Recording - October 2016 - 24

...where we bring you follow-up articles
with application hints and upgrade news
about gear already reviewed in Recording

Apogee Symphony I/O MKII
by Paul Vnuk Jr.

Back in our October 2013 issue we took
a look at Apogee's flagship Symphony I/O
modular digital interface and audio converter. At that point the Symphony I/O had
already been on the market for a few
years, but thanks to the new Symphony 64
ThunderBridge, the Symphony I/O could
now make use of Apple's Thunderbolt protocol and chain 2 I/O units together for 64
inputs and outputs.
While I already owned an Apogee
Duet for iPad and Mac, after the review
of the Symphony I/O and ThunderBridge
I sold my studio PC and previous converter setup, upgraded to a new tricked-out
iMac and made the jump to a Symphony
system of my own. Of course, the minute
I did, I knew the day would come when
Apogee would unveil its successor... just
as they had done in 2015 with the
Ensemble Thunderbolt 2 (reviewed in
March 2015).

The first major change is noticeable as
soon as the unit is unboxed. It features a
brand-new redesign and layout. It is still
a 2-space 19" rack unit, but gone is the
brushed silver audiophile look of the
original with its dual silver knobs and
full-width LED metering screen. The new
unit is a sleek all-black affair with a single large control dial and a half-width
touchscreen. Where the original had
removable rack ears for desktop use, the
rack ears of the MKII are permanent.
There is still a front-panel power switch,
but there's only a single headphone output vs. the original's two. Overall the
new MKII is closer in look and style to
the Ensemble MKII.

That time is now; let me introduce you
to the Symphony I/O MKII. The good
news is that most of what was great
about the original remains, most importantly the sound! It also offers some significant upgrades, enhancements, and
new features.

new high-resolution TFT touchscreen!
Functionally it used to frustrate me that
you could only view 16 meters on the
original-either ins or outs in sets of 8-
and that the alphanumeric information
was limited on the original's display,
necessitating a lot of back and forth
between hardware and the Maestro
app. Front panel control, while very single knob/Mac-like, also took some getting used to; often buttons had to be
pressed multiple times to navigate to the
correct parameter.
All of that is gone in the MKII. The
new touchscreen contains almost all of
the unit's settings and parameters available on one of six pages, plus a few
subpages. Not only is the touchscreen
way sexier then opening Maestro, but it
also offers access to a few things that
are not available in Maestro. The
biggest plus of the new screen is that the
meters for 16 ins and 16 outs are present at the same time.

What's new, what's different, what's
gone?
The Symphony I/O MKII is a high
tech-chassis that holds your choice of
available interface modules (of which
there are four) and connects to your
computer via Thunderbolt. The SI/OMKII
works with any Thunderbolt-equipped
Mac running OS 10.9.5 or greater, and
all Core Audio applications are supported. The unit is controlled in your computer by Apogee's Maestro app, which
also checks and updates your unit's
firmware. The Symphony I/O MKII supports sample rates of 44.1 kHz-192
kHz with latency as low as 1.35 ms.
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RECORDING OCTOBER 2016

Touch it
In terms of chassis color, I am partial
to the look of the original. However, that
goes away quickly once you use the

It might be easy to lament the loss of
one of the two headphone outputs. That
also goes away quickly with one listen!
The single headphone out contains the
same new high-fidelity DAC and Constant
Current Drive headphone output stage as
Apogee's recently released Groove,
reviewed by Mike Metlay in our October
2015 issue. This is a case of quality over
quantity! One thing Mike mentioned in
his Groove review was how unforgiving
the unit was to compressed audio codecs.
Because of this surgical clarity, I see this
as a fantastic addition to the Symphony
I/O MKII. Paired with a set of high-end
headphones, it should be great for noticing sonic anomalies, in both tracking and
checking final mixes.
Bring the Thunder
One other new major difference between
the MKI and MKII units is that the new MKII
is Thunderbolt only. The original's USB port
(used for Maestro control) is gone as it's no
longer needed, and the MKII has a pair of
built-in Thunderbolt ports rather than requiring the external Thunderbridge. This is

great on one hand, but does impose two
important considerations.
One: currently you cannot chain or link
Symphony I/O MKII units, so your channel count will max out at 32. With the
older MKI unit you could link units; with
the Thunderbridge, a pair of maxed-out
Symphony I/O boxes could be linked
together for 64 channels over Thunderbolt.
Two: with the Thunderbridge box it was
possible to have a longer cable run and
place the Symphony unit farther away
from one's Mac. Now you are limited to
current Thunderbolt cable lengths, and if
you need more 3 meters, be prepared to
pay up to $300 for optical Thunderbolt
cables. Oh, and speaking of cables:
Apogee does not include one in the box
and to that I simply say, "Grrrrr!"
Connected
The Symphony I/O MK unit's rear
panel has virtually no connections. There's
just a power socket, BNC word clock I/O,

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - October 2016