Apogee Symphony IO - 8 Ch. Preamp Feedback?

[otobianki74]

would like to hear user feedback on the pres as well.

thanks!

oto

[Melgueil]

Would be curious as well. Not much has been said so far, but I suppose they are relatively new.

Cdlt

[Clint at Apogee]

Originally Posted by Melgueil

Would be curious as well. Not much has been said so far, but I suppose they are relatively new.

Cdlt

The Pre's are undiscovered in my opinion. Yes, it's my job to sell them so I have a bias out of the gate but I will tell you that I think these are amazing. There are a lot of excellent pre's on the market I always promote collecting pre's as much as possible. Having an arsenal of Pre/Mic & Pre/Instrument combinations only deepens a producers/engineers palette for good capture.

But - the sheer warmth and DB gain of the Symphony Pre's is a bit astounding given there is no transformer. Also - the flexibility when the Send/Return is connected to an API lunch box for example. Having software controlled inserts for capture is pretty cool.

Then if you divide the cost by 8 - probably the best per cost pre at this caliber out there. If you need 8 transparent and phat pre-s with 85 DB if gain ....

I would really enjoy feedback form anyone that has them ..

Clint at Aopgee

[waldie wave]

Hi Clint. How would you compare them to say a GML, Millennia, Grace, Buzz or other mic pres you are familiar with? What types of instruments would they be more suitable for recording? Are there any reviews anywhere? I haven't been able to find any on the net. Are there any reviews in the pipeline eg from Mix Mag, Sound On Sound, etc?

By the way, I love the Symphony i/o. It is the first converter I have fallen in love with. It sounds amazing - so much better than the Rosetta 800 192k. Well done at Apogee!!

When do you think the 2 in 6 out card will be released?

[Melgueil]

They recorded a jazz album with these pres - it's up on YouTube.

As I do primarily all acoustic / jazz when it comes to mic'ing, these might work but I would want to demo them somewhere if possible. Seems to be scant user feedback at this time.
Cdlt

[SnareBuzz]

Dear Gearslutz Colleagues,

I'm a huge fan of Apogee products (started with a Duet, moved to an Ensemble, and now own a Symphony I/O with 16 Analog In/16 Analog Out card and the Mic preamp card). Just got this installed last week and over the weekend did some simple recordings of acoustic guitar (Taylor) using a stereo pair of SM81's. Was curious as to the sound of the Apogee Pres in comparison with my more common setup, which is to take the SM81's into a pair of Shadow Hills Monographs running in discrete mode (a fairly clean and fast preamp).

I'd be happy to post those comparisons, but thinking of actually simplifying with a mono-mic setup and running through a gamet of preamps:
Electordyne 501
Avedis MA5
Shadow Hills (all 3 transformer modes)
Great River
API
Heritage Audio 1073

I'm hoping to get to that comparison between now and Christmas...it'll be useful for me to show clients how these different mic preamps sound in helping aid the direction of my future recordings, so an exercise that will help me but that I'm happy to share with this community. If you guys would like me to share the stereo comparisons of the Apogee Mic Pres with the Shadow Hills Discrete, let me know and I'll post those this week or can email to whomever is interested.

Best regards,
Ron Brashear, owner
SnareBuzz Studios
www.snarebuzzstudios.com

[Lupez]

I'd be very very interested, thanks.
In the meanwhile care to share your first impression?

[otobianki74]

interested! thx!

[Peter Stengaard]

Are the converters and pres the same in the new quartet thingy ?

[otobianki74]

converters are not. pres I'm not sure about.

[jweisbin]

Before you buy, try to get near one with at least two cards in it and listen to it - not the sound of the converters - the sound of the fan.

Totally unusable unless you have an iso-box or can put it in a separate room, IMAO

[conmix]

Originally Posted by jweisbin

Before you buy, try to get near one with at least two cards in it and listen to it - not the sound of the converters - the sound of the fan.

Totally unusable unless you have an iso-box or can put it in a separate room, IMAO

Is this fan noise problem common for every unit fitted with 2 cards? Wasn't there a firmware to fix this problem? I'm interested in the 16 I/O + mic pre setup. This is quite worrying.

[SnareBuzz]

Originally Posted by Lupez

I'd be very very interested, thanks.
In the meanwhile care to share your first impression?

