put right on the recording as and when it passes hot through the interface. Overall what this adds up to from a practical point-of-view, I find, is that the Apollo is probably a better choice if you're recording lots of vocals and would really benefit from having lots of vocal pre-amps, FX, etc. RME's DSP (and its TotalMix software) is modest in comparison, but, again, the device will perform better in a general DAW environment. Anything below the top-end Quad versions will max out on processing power pretty quickly. The processing power of the Apollo's DSP chips is really not good in terms of current-gen tech. Apollo's Unison pre-amps sound very good indeed, but you can find other third-party pre-amps, compressors, FX units, etc, for the RME (and you won't necessarily have to pay $240 for them like with the UAD store). The RME will offer you more raw power and better latency performance if you happen to want to use your own DAW-based plug-ins or VSTs. You will be locked into their ecosystem, again, though, which see above for the cost implications. The pre-amps in the RME sound very good and clean, though they add hardly any colour they are similar to MOTU and Apogee in this regard (and in the same ballpark of quality a bit better than MOTU and a little bit below Apogee, though the new FS features of the latest Babyface should not be underestimated).Īpollo offers their Unison pre-amp technology, which means that you can monitor and record things straightaway with a gorgeous 'colour', say of a Neve or Manley. It is best in its category in this regard. The RME will perform better out of the box, especially with regards to driver performance and round-journey latency. The Apollo gives you a pretty much unmatched suite of plug-ins and emulations, though you will be locked in to their ecosystem, finding yourself paying $100s if not $1000s of dollars for extra stuff. If a user doesn't care much for the Apollo plug-ins and Unison pre-amp emulation, RME's interfaces perform measurably better. You can look up these figures and benchmarks anywhere. RME's interfaces have noticeably better latency and driver performance than Apollo's. so long as you stick with Apollo plug-ins to run on Apollo-only SHARC chips.

As a result, what you're effectively doing when you buy an Apollo device is 'buying in' to their ecosystem. You could run more plug-ins and VSTs on an 8-core Intel or AMD CPU. Of course, Apollo's own plug-ins and emulations run well on them (just about the Duo versions will max out pretty easily), but the processing power is certainly nothing to write home about at this point. The 'DSP' on Apollo at this point is extremely old SHARC chips, which are about a decade out of date. One of the most reputable and established brands? Yes, I'll give you that. There are many better interfaces than Apollo, just they happen to be in a higher price bracket.

Absolutely not 'by far the best audio interfaces you can get'.

Can you use uad plugins without apollo