Michael Tibes
Well-known member
As much as I like Apogee's sound quality, I'd stay clear of them because of their not so great reliability, unavailability of schematics and bad support for older units ('we don't have these old parts any more...')
This is the way I feel about my Metric Halos. I have a ULN-2 that I bought in 2004 and still in use, although not as much as my ULN-8s. They keep supporting them, although I don’t think any more ULN-2s will be made (due to chip availability).We had some MOTUs. They are fine. Sound good. Well made. I was impressed with their cast alu chassis, for instance.
The only reason we stopped using them, is because the local importer changed it's service. Before, we paid a resonable exchange rate for repairs. Sometimes we got a new one, usually the exchange was a repaired one. That suited our administration well. They always suspect some monkey-business if repairs are expensive. Of course, not if the price is fixed and known beforehand.
These days, they feel you should simply buy a new one. Out-of-warranty repairs are slow and fairly expensive.
We bought Behringer ADA8000s. Cheap and cheerful. And RME interfaces. We can usually fix what goes wrong with them in-house. Parts are available and reasonably priced. But, most important to us: drivers are updated frequently and even for very old gear. Frankly, RME is the only manufacturer I can think of that cares for old stuff. I used to hate RME. Until I was forced to use one and RTFM. It took a while, but I can't live without TotalMix and DigiCheck these days.
That’s a great price. Wish it made sense for me right now — unfortunately have to drop a bunch of money because of car troubles so this converter endeavor is currently on hold lol…I'm putting up for sale Metric Halo 2882. Going to list here on black market. Converters are stelar and it's rock solid adat stand-alone mode. It will be hard to find something in that good for that money
+1. I have purchased exactly one Apogee product, and it died at almost exactly the 1 year point. Then I received a laughably bad customer service email thread full of questions that are answered in the email thread above where he asked them- with screen captures marked up with circles. It took over a week to get an RMA#, and during that almost-two-weeks, he told me that he was being so thorough so as to not waste my time sending in a unit that didn't need to be sent in. He said an estimate for the repair was not available for my problem. When the repair came back, the charge was almost the cost of a new unit, and greater than the cost of a competitor that I should just bought in the first place.As much as I like Apogee's sound quality, I'd stay clear of them because of their not so great reliability, unavailability of schematics and bad support for older units ('we don't have these old parts any more...')
Really? I’ve been using the same 32 I/o 13 year old apogee symphony mk 1 with zero technical issues and it still works with the newest version of Mac OS and silicone and protools hdx. I had problems getting past apples new security updating to a new Mac and apogee’s support walked me through the code to get it recognized. That’s a legacy product supposedly not supported by tech support but they were happy to help. My experience with apogee is the opposite of yours.As much as I like Apogee's sound quality, I'd stay clear of them because of their not so great reliability, unavailability of schematics and bad support for older units ('we don't have these old parts any more...')
If you can find a Lynx Aurora with the ADAT card installed you'd be golden, the bang for the buck on those is amazing these days. Tricky part is finding one with the ADAT card though, they seem more of a rarity while HDX and no extender cards are available all day long for cheap. Other than that, from my own experience an old Multiface is a pretty safe bet.
One that I have been curious about is the SSL Alpha Link. You see these things cheap (relatively) on eBay and Reverb with tons of I/O and connectivity options and it's SSL. Reviews are pretty much non-existent though...
The ADA8000 had power supply reliability issues (they had parts that ran hot and eventually failed). But these were solved in the ADA8200. I have one and it has proved to be very reliable. The only caveat is (in my loopback measurements) it drops off by 0.5 dB at 20Khz.Would a Behringer ADA8000 be worth considering? Super cheap
good to know about the x series .To be fair, Apogee still services the ad/da16x, which is pretty old at this point.
That was as of several months ago. I have a perfect AD, but a DA with 1 channel low in volume that's laying around. They said 100 bucks min, 500 max (probably a whole board replacement?). Not too bad considering the age. One of these days I have to figure out what to do with them (as I have a symphony setup here now).
Yes it does suck they don't have schematics. But you know damn well if they made them available, in 3 months there would be a knockoff on the market.
That's a helpful bit of info, thanks. One of these days I'm going to take a look at the low output channel on the da16x here. I'll make sure to check those application notes.good to know about the x series .
My opinion is that they could release the not so special parts of the circuits and leave the magical parts in blocks on the drawings.
I literally just copied the chip manufacturer application notes when troubleshooting my Rosetta's input/output section . Could have saved a bunch of time had it been provided, especially since it was in that section..
Apogee was helpful though and went from saying they don't repair the Rosettas to they felt confident they could fix mine after I shared the progress being made . Fortunately other members here saw the issue from my drawings and measurements too and it was a successful repair.
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