[isma]

Originally Posted by Quint

To those here that are figuring the cost of a UAD quad or duo into the overall cost of the Apollo, in an attempt to come up with how much the rest of the unit is actually "worth" or what level of quality it is, I think you should consider this. Recently you could purchase the LA-610 (I think it was the 610) and get a UAD card thrown in for free.

Why would they do this? They do this because they know that the card only costs them a fraction of the selling price to make and they know that people will buy the plugins and spend way more in the end. Giving the cards away or including them in products like the Apollo is an ingenius way to drum up business on the sale of plugins. In the end, I think that the Apollo is as much about selling plugins as it is about selling the hardware itself.

In the end, we will see how the conversion on the Apollo sounds and that will be the selling point for me. However, I wouldn't have been nearly as interested or anticipatory if the ability to track with or even through UAD plugins wasn't included as a feature. Normally, I'm pretty indifferent to the quality of built in plugins on interfaces but the fact that the Apollo can use UAD plugins, especially the Studer A800, and the fact that I can track with them without depending on the computer at all is what I find intriguing.

All that being said, I think it's a bit ridiculous to say that the Quad card costs $1500 and from there conclude that the rest of the Apollo Quad is only worth $1000. UA knows what they're doing and the real "cost" of adding the Quad card to the Apollo is a mere fraction of the cost of the entire box. At the absolute most, you are only spending $500 on the Quad card (and the included Analog Classics plugin bundle). The remaining $2000 is going entirely to everything else. We don't know what the conversion sounds like yet but I can promise you that the overall quality of the conversion and preamps won't be anywhere near the $1000 level that some of you are claiming.

UA stands to make a boatload of money by opening up UAD plugins to a whole new segment of customers that previously might not have considered going the UAD route if it meant they had to purchase a UAD card, myself included. However, if someone can gain access to UAD plugins while also getting a quality interface, that's an entirely different matter and that's why there is so much interest in the Apollo. It really is a very smart move on UA's part.

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