Apogee Duet 2 - Worth it with my set up?

[relliots]

Hey guys,

I'm in the market for a new audio interface, primarily for production and audiophile quality listening.

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with the Apogee duet 2? I know it's a great piece of gear, but is it really worth shelling out for the 600$ price over something like the NI Komplete audio 6 which goes for 230$ (another highly recommended interface).

I'd be running balanced outputs to 5 pin DIN into a QUAD 34 preamp to a QUAD 303 power amp which drives my Yamaha NS-10M's.

Again, i'm just an enthusiast looking to get the most out of my QUAD gear from digital sources... mainly talking about .wav or .aiff audio here. Anyone think (or know personally) if the extra cash for the Duet 2 is worth it? I've had good experiences with NI audio gear in the past but I hear the apogee software interface is phenomenal and the firmware is built for core audio from the ground up (mac only obviously).

Input?

Thanks in advance,

 

[ChrisA]

Hey guys,

I'm in the market for a new audio interface, primarily for production and audiophile quality listening.

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with the Apogee duet 2? I know it's a great piece of gear, but is it really worth shelling out for the 600$ price over something like the NI Komplete audio 6 which goes for 230$ (another highly recommended interface).

I'd be running balanced outputs to 5 pin DIN into a QUAD 34 preamp to a QUAD 303 power amp which drives my Yamaha NS-10M's.

Again, i'm just an enthusiast looking to get the most out of my QUAD gear from digital sources... mainly talking about .wav or .aiff audio here. Anyone think (or know personally) if the extra cash for the Duet 2 is worth it? I've had good experiences with NI audio gear in the past but I hear the apogee software interface is phenomenal and the firmware is built for core audio from the ground up (mac only obviously).

Input?

Thanks in advance,

You will NOT hear the difference if all you are doing in play back. Save your money and get something like an PreSonus "Audiobox". or the NI box. Both are good. (The Presonus box has a great built-in headphone amp.)

If you are recording likely your weak link will be the room itself and then your microphones

What files are you listening to? Uncompressed AIFF or lossless (FLAC and Apple Lossles) are all bit-perfect but are also 44.1K samples/sec and 16-bit. The Apogee, NI and Presonus are all overkill for playback.

One thing you can do to improveo the sound is to run ALL the digital volume controls to 100% and control the sound level with an analog pot on the preamp. All digital volume controls reduce dynamic range. It is basic math that they can't avoid.

 

[spoonie1972]

if all you care about is your output, use your optical out (mac pro), or digital audio out on the macbook pro (requires a funky adapter, can't remember if its optical or spdif coax) - and get something like the mytek D/A 96.

you can probably find one used and it'll be leagues better than anything else around the $600 mark (assuming you can find a mytek stereo96 D/A used).

If you need input as well, ignore everything I just typed

 

[swosanity]

For my set up duet was a game changer. Is it worth it? For me it was. Are there cheaper options? Yes. But are they equal I would say not.

 

[ChrisA]

For my set up duet was a game changer. Is it worth it? For me it was. Are there cheaper options? Yes. But are they equal I would say not.

For playback, yes there are equally good units for less. The weak link is the source material.

 

[bwhli]

If you're going to be using headphones with the Duet, I'm going to suggest you get something else. The headphone amps on the Duet are okay, but you can do better for the price!