Apogee Symphony 64 Bedienungsanleitung PDF herunterladen

resolution January/February 2012

REVIEW

pogee has a long history in the manufacture

of digital audio hardware, including some

classic A-D and D-A convertors, but the

landscape has shifted beyond recognition

since the company’s founding in 1985. Recording

with DAWs has become widespread and work patterns

and recording locations have become increasingly

diverse shifting between a full-on studio set-up with

DSP accelerated DAWs to tracking a vocal on a laptop

in a living room happens not only across projects,

but also within projects. The Symphony I/O is

Apogee’s latest hardware offering, and acknowledges

these shifts while taking over as the company’s

ﬂagship offering for A-D and D-A conversion. This

means the demise of the X-Series and Rosetta 800

Series convertors, which will sadden some, but the

design approaches of these ranges have been carried

forward and developed using fewer, more advanced

components, leading to a shortening of the audio

path and improvements in latency. Not only this, but

the system is incredibly modular, allowing users to

determine their exact I-O requirements, and is capable

of interfacing with a computer in a variety of different

ways to reﬂect different workﬂows and locations.

A ﬁrst glance at the unit shows that even the

industrial design seems to nod towards that changing

landscape. While the X-Series and Rosetta boxes

clearly signiﬁed ‘studio kit’, the Symphony I/O looks

more like high-end hiﬁ in its design cues, with an

almost minimalist approach to user controls via

two aluminium rotary encoders. Power it up, and

illuminated OLED indicators and meters previously

disguised by a darkened panel spring to life to let you

know that it’s alive and kicking. And it’s safe to say

that you’ll never be in any doubt about the sample

rate you are running at, as this is emblazoned in large

numbers at the top of the display panel. A couple

of ¼-inch headphone jacks and a power switch

complete the picture at the front.

The rear panel is dominated by two card slots, in

which you insert your choice of I-O options. Digital

interfacing ﬂavours for these cards are optical (up to

96kHz) or AES (up to 192kHz). In the case of optical

I-Os, these are capable of working in SPDIF, ADAT

or SMUX formats up to 96kHz (in SMUX format

an additional lightpipe connection is included for

input and outputs for the higher channel numbers).

Balanced analogue and AES connections are provided

on DB-25. There are four basic cards currently on

offer, each supplying 16 channels of analogue and

digital input and/or output in a different permutation.

The four card variants are; 8 channels of analogue

input and output + 8 channels of optical input and

output; 8 channels of analogue input and output +

8 channels of AES input and output; 16 channels of

analogue input only + 16 channels of optical output

only; 16 channels of analogue output only + 16

channels of optical input only.

There’s also a recently released (and not supplied for

the review; see New Products p18) card that provides

8 channels of microphone preampliﬁcation. Installing

this in conjunction with any of the analogue input

options effectively routes the analogue inputs from

that card to the preamps, through some assignable

insert analogue insert points, and then back to the

A-D section of the ﬁrst card. You do, obviously, reduce

the potential I-O count by going down this route (the

pre card occupies a whole slot), but it’s a useful option

for some users.

The remainder of the rear panel provides USB,

Ethernet and a couple of PC-32 connectors, together

with Word clock and loop sync I-Os on BNC — and

these, together with the I-O cards detailed above,

provide the ﬁrst clues about the unit’s ﬂexibility.

Put simply, the unit is capable of working in one of

four fundamental modes, referred to as Audio Interface

Modes. The ﬁrst of these enables Symphony I/O to

work as a USB 2.0 audio interface to any Intel Mac

running OS 10.6.8 or higher. This supports 32 audio

streams, giving 16 channels of input and output to

any DAW that supports Core Audio. Pro Tools HD or

HD Native users will probably prefer to connect in Pro

Tools mode. When connected to the interface port on a

Pro Tools HD card using the PC32 connector, Pro Tools

sees each interface card in the Symphony chassis as

a 192 interface. What’s nice here is that (unlike some

other third party A-D/D-A boxes), sample rate and

clock source are set from the Pro Tools dialog boxes in a

way familiar to all Avid users — you’re not constantly

having to check that the session sample rate and

sample rate for the convertor are set correctly.

