Recording - June 2013 - 28

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Apogee has been making waves in
the world of Mac-based digital audio
for years. We’ve reviewed high-end systems based on the Symphony PCIe card
architecture, including a variety of the
exceptional A/D and D/A conversion
racks that have made Apogee’s name a
famed one in audio circles.

Apogee Quartet
But in recent times, we’ve seen another
side to Apogee, as the firm has brought its
genre-defining conversion and interfacing
products down to unheard-of price points
and placed them in the hands of many grateful musicians. From the original Duet and
revised Duet 2 2-in/4-out interfaces to affordable single-channel devices like the ONE
USB microphone/interface, GiO guitar interface/pedal controller, MiC USB mic, and
JAM USB guitar interface, the Apogee sound
is in more studios and gig bags than ever.
Apogee’s new Quartet bridges the gap
between these two worlds handily. It sits
at the top end of the newest range of
Apogee USB 2.0 products—a lineup
filled out by a revamped ONE and a new
version of the Duet—which are most
immediately notable for their clean integration with iOS as well as Mac OS X.
The current crop of iOS-compliant interfaces out there has a few seriously-constructed boxes and a lot of economical
and (ahem) perhaps not quite world-class
contenders... but if you’re inclined to think
that an interface that’s meant to play nice
with an iPad has to be a toy, stop thinking
“iOS” and start thinking “Apogee”!
The basics
Let’s set aside one of the two cables that
comes in the box with the Quartet, namely
the one that ends in a 30-pin iOS dock connector. (Don’t worry, we’ll get back to it
later.) Once we’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to look at the Quartet and take in just
how much power you’re getting in the
package, without being distracted by “this
is an iPad interface”.
The Quartet is a heavy, sturdy tabletop
box with a confidence-inducing metal chassis. The front panel is clean and uncluttered,
with a large color OLED display for level
meters and system status icons, a large push28

RECORDING June 2013

A world-class audio/MIDI interface for your Mac... or your iPad

click Controller Knob, and a set of touchpads
to quickly assign the Controller Knob to various input and output functions—four for input
gain, two for speaker and headphone output selection, and three with a variety of software-assignable functions we’ll cover below.
Apogee advertises the Quartet as a 4in/8-out box, but that’s not strictly true. In
addition to the four analog inputs on
XLR/TRS combination jacks, there are two
optical digital inputs for 8 channels of
ADAT/SMUX input and a BNC Word
Clock output. This lets you add 8 channels
of clock-synchronized high-resolution digital audio input just by cabling a standalone 8-channel preamp/converter to the
Quartet. The outputs are all analog—six
channels on balanced 1/4" TRS plus a
headphone output on the side panel.
The Quartet is powered from a line-lump
power supply (there’s no power switch, it
powers up when it sees an appropriate
host over USB), and there are two USB
ports on the rear panel. One is a micro-B
connector that, with the appropriate cable,
attaches the Quartet to a Mac (shhhh, yes,
there’s that other cable too, but we’ll get
back to that, I promise!). The other is a USB
A connector for MIDI; you connect any
CoreMIDI-compatible USB MIDI device—a
control surface, keyboard, 1x1 DIN interface, etc.—to the Quartet, and that port
passes MIDI data to and from your computer, which sees the Quartet as a 1-in/
1-out MIDI device. I love that feature!

Ready, Maestro?
A lot of the magic of Quartet is set up in
the Maestro 2 software from Apogee,
which you must download and install before
you use the interface. Maestro 2 integrates
the Quartet with any other Apogee devices
connected to the same Mac, allowing you
to quickly tab between them and set up the
inputs, outputs, dual low-latency internal
mixers (see the screenshot above for one of
them), and signal routing preferences.
Each of the four analog inputs can be set
as Instrument, Mic, or +4 / –10 Line level.
Small bummer, though—the TRS jacks only
work for Instrument signals, so you’ll need to
feed your line-level stuff to Quartet over XLR
cabling. Apogee probably made this design
choice deliberately, so the TRS inputs would
present a suitable impedance for guitars and
basses. An appropriate icon appears on the
OLED (with a red dot for phantom power
where applicable). You can flip polarity, solo
and mute inputs in Maestro 2 as well.
The eight channels of output can be routed flexibly, with the user specifying how
many sets of speakers are connected to the
Quartet. You can then switch between them
easily in the software, or program one or
more of the three assignable front-panel
touchpads to select between them. I wish
there was a feature to cycle between all
speakers by repeatedly touching the same
pad; if you have a 3-monitor setup, it takes
all three touchpads to control it, and you miss
out on the many other useful functions these

Recording - June 2013

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