Hi Lupez..got your email and also checked the forum to see what other questions were out there. I'll be posting up files soon enough based on the interest, but I'm happy to share my first impressions with you & answer some of the other questions I saw after my post.

First Impressions:
Impressions & Opinions are subjective of course and probably dependent on a number of factors, but using a stereo pair of SM81's on an Acoustic Guitar and recording with the Apogee Symphony Mic Pres and then comparing at comparable gain to something like the Shadow Hills using the Discrete setting, I was honestly very surprised at what my ears were telling me.

Based on a few listens back and forth, the Apogee mic pres are actually warmer and more colored than the Shadow Hills in Discrete mode. I expected them to be very clean (ie, like Millennia or Grace, or Forrsell) based on my experiences with the Ensemble preamps, but they are NOT the same at all.......

The Apogee Symphony pres are beefy to my ears and warm and they don't accentuate the top end at all...in fact, I think they have less sparkle then others to my ear...a bit surprising given the lack of transformer in these preamps. They're quite vintage sounding relative to what you'd consider as clean/sterile preamps. I like the sound a lot based on initial listening, but need to do more as my first card had a problem which Apogee quickly resolved.

FAN NOISE:
As has been discussed elsewhere in the forum, when you add the mic pre card to a single card symphony unit, the fan does start to run at higher speed and more often then with a single card and it's not the quietest fan in the world. Apogee will send a vent-mod kit to any owner with 2 cards and that modification significantly reduced the fan noise on my unit, but it's still more fan noise with the mic card then without. Whether this is a no-go or killer for your situation will depend on how you use things, how you're setup/etc. I'm still evaluating myself to understand the impact of the noise on my recordings and if I can work around it at all since I track in the same room as the unit. Apogee have been wonderful to work with, responsive with solutions, answers, and I have no reason to believe this will change.

Files will be forthcoming, but I hope that answers a few questions!
Best regards
Ron

[Lupez]

Many thanks!
It's more or less what I expected although not what I hoped for - I don't think it's the sound I would use for recording a Martin acoustic or similar.
But on the contrary sounds like a great choice for tracking drums.

Slightly OT: aside from the mic pres module, do you find the Symphony an obvious upgrade from the Ensemble? I own a Duet2 and I am still not sure if it's worth upgrading to the basic 2x6 module especially considering I should look for a clean pedigree pre to go with the Symphony, and in the end I would end up investing as much as your 8 channel module with mic pres....!

The fan noise worries me a little as I would track close to the Symphony.

[piano]

Originally Posted by Lupez

Many thanks!
It's more or less what I expected although not what I hoped for - I don't think it's the sound I would use for recording a Martin acoustic or similar.
But on the contrary sounds like a great choice for tracking drums.

Slightly OT: aside from the mic pres module, do you find the Symphony an obvious upgrade from the Ensemble? I own a Duet2 and I am still not sure if it's worth upgrading to the basic 2x6 module especially considering I should look for a clean pedigree pre to go with the Symphony, and in the end I would end up investing as much as your 8 channel module with mic pres....!

The fan noise worries me a little as I would track close to the Symphony.

I'm getting a Symphony I/O tomorrow. I am comparing it to my Ensemble with a Big Ben Clock - this is as souped up as an Ensemble can be (with out mods). I also have a Duet - and yes the Ensemble is better sounding than the Duet. Yes, the Ensemble sounds better with the Big Ben.

[SnareBuzz]

Originally Posted by Lupez

Many thanks!
It's more or less what I expected although not what I hoped for - I don't think it's the sound I would use for recording a Martin acoustic or similar.
But on the contrary sounds like a great choice for tracking drums.

Slightly OT: aside from the mic pres module, do you find the Symphony an obvious upgrade from the Ensemble? I own a Duet2 and I am still not sure if it's worth upgrading to the basic 2x6 module especially considering I should look for a clean pedigree pre to go with the Symphony, and in the end I would end up investing as much as your 8 channel module with mic pres....!

The fan noise worries me a little as I would track close to the Symphony.

