Meet Duet
The most respected portable audio interface ever

Apogee Duet is an award-winning audio interface, headphone amp and MIDI interface making it easy to create professional recordings anywhere on your iPod touch, iPhone, iPad or Mac.
With Apogee’s legendary digital audio conversion and world-class mic preamps, Duet is the best way to capture your music with incredible dimension and detail.

Highlights

• First professional stereo audio interface for iPad
• Direct digital connection to iPod touch, iPhone, iPad
• Works with new iPhone 5, iPad (4th generation), iPad mini
• (Apple’s Lighting to 30-pin adapter required - Sold separately)
• Works with GarageBand, Auria, MultiTrack; Any Core Audio compatible app on iOS
• Works with GarageBand, Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton; Any Core Audio compatible app on Mac
• Low latency monitoring, complete input/output control with Apogee’s Maestro software (iOS & Mac)
• MIDI input/output (USB-A type connector)
• DC power supplies charge to iPod touch, iPhone or iPad
• USB 2.0 audio with 24-bit/192kHz A/D and D/A conversion
• 2 Analog inputs with world-class mic preamps and selectable 48v phantom power
• 2 Balanced analog line outputs
• 1 Independent 1/4” stereo headphone output
• Legendary Apogee sound quality
• Designed in California - Made in the U.S.A.

Please note: Duet for iPad & Mac is a new product that has special circuitry for connecting to iOS devices. The previous generation of this product, "Duet 2", does not have this capability as it was not available at the time of design.

Link : Apogee Duet 2 - 2 IN x 4 OUT USB audio interface

I assumed something like this was why GC was selling Duet 2's for $500 last month. Nifty.

Would have been nice if there would have been an 'upgrade deal' for Duet 2 owners.

I thought babyface worked with ipads

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it does but with 10 inputs and 12 outputs!

So using my logic I declare the duet is not the first audio interface to work with the ipad!

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They said "professional". Apparently Apogee thinks RME stuff is for hobbyists.

LOL, apogee and their back handed marketing.

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These things already worked with iPad the question is: can they be completely powered from the iPad?

No, dont think so. If that were the case they would have put it in the press release.

Great development to make the iPad a real useful ultra compact recording machine.

Only thing missing from the Duet / One would be a digital input to allow the use of any other external AD converter if one wished. I want to use my ULN2 to record on iPad!

I've been reading up on the new Duet, since I'm looking to get one, and I found out that yes, it does charge your iPad/iPod/iPhone.

Well, if it doesn't charge an iPad, then that makes it no good for many pro uses. Also, the Duet settings can be controlled by the Maestro app on the iPad.

It is in the press release, you obviously missed it.

DC power supplies charge to iPod touch, iPhone or iPad

That is not what he meant.

The press release says that a connected iOS device will be charged by the Duet.

What supersuper means is if an iOS device would deliver enough energy to power the Duet (so that you dont need an external power cord).


So no, I didnt obviously miss it

Oh I see. You mean the other way around. The iPad powering a Duet. I would kind of doubt that, as an iPad is probably not going to have the juice to power something like a Duet 2. iPads are known for not having high powered USB outputs when going through a dock connector, compared to something like a desktop or some laptops. And if somebody is recording high quality audio, wouldn't they want a stable and powerful enough power source to drive their audio interface?

When I hook up certain USB midi keyboards to the iPad, even tiny ones like a Korg Microkey, it needs to be used with a powered USB hub. For me at least, the Duet being able to charge the iPad is a huge plus. Almost none of the other audio interfaces do that.

For those of you excited by the prospect of recording into IOS... I am trying to understand the uses and benefits of using IOS with the Duet/Quartet. What programs other than recording into garage band would be of interest? Wouldn't it be more effective and almost as portable to record into Logic on a MacBook Air? Or... if you have to carry around a duet with all the cables, and still require to plug into a power source, how much harder is it to carry around a MacBook Pro rather than an iPad? What other uses would warrant such excitement over this new feature? I feel like I wouldn't really use it, but I am probably not understanding what the possibilities are.

