At the end of the day it is still a UAD product, meaning that you will spend a lot more on their proprietary plugins than on the card itself.

And I'm not sure sure that a latency of 1ms vs 5ms is very important, except of course for the UAD sales staff.

 

Honesty I'm agree and attached to USB 3 , Olymoon you right , common guys for how long we going to keep changing our ways of connections were musicain were not fashion mode computers connections

 

Not sure how they calculated 4.5ms minimum for USB, badly coded/broken divers?
And then post a pic with "6ms USB Bus clock FRONT buffer" & "6ms ... BACK buffer."

USB 2.0 runs @1 frame/ms. Source: USB spec.

 

try to compare specs with real world scenario.

Speaking of which, on my Thunderbolt (3) Focusrite Clarett 2Pre, this is my minimum latency on 88.2khz


16 samples, just enough to record vocals with draft plugins or pianos & other lightweight vstis. If there's anything "heavier" to be recorded, still on a low latency, i switch it to 64 samples, that will take it up to 1.64ms per direction, which is still under 2ms. All cool under 17% cpu usage.
I tried that with my traveling usb soundcard (2i2 gen2) and didn't have the same luck.

Machine: HP Zbook G3 4K Mobile Workstation, i7 6820hq, 16gb ddr4 ECC ram, Zdrive M.2 SSD, Nvidia Quadro M1000. (usb-c/thunderbolt3 as main connection)

 

On the same note, yesterday I was tracking vocals on 2 mic channels on my old Line 6 Toneport UX2 on a MacBook Pro 2012 using Pod Farm plugins at 32 samples without a hiccup.

 

its USB-C / thunderbolt 3 how freaking Cool ... this will be an amazing interface with amZing plug ins ...what a cheap way to get awesome sound im getting one for my PC ... im so over my Focusrites Clarett 2 shitty clock you cant even keep solid lock with the dam thing solid to other interfaces .. i only use 2 channels most of the time any way .. 1 for mic one for guitar id rather they had a UADS Digital Neve ,Manley ,ssl or even a Distressor at the input than someones crappy pretend interpretation of one also on a UAD SYSTEM you have near ZERO latency and no drain on the CPU. no mater what your recording its just how it works think this is a freaking Killer Product ...

 

I saw it ..and YES it is...

I have the apollo twin duo... Win version, USB 3.0, overall happy with the sound quality,stability etc.,
but the one thing I considered a serious drawback, is that they made these units either/or... and yes I own an iMac also...
other than pure greed, what sense does that make ?

 

@m9cao
Well... hehehe... I have ranted against UAD policies in the past too. Some things in this life are measurable though and as audio cards, Apollos provide some of the best sounding solutions, sitting at the top of the "food chain" along with Prism Sound, Antelope etc. So if this interface doesn't compromise the acclaimed UAD sound quality, @499 dlrs price, i think it will be justifiably a hit product. The dsp is just a bonus.

Yep, and imho that is what they 're trying to "fix" with this interface, to unify the lower end of their products, which presumably is the most commercial one as well.

Excuse me, but this is not entirely true. Even with just the dsp card running plugs (i have a uad-2 quad), the main cpu takes a hit, although a minor one.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2018

I had no idea. I thought the newer USB Twin would be Mac compatible. The first-gen Twin is Windows compatible if you have a Thunderbolt port, which is not so unusual now as it was 3 years ago.

I am a happy UAD user and I don't see myself selling my Twin and crossing over to some other system. However, it's a matter of commitment. when I bought it in 2014, Nebula was a rather obscure audio cult with elite following. Their core technology advance in the last couple of years, and newer interfaces, have made it possible to build an audio setup in Mac or Windows that will sound amazing without being tethered to an interface or license dongle.

 

Measuring round trip latency is easily done with a loopback audio cable. Not by posting a screencap from your DAW's drivers settings (the referenced article goes to great lengths to explain why reported latency has little to do with reality).

VSTi processing has nothing to do with your audio driver or audio interface (USB or Thunderbolt); happens inside your DAW.

The speed of sound is roughly 1,125 ft/s, which means it travels ~1 foot per ms. Unless you can't track with monitors (which are more than 2 feet away from your ear), or can't play on stage due to too much latency (the wedge is 6 feet away from your ear, minimum, which translates to 6ms delay, minimum), this is all strictly academic.

