It's been over six years since we review the original firewire Ensemble from Apogee Electronics, calling it an "ideal centrepiece for any Mac-based studio" (http://sosm.ag/jun08ensemble). Now the company are updating their interface to take advantage of the latest connection protocols, and providing lower round-trip latencies than ever. The new Ensemble is a 30x34 Thunderbolt 2 audio interface for home, project and professional Mac-based studios.
One of the areas where the original Ensemble drew criticism was in its lack of front-panel control, but this looks to have been largely resolved in this reincarnation. Input selection buttons and assignable soft keys have been added to the front panel as well as monitor and individual headphone output knobs.
Blending the best of Apogee’s acclaimed innovations from products like Symphony I/O, Duet, Quartet and JAM with new features and Intel’s Thunderbolt technology, Ensemble provides everything you need to record, edit, mix and master on your Mac using Logic Pro, Pro Tools or any Core Audio based DAW.
Apogee claim to offer the lowest round-trip latency performance available in any all-in-one audio interface at 1.1ms. The Ensemble sports eight mic preamps with Apogee’s Advanced Stepped Gain circuitry, front panel Guitar I/O, built-in talkback functionality, and the most comprehensive user interface of any Apogee product.
The new Apogee Ensemble should be available in October and will cost $2495.
Ensemble Highlights from Apogee:
- Thunderbolt 2 Mac audio interface
- 8 Mic preamps with up to 75 dB of gain and Advanced Stepped Gain circuit
- 2 front panel Guitar I/O channels with class A JFET inputs, dual mode re-amp outputs
- 16 analog outputs of premium Apogee conversion
- Proprietary Thunderbolt audio driver and ESS Sabre32 DAC offer full 32-bit playback
- Groundbreaking low latency (1.1 ms round trip @ 96kHz/32 buffer)
- Core Audio-optimized hardware DMA Engine frees your Mac CPU
- 2 high-resolution OLED displays show levels and settings
- Input select buttons and controller knob for selection of parameters and settings
- 4 assignable buttons to control: Talkback mic (built-in or external), Output settings such as speaker set selection, mute, dim, sum to mono
- Complete input/output control with Apogee’s Maestro software
- AD/DA conversion for recording up to 24-bit/192kHz
- Works with Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton or any Core Audio compliant app on Mac
- Designed in California – Assembled in the U.S.A.
