Apogee Quartet vs. UA Apollo Quad and best outs for recording

DFauvre

Inspired
I lost an entire week to trying to figure out why the headphone out of my new Apogee Quartet sounded so inferior to the headphone out on Axe II. I tried every imaginable configuration and worked with Apogee and Fractal. No one could figure it out. So I returned the Quartet and bought a UA Apollo Quad.

First, I can say (I have great ears for tone and have owned an amp by about every major manufacturer at one time or another and opened for national touring acts for 2 years with a large amp rig) that without a doubt, the Apollo is dramatically better than the Quartet. Not even close. The Apollo has far better converters and they are far more accurate.

Additionally, oddly, the best sounding out is the XLRs from the Fractal. Go figure. I would have thought using S/PDIF or USB would be better, it's not.

Would love any comments. The Axe II through the Apollo sounds as good as it does out of the headphone out of the Axe II. So I imagine the headphone amp on the Apollo is better as well.
 
I record almost exclusively with the XLR outs.

I can't hear any noticeable degradation vs. S/PDIF.

I'm on a PC / Pro Tools platform so USB is not a good option for me since Pro Tools does not support aggregate devices on the PC.
 
I agree with you on the Apollo. Very nice interface. It would hang with my Radar.

I also use the Balanced outs of my Axe 2 the most. They also sound really, really good though my API or Reddi DI.
 
I did the same USB/AES/Analog out comparison and the best is USB with Axe Fx 2, analog being very close and AES sucks too much low end (don't know why, being digital). I own a RME Fireface UFX btw.
 
Good to see this as I am hoping to get an apollo quad by end of month. Besides sounding great, it has killer DSP plug ins and 2 headphone outs. Perfect fit for my lil studio.
 
If you find that the spdif or aes connection from the axe doesn't sound as good as USB, something is wrong. USB and spdif should sound identical. Analog out should be slightly less accurate. I tested extensively awhile back and settled on spdif since it was clearer than analog. I would have used USB except for the aggregate device issue in my setup.

Is it possible that the complaints against spdif are due to clocking errors? For example, my sync is now defaulting to 44.1 when I start axe edit so I have to change it back to 48. At 44.1 it will sound bassy.

Ps I'm usually on an ff400.
 
I did my comparison by ear.

My Axe is patched with fairly short, 3m, high quality XLR's.

On my system, there was not a noticable higher quality to spdif vs. analog.

But spdif sounds fine as does USB. Not complaining about them.

It's just more practical for me to patch analog and it sounds just as good to me.
 
How is anyone using USB due to the horrid aggregate device problems with Macs? Also, any suggestions on why S/PDIF sounds inferior to the XLRs? Is it a setting somewhere? I am new to using S/PDIF and the apollo
 
How is anyone using USB due to the horrid aggregate device problems with Macs? Also, any suggestions on why S/PDIF sounds inferior to the XLRs? Is it a setting somewhere? I am new to using S/PDIF and the apollo

Who is saying spdif is inferior to analog?
 
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