symphony interfaces are among the top choices for industry professionals in terms of overall sound quality and unwavering support for Apple’s pro computers. Apogee has sat atop the world of digital audio conversion for quite some time now. I have to conclude that my USB to SPDIF converter is the main culprit in the poor USB performance, as even with the purifier, the USB output doesn't sound nearly as good as the toslink connection.In this weeks episode of Logic Pros, we are taking a look at the new Apogee Element Thunderbolt audio interfaces. For now, I'll keep using the toslink with iFi purifier, as that sounds very sweet indeed I have to conclude that my USB to SPDIF converter is the main culprit in the poor USB performance, as even with the purifier, the USB output doesn't sound nearly as good as the toslink connection. I tried placing the purifier in different positions (before DTIPro, for example, or after) but it seemed to have the best effect just before DEQ2496, so I assume most of the jitter was being introduced somewhere between the mac and the toslink cable. For reference, my system consists of:Ģ011 Macbook Pro -> toslink -> iFi SPDIF purifier -> DEQ2496 -> DTI Pro32 -> I2S -> Uther II DACĭEQ2496 is acting as an all digital parametric EQ, while the purifier and DTI Pro are acting as dejittering devices. I assume it has to do with the quality of the recording. It never hurt the sound, but didn't always improve it. While I was already happy with the toslink output from the mac, the iFi purifier added a little depth and perspective to the sound that was obvious on some tracks, but not on some others. The USB output improved, but not enough to use it this way. It did improve the SQ of the SPDIF toslink output from the MacBook, though, and for that I'll keep it in my system. Joe's suggestion of the iFi SPDIF purifier worked out, but not enough to fix the problems with USB output.
So, the question is: do you folks use (and prefer) the S/PDIF output on the Macs directly or is a high quality USB-to-S/PDIF converter a better choice? Are there some software limitations with Mac S/PDIF output that do not exist with USB, or are they equivalent from software perspective? Overall, I feel they are very closely matched now. Sometimes the CD sounds a touch better, sometimes the Mac over S/PDIF.
The sound is now really close to what I get from the CD: when doing A/B comparisons, level-matched, I can occasionally hear very slight differences. Today, I got the mini-Toslink to regular Toslink cable and connected it between Macbook and DAC.
Perhaps I need a better USB-to-SPDIF converter (maybe with async capability?)
While I do have some jitter reduction built into the system, I still find that SQ is better when played on a CD transport than from the Mac through the USB port. Up until now, I've been using a simple USB to SPDIF converter to feed into my DAC. I've been using the Mac for years, and somehow never knew this! I just discovered that my Macbook Pro has a Toslink S/PDIF out.