Lupez, I had an Ensemble before I bought the Symphony and I had both at the same time so I could compare. The difference in the sound of the converters is not subtle...for me it was night and day better sound quality and hearing more of what was there with the Symphony. I tried the Lynx as well and the Lynx is cleaner, but sterile clean is not my preference...I like the sound that Apogee parts on my music and so I choose to stick with them. Incidently, I sold the Ensemble. The converters & the mic pres were much more sterile in the Ensemble than they are in the Symphony...I prefer the latter, but different strokes for different folks you know??? There's no right/wrong here..it's all a matter of preference. I liked the Ensemble...I love the Symphony

[SnareBuzz]

Dear Gearslutz Colleagues,

My studio partner and I did these recordings in part to help us evaluate the Apogee Symphony IO Mic pre card and in part to help us make some decisions for tracking of an upcoming album. The first files I'll post here are all of a Taylor Acoustic Guitar. Every preamp tested was a separate performance (yes, I'm aware of differences in takes). All were done with a single Shure SM81 condenser at ~12th fret and about 3 ft from the acoustic guitar...once set, that didn't move and neither did the performer...at least not much.

All preamps were dialed into about a -10db setting as best I could using Maestro's metering. When I bounced files, I used Slate's FG-X metering and ensured the RMS values were near -28-23 on average and the last chord was -25.3db on the RMS scale...if that helps at all in leveling different performances.

Long story short, this wasn't intended as a true shootout and I understand this method has its own flaws..... for us, it served the purpose to give us the flavor of different pres and to be able to compare the Apogee Symphony Mic Pres with others that are well loved & used by folks here as well as us. They're blinded, but I'll post in the next posting the key for those that are interested

I hope you all find these useful....I have similar ones for Bass Guitar & Vocals which I plan to upload soon!

Enjoy!
Ron Brashear
SnareBuzz Studios
www.snarebuzzstudios.com

[SnareBuzz]

PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR THE KEY FOR THE MICPRE TEST IN THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR TEST ABOVE

Guitar Mic Pre Test:
SnareBuzz Studios


Test # Microphone Preamp & Notes
1 Apogee Symphony IO Mic Pre (setting of ~ 50%)
2 Shadow Hills Mono Gama (Discrete setting)
3 Shadow Hills Mono Gama (Nickel setting)
4 Avedis MA5 (28k lift engaged)
5 Avedis MA5 (no 28k lift)
6 Electrodyne 501
7 Heritage Audio 1073 500 series (no EQ)

[PaulOcchialini]

#4 Avedis was my favorite, unlike what seems like the entire audio community I again dislike everything I have heard from shadow hills. The Apogee is very vanilla to my palette, which is not always a bad thing and the heritage sounded pretty ok too.

[SnareBuzz]

The following files were recorded using a Warwick bass guitar and each preamp tested was a different performance of a general pattern. Again, our purpose in doing this was to try and understand and compare different preamp choices with this bass guitar to help us with understanding the Apogee Symphony Mic Preamp and compare it to others we use all the time. Where possible, we used the direct input on the preamps, although the Avedis Preamp and the Heritage Audio preamp do not have direct inputs, so in those cases, we used a DW FEARN direct box and dialed in the same level of signal.

My hope is that this serves to share information with others that may be curious as to the sound of the Apogee Mic Pre card and in comparison to other commonly used 500 series preamps.

Please let me know if you have any questions...I hope you find this useful! Mic preamp key to follow in the next post!

Best regards,
Ron Brashear, owner
SnareBuzz Studios
www.snarebuzzstudios.com

[SnareBuzz]

Bass Mic Pre Test:
SnareBuzz Studios


Test # Microphone Preamp & Notes
1 Apogee Symphony IO Mic Pre (direct through DI)
2 Avedis MA5 (DW Fearn direct box)
3 Electrodyne 501 (direct through DI)
4 Shadow Hills (Steel Setting, direct through DI)
5 Heritage Audio (no EQ, Fearn direct box)

[SnareBuzz]

There hasn't been a ton of examples or talk about the Apogee Symphony Mic preamps and so I decided to take them for a spin in my studio. Here's the long and the short of it for me:

The mic pres definitely have a colored tone..much more colored than the preamps on the Duet or the Ensemble which are the other Apogee mic pres i have experience with. Is this a good thing or a bad thing...well, I suppose that's subjective and probably dependent on whether you like the color or not and whether you have other colored preamps or are using this as your primary source.

