high end laptop interface

[patchmonkey]

Originally Posted by µ¿ z3®ø™

the apogee is in a whole 'nuther category. extremely neutral and transparent, nice recovery of transients w/o sounding hyped and a very nice translation of the soundstage.
i don't think that either the MH or RME are dogs. i was fairly happy w/ the metric halo (problem being that i'm not really a huge fan of digital) and it was really only hearing the apogee in comparison that made me realise that i could achieve a much more digital nasty free recording with the rosetta.

very helpful to hear someone who's directly compared these, although i fear you're telling me what i already knew. i've used apogee converters from the ad8000 to the ad16x, and know they're of high quality. and i also know that you usually get what you pay for, great reviews of the metric halo and rme aside. but, as someone who went digital only reluctantly, i hate spending money on computer/digital gear that could be put towards nice analog gear, as james said -

I did consider the Rosetta 200 + FW Card + DAV-1 pre-amp combo which I'm sure would have been an awesome rig (albeit at 3x the price of the MH!), but finally the cost, convenience and excellent user-reports on the ULN-2 (plus the 'beta' state of the Apogee Firemix software at the time) tipped the balance towards Metric Halo and I put the money I saved into some new microphones (Gefell & Avenson if anyone's interested!).

guess i may have to suck it up and go with the rosetta, although i'm not sure i can justify the expense right now. what are you using to interface with your monitors, btw? although that's a whole other can o'worms...

[µ¿ z3®ø™]

Originally Posted by patchmonkey

what are you using to interface with your monitors, btw? although that's a whole other can o'worms...

dangerous music 2buss/monitor/MX.
this in combination w/ the FireMIx software allows me to cover just about any scenario.

[nano_606]

First of all, I don't have any direct experience with Apogee at all. But I do want to point out a conversation I had with AKM semiconductors chief engineer a year ago. He said that of all the companies they deal with, only one "tweak" the D/A converters after AKM delivers them. He said Apogee opens them up and does a few "minor design changes" to the D/A converters in all of their units.. Now im not exactly sure what that means to us end user guys,, but I have a feeling that maybe what your hearing out of Apogee's D/A is not really whats on the hard drive..

In that case I would like to hear a comparison of sounds tracked with Apogee A/D, and then played back through a slew of other D/A's. I am suspecious that the D/A might not be telling the real story...

Don't mean to piss anyone off, just curious... Why the D/A? Why not the A/D too? I have a feeling that it's kinda like the studio situation were the band says "hey man it sounded great at the studio, why does it suck in every cd player I put it in"... Not that drastic , but you get the idea.