The only slight niggle is that the relationship

between physical inputs and outputs on the I-O cards

and how they are represented in Pro Tools is ﬁxed

according to the speciﬁc cards installed, and isn’t

intelligently recognised by Pro Tools (you just see

A1-8, B1-8, etc.) Still, a quick reference to the tables

in the manual and some work on the labelling in Pro

Tools’ I-O Setup page is all that’s needed here. Multiple

Symphony I/Os can be connected to an HD system,

each seen as one or two 192s. The only limitation here

is that you can’t daisy chain them together — each unit

has to have a dedicated HD card to connect to.

For those who aren’t part of the Avid universe,

Apogee also offers its own PCI-based solution in

the form of the Symphony 64 PCI card. This is an

entirely new version of the Symphony 32 card offered

previously, but as the name suggests, supports 64

channels of audio input and output to a Core Audio

compatible DAW. Up to two Symphony I/Os can

be connected to each Symphony 64 card. Owners

of Symphony 32 PCI cards will be disappointed,

however, as these are not compatible, but Apogee

is offering an upgrade path. Finally, the unit can be

set to operate in ‘standalone’ mode — effectively

providing A-D and D-A conversion between speciﬁc

inputs and outputs.

Switching between each of these modes is

accomplished with the front panel encoders (push

to select parameter, turn to select option, push to

conﬁrm). The unit then reboots and starts up in the

chosen mode. Selection of this and other functions

via these controls is surprisingly intuitive, and not

at all like the experience of trying to wallpaper your

hall through your letterbox that I was expecting. But

there is a level of detailed operation that even the

best designed user interfaces aren’t suited for and

this is taken care of by the ﬁnal component of the

Symphony system — the Maestro application.

Maestro will be familiar to users of other Apogee

products, and again runs on any Intel Mac running

OS 10.6.8 or higher. It provides said level of detailed

conﬁguration with a nice graphic interface, with

slightly different levels of functionality dependent on

which mode the unit is operating in. Communication

between the computer running Maestro and the unit

is via USB for USB Audio Mode, Pro Tools HD mode

and standalone mode, or directly from the Symphony

64 card in that mode.

Common to all modes are panels for conﬁguring

inputs and outputs — in particular setting and

trimming operating levels for analogue and digital

inputs and outputs, and setting the digital format for

the optical inputs and outputs. Four, progressively

more heavy-handed varieties of soft limiting are also

selectable on the analogue inputs ranging from ultra-

transparent catching of the odd stray over to full-on

‘creative’ distortion with ‘Soft Crush’. If a mic preamp

card is installed an additional panel is available that

handles gain, phantom power, polarity reverse and a

high pass ﬁlter.

There’s also the ability to conﬁgure analogue

hardware outputs as monitor outputs, with level

control available in Maestro and from the front panel

of the unit. Usefully, this can be in stereo (uses the

ﬁrst two outputs), 5.1 or 7.1 (uses the ﬁrst six or

eight analogue outputs) with a single level and mute

control. Similarly, the two headphone outputs on

the front panel (remember those?) can each mirror

any pair of physical outputs (analogue or digital). So

what you get here is a reasonably ﬂexible monitoring

system when working outside of a ‘conventional’

studio environment. Other options (with some

variation according to the unit’s mode) include the

ability to select which blocks of eight inputs or outputs

meter on the 15-segment meters on the front panel,

the peak hold behaviour, and system settings, such as

sample rate and Word clock source.

USB Audio, Symphony and Standalone mode

also feature comprehensive routing matrices for

Apogee Symphony I/O

Long-awaited not just by the user base but also by the design team behind it, Apogee’s

new ﬂagship sets a few records straight and redeﬁnes what can now be expected from a

convertor box. JON THORNTON ticks the boxes.

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Apogee Symphony I/O 1

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24resolution January/February 2012REVIEWApogee has a long history in the manufacture of digital audio hardware, including some classic A-D and D-A c

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25January/February 2012 resolutionREVIEWmapping physical inputs to outputs (standalone mode), or physical inputs and outputs to pairs of software inp

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