It's not just about recording into iOS, but you can also record out of it. There are many very awesome synths on the iPad now, that have no equivalent at all on a desktop or laptop. Now you can capture those synths, drum machines and other apps and record them directly into your DAW, treating the iPad as a sort of hardware sound module. Up until now, I've been using the headphone out on the iPad, but being able to pump out audio through a high quality interface like a Duet is appealing to me. Also, the whole touch screen GUI is a completely different way of interacting, and for certain uses, it's much better than using something like an old and tired mouse. It's not for everybody, but for hundreds of millions of people, they have seen the benefits. You just have to live with an iPad for a while, and you'll quickly find out if it's for you or not.

I use desktops, laptops and iPads, and I'm not going to say that any one is better than the other. Each one has it's own uses which it excels at. I do audio and music on all of them, it all depends what I'm looking to do at the moment.

Also, an iPad is completely silent, no noise at all. The same can not be said for desktops and laptops, which all feature fans, that can get rather loud, especially when the machine is under load. I'd rather be recording vocals into a completely silent iPad which is right in front of me, and get crystal clear, noise free vocal tracks, instead of recording into a laptop or desktop, and you capture vocals plus whatever noise that the machine is making.

Besides Garageband, there are just too many apps to mention, from all sorts of synths, drum machines, sequencers, DAW's, vocoders, guitar amps, everything really.

SBX-80... Thanks for the thorough reply. Very helpful indeed!! I looked at the iPad as more of a substitute for the computer whereas you are explaining that it can be used in tandem.

In regards to the iPad being a quieter form of recording... what app or apps are you using when you record vocals into the iPad? What is your preferred setup? For example, do you have the music track coming through headphones while you record vocals? If so, is the audio also coming from your iPad?

Yeah, I think that it's a mistake to think of it as a substitute for a computer. I think that iPads are great and I've owned a few of them, but I won't be giving up my desktop or laptop anytime soon. For a very light user, for somebody like my mother, an iPad is good enough to replace her computer, but for many musicians, engineers and power users, an iPad is not going to replace anybody's desktop or laptop, in my opinion. I think of it more as an awesome addition to my current setup.

As for recording vocals on the iPad, I haven't done that yet. I haven't had any audio interface for the iPad, that's why I am excited by the Apogee Duet 2. I own an Apogee Duet 1, which I've been using on my desktop and laptop, but that is not compatible with the iPad.

I know exactly how I'll be recording vocals though, when I get the Apogee Duet 2. I'll be using Auria, which is a 48 track (48 mono or 48 stereo) audio only DAW for iPad. I do own Auria and I find it to be excellent. I think that if you look at the Apogee videos for the Duet on their website, you'll see some people recording into Auria.

Loving the integration between iOS and music technology lately!

It does, in stand alone mode, a feature RME added via a firmware upgrade and not a new model

Maybe Apogee couldn't make it work that way; Maestro for iOS should be handy to have, though, at least.

We have a few reasons we didn't just do a firmware upgrade.
The first is that we wanted Quartet, Duet and ONE to power the iPad or iPhone while recording.
Second, we wanted the end user to be able to change input and output settings without having to connect to a computer every time you want to make a change.
Third, we wanted to add a low latency mixer.
To do these things, Duet needed to have an extensive circuit redesign.

Other audio interfaces without this technology, including Apogee products can be adapted to connect via Camera kit to iOS devices but they do not offer the same professional performance and features customers should expect from a pro interface. Like iPad charging and software control..

Chris Lawson
Apogee Electronics

Thanks for the clarification, Chris.

Btw, thanks for not calling it the iDuet

Been using a babyface and a UCX with my iPad for months and months now so I'm getting a kick...

Are you guys coming out with Lightning cables, so people don't always have to use the silly adapters?

wow - cool. Just not sure if i could ever REALLY do anything off an iPad - atleast nothing past tracking a quick idea.

So is the DA/AD different?

In which case, this is a duet 2 with MIDI as the only difference?

For the quick tracking ideas I do in Auria, even the One is a tough pill to swallow over something like the Roland Duo Capture EX, which has more versatile I/O.

Hi,

If it is possible why not give existing user the option to upgrade too via firmware?