Apogee Officially Introduces 'Quartet' Desktop Audio Interface for Mac

But can it run crysis?

At such a great price I think I'll pick up a couple for my Grandma.

And nowhere near the quality of ANYTHING Apogee makes.

Great. Another person I can sell swamp land to. How much would you like to buy? :)

Seriously, when it comes to "high end" audio, the sky is the limit for the amount of BS snake-oil "properties" companies can sell to people that don't know any better. Apogee is quality equipment, but it's way overpriced for what you get IMO in the areas that matter these days. Sadly, no quality of op-amp is going to save you from either USB 2.0 latency issues (unforgivable here given the price) or Apple earbuds being the playback medium of consumer choice these days OR the fact that a typical pop album has about 10dB of dynamic range on average (since the record labels believe louder = better even if it's clipping). So what is the point in buying the "best" recording gear if the end product could have been reproduced on the worst dreck out there?

Even so, typical "low end" (price-wise) amplifiers and receivers on the consumer end have improved drastically over the past decade as have speakers from companies like PSB that can make +/- 1dB frequency response a reality in speakers that cost under $1k a pair (unheard of 20+ years ago anywhere near that price). But it still takes at least a modicum of thought to find these good speakers since places like Best Buy are not the place to shop for such things and at this stage, the idea that the typical consumer is EVER going to have the kind of system on the playback chain that warrants ever increasing diminishing returns high-end equipment on the recording chain is about exactly ZERO.

There are, of course, classical labels that cater to high-end audio for recording (seeing they don't need to pay rock stars), but if classical and jazz isn't your thing you're sadly limited to a handful of pop or rock recordings that are worthy of more expensive gear (some Tori Amos and Pink Floyd recordings come to mind).

In any case, I'm afraid far more damage is done via editing and mastering on most albums than any op-amp on a cheaper input device would ever provide to a typical recording. Apogee is about the brand name reputation in "high-end" circles (snake-oil or not) more than the products, IMO. The fact they made a consumer EQ "palette" device for high-end speakers ought to tell you something about the nature of typical recordings out there. An accurate speaker should NEVER need any kind of EQ what-so-ever, but sadly the recording end is where most music gets screwed up (whether by incompetence or being ordered to by music execs that don't give a flying crap about sound quality, only perception based studies on loudness = higher sales data).

they should have released a more reliable 'maestro' instead! I'd like to trust Apogee that the product will work as well as it looks, but with the duet I have to force quit the 'duetdaemon' and plug/unplug several times until it finally decides to work right. Very unprofessional to have to jiggle and cajole your gear for 5 minutes to work correctly. Same thing on macbook pro & new imac.
Happened on Snow Leopard, Lion & Mountain Lion. Fix the maestro before you release more hardware!

As I said last week, get one of these for a fraction of the price... great sound, quality pre's, excellent ergonomics and fits nicely with the Mac... I have the 2x2 version of this and it's impressive!



http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/811296-REG/Lexicon_IO42_I_O_42_USB.html

this earns a solid "meh" from me.

$1295 for a USB 2.0 interface with only 4 inputs? That sounds more like a way overpriced toy than "professional" audio to me. I got a 4 input firewire interface for my own hobby project and it cost under $400 and has no latency issues.

It depends how good those preamps are. You can easily pay 1000$ for a single good preamp.

Why is this news? This is WAY overpriced. MOTU's 4Pre is 1/3 of the price. Hell, the 8pre is 1/2 of the price!

But will it blend?

There are so many audio interfaces which cost way more then this quartet.
Apogee is expensive but you get what you pay for. Apple isn't cheap either but clearly people see it as the best choice.

You buy pro audio gear based on how it sounds. ******* money. :cool:

Audio gear shouldn't "sound" at all. It's supposed to be transparent. After a certain point, it is and people are fooling themselves with golden ear crap.