Universal Audio Apollo Twin USB DUO Heritage Edition 10x6 USB Audio Interface with UAD DSP Reviews

Wow this is super fast, crystal clear, and so easy to navigate both for myself and for guest vocalists. I love that theres some great plug ins this comes with as well for beefing up and solidifying your mix. Definitely makes purchasing seperate rackmount compressors more optional than necessary. I have a simple and smaller sized recording studio space, since I usually only record vocals here. This is a perfect fit for my needs. I run Pro Tools 99% of the time and this apollo works great with it. Far better than the mbox audio interfaces I used to used for the last 12 years.

It's expensive and the plugins from UA can help with latency, but it's just a great sound that has become "honest" for me and my little studio. For the money, I wish they had 2 headphone outs, but, hey -it's so crazy to complain having come from the analog world. It's a great, expensive piece of equipment. The real winner is anyone who does business with Sweetwater. Sweetwater wins no matter what equipment; problem or tech issues - they are the very best!

I love the sound of this interface. I upgraded after 6 years and the way the music opened up is fascinating! I can hear the smallest of EQ moves, which gives me instant restraint by not being heavy handed. The mixes I've done lately have gone faster and come out cleaner than before, saving me hours of revisions.

I like the Console, but must admit, I'm no expert just yet. Thank goodness for the online reference videos! If you're on the fence, accept this as permission to make the switch!

I simply plugged it in, replacing my Audient ID14 and I immediately noticed a much thicker, stronger sound. Once you get into the UAD Console your options are unlimited. The NEVE 88RS is a must have and will make your voice, or anything else, punch and kick through anything.

Have not had a single issue with drivers.

Looks pristine on my desk.

Always Happy to shop with Sweetwater.

5/5

The construction it's slick and robust with very intuitive on board and software controls. Super easy to set up after installing the drivers. It works flawlessly with Cubase 11 Pro. No issues at all with Windows 10. The plugin engine is very cool and the UAD unison technology let you use some goo preamp emulations that sounds close but never the same as the original analog gear. I can say it because I tried every single one and for example the Neve 1073 sound okay but it has a lack of presence compared to my real Neve 1073! Regardless of this I gave it 5 stars because it has a very good converters, a super nice control software, unison preamps, plugins DSP which free up a lot of PC processing. Two thumbs up!

Absolutely love it, I wish I knew about the unison technology sooner! It's an awesome and affordable way to get that clean, beautiful sounding signal in that Ive been looking for. I cant wait to experiment more and find my new signature vocal chain. I recently got the UAD Avalon and Voxbox preamp plugins to use with it and I'm like a kid in a candy store. I can't decide which preamp plugin I like better at this point. Cool stuff!

MY REVIEW: Absolutely outstanding piece of gear. I was IMMEDIATELY impressed with how much faster this Apollo made my PC, thanks to the integrated DSP capability that essentially splits the plugin processing with the computer's CPU. Plugin-heavy sessions that used to have a very slight lag now responded extremely quickly as if my session was empty - it was that responsive! I didn't know what I was missing until I had this unit setup and running with Pro Tools 12.

BIG THANKS TO MY SALES ENGINEER RICHARD!
Richard absolutely went above and beyond in assisting me with finding the right piece of gear to take on the new interface role. His patience, expertise and very kind demeanor made my venture into high-end recording devices a very, very pleasant experience. I am forever sold on using Sweetwater for all my future studio gear needs thanks to Richard!

TLDR - If you're using a PC and want to upgrade to Apollo, THIS is the interface you need to work seamlessly with Windows. The quality of the audio is unmatched, even through my limited testing. Don't hesitate; BUY IT NOW!

I've used a number of recording interfaces. I really struggled with buying the Apollo because I'm cheap. I'd rather spend more money on guitars. BUT, this thing is absolutely better than anything else I've used. Latency, reliability, and quality of build are just far superior to other products. The plug ins are as amazing as all those Youtube videos you've watched. Works seamlessly with Cubase. The Diezel virtual amp plug in blew me away. Every amp VST I've tried before this are just awful. They sound like a cheap distortion pedals from '83. Not this. It was nearly spot on and so playable. The recording options and and quality is excellent. If you're being cheap, stop. The time has come. Buy this device or a larger UAD product. In the long run your creative juices will flow and there will be no looking back. Thanks to Christian Baer my sales engineer for always being helpful and fast. I hope Sweetwater keeps their business model a very long time.

This things sounds fantastic. The plugins are rad.

I love this product. Only took me a few days to learn how to use it because of my experience , but once I learned how to use it I really love it and all the new plug-ins I now have access to. I totally got the sound I was looking for and it's definitely a big upgrade from my presonus audio box i2.

I just got this interface today, and I can already tell a big difference between this and my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4.

It took a little fiddling to get the drivers and software installed, but once it was all on and working, I could tell a huge difference, especially when I figured out how to use the console with all of the included plug-ins. It's very cool that you can test out effects and preamps and things in real time without baking them into the recording.

I use Adobe Audition as my main DAW for voiceover work, and this works smoothly with that. I also use Reaper for music production, and the interface and plug-ins work with that, as well.

I teach voiceover remotely over Zoom, Skype, Discord, etc. I use an Electro-Voice RE20 when teaching at my desk. I just tested the interface on those, and it works great. I can even add effects to my voice to broadcast over those channels, if I want, which is cool. When I was using my Focusrite, I had to have the gain cranked up almost all the way to get enough oomph for the microphone. The this, I only have to have it cranked about 3/5 of the way to get enough power. (I'm not using a Cloudlifter or anything like that.)

For voiceover recording, I use a Neumann TLM 49, and I can hear the difference this interface makes with it. It's a cleaner, more focused sound with stock settings and no effects added.

Because the interface isn't powered over USB, there's a lot more power behind the signal going to my monitors and headphones. I barely have the thing up to 20% and it's already louder than my Focusrite 2i4 was at 50%.

All around, this just feels and sounds more professional. I can't wait to play around with recording music with my guitar with this thing!

The sound quality of the Apollo Twin USB is excellent; it picks up every subtle noise and nuance needed for doing the audio engineering tasks while delivering on the clarity and separation needed for mixing. The build quality is as good as anything I've worked with. The software components have useful features, are easy to use and (thus far) work without a hitch. I was surprised at how quickly I became familiar with the controls; it turned out to be more intuitive than I expected. I like the fact that it takes advantage of the superior technology of USB-3. The device driver(s) are working well with my AMD/Windows11 system; I am able to route all audio through the Apollo Twin. I've connected my rack mount RME Fireface 800 (think studio version of a Swiss army knife) to it via ADAT for added I/O and it all works seamlessly. With UAD's Fuchs ODS plug-in loaded into the Apollo Twin's on-board DSP, I can record lead guitar with a highly processed, ultra-low latency signal; then, once the raw signal is in my DAW, a more sophisticated plug-in can be applied. The built-in microphone recording technology is a high-quality feature that adds a lot of value. Two things I don't like: 1) the low resolution of the volume knob results in incremental, rather than continuous, adjustments and 2) the ADAT cable obstructs access to the on/off switch. If the rating scale had ten stars, I would have given this product a nine.

Yes, the UAD hardware and converters sound incredible, none of that matters if the unit is not compatabile with your DAW. The unit constantly locks up and requires rebooting. Coming from a cheap Focusrite, I never experienced any issues with the Focusrite from a cracking, popping, or freezing issue, since upgrading to a unit that is 8x more expensive. This thing should be a tool to help me create music, not spend more time trying to fix it and troubleshoot issues.

I had to box this up and get rid of it. If you're running S1, I would steer clear of this product.