At any rate, the sound to my ears was high quality, although there was no source I recorded where the Symphony Mic Preamps stood out as clearly the best choice for a given application....I always liked one of my 500 series preamps better on every situation I encountered.

I think Apogee have a high quality preamp here that is definitely providing a lot of bang for buck.....nice job on the sound quality, but not quite what I was looking for...your mileage may vary...

As for the fan noise issue...here's my experience:
When you move from a single card in the Symphony I/O to a box that has the single card + the mic preamp card, the fan comes alive and it's certainly audible. When I contacted Apogee they pointed me to their website where a Symphony Fan Modification can be ordered and this amounts to a magnetic strip applied to the left hand side of the box (if you're looking at it from the front) which seals off those vents and pulls more air across the right hand side where the 2 cards lie stacked. This does in fact reduce fan noise significantly, but it does NOT remove the fan noise completely and the difference between a modded box & a single card box was significant enough to be a killer for me.

I have a small studio where the Symphony resides near my monitoring station and in the same room as most of the tracking....the fan noise is low, but always audible, even when you're mixing and I couldn't ever adjust to that...just me...I got used to silence and ultimately, I decided to send the card back because in my situation and with my setup, it wasn't something I could deal with.....great bang for buck, but the fan just killed it for me.

I've decided to add a couple clean channels...probably a pair of Millennia HV35's which will cost me as much as the 8 channel card nearly, but with a single card in my Symphony IO, I now have silence again, great sounding conversion, and I can hear my music with the clarity I was accustomed to before.

If you mix in a different room than the Symphony IO, if you track in a different room than the Symphony IO, or have access to isolation for the Symphony IO, then this is a great option! If you're a small home-based operation that needs a silent tracking environment, then you're probably best off using a single card in the Symphony IO and using external preamps.

Hope this helps....I'm a very loyal Apogee customer & a huge fan of their products....it'd be awesome if they could figure out a way to silence the fan or bypass power to the 2nd card when it's not needed through software (ie, using external pres or mixing).

Another million dollar idea: offer up a 4 channel Symphony I/O box that has 4 of the Apogee Symphony Mic Pres...essentially the Symphony conversion with the Ensemble type setup...you'll sell a ton of them!

[Lupez]

that's awesome, thanks!
as soon as I get access to my monitors I'll give my feedback on the files.
I wonder how a drumkit would sound through those pres....

[SnareBuzz]

Never tested drums through them, but that was the original plan. I have some vocal files too, but honestly, I think the bass & the acoustic guitar give you the sense of the press well enough.

I'd think the pres would be terrific for toms, and bass drum....I'm not sure I'd like them on overheads...they're not fast enough for my tastes....I'm actually thinking of using Millennia preamps for the overheads and then my transformer based warm goodies for the rest

Happy Thanksgiving All!

[soypancho]

They have a lot of gorgeous tracks on their Soundcloud account recorded with Symphony pres.

[SnareBuzz]

Originally Posted by soypancho

They have a lot of gorgeous tracks on their Soundcloud account recorded with Symphony pres.

Absolutely correct and here's the link:
Apogee Symphony I/O recordings by Apogee Electronics on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

While I think these are useful recordings, they don't isolate individual instruments or compare with other gear to show differences in qualities. I've stated before that I do think these mic pres from Apogee are very high quality...they have a sound and to understand that, you have to hear them in comparison with something, so I provided my files to help in that case.

In addition to that, my recordings probably reflect the environment more looking into these types of pres....ie, most commercial facilities will have consoles when the number of preamps needed is high and will use boutique preamps for specific reasons. For those of us with home-based studios (whatever the quality), the environment is different...things like fan noise become more of an issue when our tracking room IS the same as our Mixing room, and my guess is that's the case for more on this forum than not...my 2cents.

If you want to use the Apogee recordings to form your opinion, then great. If you find the files I provided useful, then great. If neither help you out, get the darned thing and try it for yourself

Peace,
Ron

[Geddyleewannabe]

Does the mic pre module provide phantom power for condenser mics, etc.?

[J-vdg]

i would like to listen to the stereo comparision if thats oke with you!

greetings

Verstuurd van mijn GT-I9000 met Tapatalk

[Geddyleewannabe]

Originally Posted by Geddyleewannabe

Does the mic pre module provide phantom power for condenser mics, etc.?

BUMP