 

I think you're either wrong on this one or either I wasn't clear enough. If it has nothing to do with it, then why does "using a higher sample values -> which increases latency roundtrip" helps with CPU spikes and keeps it from not maxing out. If I take a heavy synth (diva for example) I won't have much luck with it on 16 samples buffer lenght, playing diva pad patches would be impossible, utterly cracking. The more I increase the buffer lenght the better the CPU handles heavy processes in real-time, but that also induces a higher latency roundtrip. In my case, my thunderbolt interface and its drivers works better, faster and more usable at lower latencies than my other USB interface which crashes under a minute if set and used at 16 samples buffer.


The estimated latency value in my DAW changes in realtime based on the selected sample lengths. If that panel would be irrelevant, then why does the latency is audible when the buffer length is raised and gets tighter and imperceptible when lowered? Why does studio one crackles and also completely crashes under a minute of use when I set 16 samples buffer on my USB focusrite, but works fine and stable on the thunderbolt one, on the exact same workstation laptop/O.S.

I don't think that "all strictly academic" can compensate for tried/proven/real-life user experience/comparison.

I'm not saying that Thunderbolt made USB obsolete, but I do say that it works better on my system.

This info is useful for people who might buy or already own the same laptop, in case they're ever looking to buy a new interface and can't decide which connectivity it's best for them and their workstation.

P.S. if you want me to screen record the behaviour of each soundcard in action and show you how it's impossible for me to use my usb soundcard on 16 samples buffer, but possible on the thunderbolt one, would you explain to me and justify why the USB interface it's still better in your eyes, beyond my actual real life comparison that proves the opposite?

Evorax

 

You forgot option C, the one where you're wrong. It's the one you want

"Higher sample values" makes no sense. If you mean "larger [ASIO] buffer size," increasing it adds the same amount of latency to all audio interfaces -- from onboard sound to Firewire/USB/Thunderbolt to ... other hardware solutions.

Which USB interface is that? There are USB interfaces that crash all the time. That's due to them being junk and/or having bad drivers, little to do with the choice of interface.

Which DAW is that?

If the difference between a buffer that's 16 samples long @ 88.2k buffer (math: (1 / 88200) * 16 = ~ .00018 seconds, or .18 ms) and one, oh, let's say 4 times bigger (.72 ms) is important to you, you are not human and/or are kidding yourself. The round trip through your 16 sample (.18ms) buffer takes (here's that math again ) .18 * 2 = .36 ms, or roughly the time it takes sound to travel through 1ft * .36 = .36 feet of air.

I'm happy that your new interface works better than your old one, though attributing this win to Thunderbolt is a bit of a head-scratcher
Edit: I can't math, was off by x10

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2018

Would this be a good interface for someone who just wants something high quality with good mic pre-amps, solid build quality and good headphone input?

I don't plan on using any UAD plugins to mix and master so the processing power of the interface itself doesn't really matter to me.

 

If someone verifies it has the same preamps as the proven award winning Apollo Twin MKII, i'd say yes.

Skip to 2:25

 

Dunno. Their other stuff always mentions # of SHARC processors, like this:
Built In DSP/FX: Four SHARC processors - Realtime UAD processing (vintage compressors, EQ, tape machines, preamps, guitar amps, stompboxes)
... but not for this thing ...
Built In DSP/FX: UAD Plug-in Emulations (Tube Pre, EQ, Delay, Guitar Amp, Distortion, Compressor, Channel Strip)
(both pulled from Sweetwater's website)

UAD Plug-in Emulations? Maybe just an unfortunate omission/odd wording, but a bit confusing.
Just curiosity on my part btw, not thinking of buying.

 

The reason the adaptors for Thunderbolt to USBC - backwards compatibility isn't possible is because USBC / Thunderbolt 3 powers the thing on bus power and only that true connection will do it. Most new machines have usbc / thunderbolt 3 , so in that sense this is a great inexpensive move forward. This isn't wonderful for those of us, especially macbook pro retina owners who've not been impressed by apples latest offerings. I don't fault UAD for this I applaud them for this step forward. This solves the mobile problem for a lot of people.

 

it says its built on a twins solo core