pro tools op

3rd Party Interface Options

In the last post, I was talking about the DigiDesign brand interfaces for Pro Tools HD.

Aside from less than exciting sound quality, they are also large, heavy and feature cooling fans that add noise to your control room. So, after hearing a lot about Apogee products for years, and learning that there was a way to add a card to their units that would allow you to bypass using a 192, we took the plunge and bought a couple of Rosetta 800’s for our live rig.

Apogee Rosetta 800 w x-hd card
The Apogee lives up to its marketing tag line: it sounds amazing. I love the sound of this box. It is warm, punchy, rich in the bottom and it performs remarkably well. It has a wide array of I/O options, lightpipe, AES and an option card for HD connection (or firewire if you so choose). My only complaint about it is with the X-HD card option: you can only run 8 channels in and out. Another nice feature is that it uses no cooling fan (I can’t seem to stop talking about that on this post). Fits in a Single rack space which makes it very portable. With the lightpipe connection you can use it with a Digi 002 as well when you need to do the occasional low budget remote and still have it sound great. Very helpful and responsive tech support too. The Apogee people always answered the phone and talked us through some serious problems at first when we had a bad HD card. They fixed it really quickly and got us going, even upgrading our Rosetta 96k to a 192 at no charge. I can recommend them without hesitation.

Lynx Aurora 16 w LT-HD card
This is also a great sounding box. Much cleaner and detailed in the top end than the Rosetta. Both the Apogee and the Lynx seem to put the Digidesign converters to shame. It is definitely more transparent than any other converter I’ve worked on with Pro Tools. I really like this box for live recording because it fits 16 channels of A/D and D/A conversion into Pro Tools directly (with the LT HD card) in a single rack space. My only gripe about it is that the digital I/O is only AES, which means that can’t use it with a 002 for low budget remotes. But that’s a minimal gripe. I’m sure there’s a format converter out there somewhere that I just haven’t researched yet. This box does generate a fair amount of heat (as does the Rosetta) so give it some room in your rack if you can.

Summary

I think I prefer the sound of the Apogee Rosetta, it just seems smoother and I find myself less fatigued at the end of a long day when I work with it. The Aurora is definitely more defined in the top end (which is probably why I feel fatigued after using it) and it is also probably translating the sound of digital audio more transparently. The Apogee feels more analog.

Both of these units sound much better than the DigiDesign options the 96 or the 192 io. Even if you own one of those units, try out some external converters. It can really improve the way you hear your mixes.