Why do Apogee Products Sound Amazing...?


For more than twenty years, artists, producers, and engineers have trusted Apogee for their digital audio solutions. Since the earliest days of digital audio and throughout its history, Apogee has produced the finest digital audio conversion products while consistently winning industry recognition, awards, and user loyalty.

 

The simple secret: Apogee engineering carefully designs each converter based on a commitment to the integration of the best analog and digital technologies available.

 

A Step-by-Step Look at Apogee Technology

 

Step One: Analog excellence

Analog design excellence is the first critical step in realizing world class digital audio. Poor analog design and cost-cutting measures result in diminished audio quality. Everyone has heard the saying “garbage in, garbage out." Delivering bad analog audio to the digital converter will always result in bad audio out of the converter. Great-sounding analog audio is the first step, but it is not the last.

 

Step Two: Getting from A to D

Digital audio conversion is the process that samples an analog audio signal and represents that original signal with 0’s and 1’s. Like a motion picture camera that captures action at 24 frames per second, the sound is “photographed” or sampled between 44,100 and 192,000 times per second depending on the chosen sample rate. The sample rate determines the highest frequency that can be captured by the converter. Digital audio samples can be captured with word lengths ranging from 8-bit to 24-bit. A larger bit size results in superior definition and increased dynamic range.

 

Step Three: A cure for the Jitters

The accuracy of the conversion process depends largely on the stability of the digital audio clock. Imagine what a movie would look like if the film was displayed by a projector with unevenly spaced gears. It would vary in speed and be confusing to watch. Like film, digital audio also needs extremely steady timing to capture and reproduce audio accurately.

Apogee designs the finest “digital gearing,” or clocks, available today. Apogee’s C777 clocking technology is the best digital audio clock currently produced. The variation, or jitter, in Apogee's clocks is simply imperceptible. Apogee clocks challenge the world's most sensitive test equipment to detect jitter. In other words, Apogee designs the most stable foundation possible for the process of digital audio conversion and places it inside every product.

 

Step Four: Think you need an expensive outboard mic pre... maybe you don’t.

Apogee's mic preamps deliver a sound that is second to none, including standalone outboard products. Inside Ensemble and Duet are premium mic pres capable of preserving the nuances of the world's best microphones. You may want a wide array of mic pres to choose from, but if you have Ensemble or Duet you already own a world class mic pre. Apogee has been designing mic pres for its legendary products since the AD-1000, instantly winning recognition for outstanding sound and performance. Legacy products such as the Mini-Me and Trak2 are still in high demand due in part to the sound of the mic pres.

Ensemble and Duet mic pres provide 75 dB of gain, and ONE provides 65 dB, all with ultra-low self noise, unprecedented transparency, and a wide frequency response. Apogee mic preamps can compete with the finest mic pres available, regardless of price. With amazing mic preamps and unsurpassed converters, Ensemble, Duet and ONE are definitely the best bargain in digital audio today.

 

Step Five: Back to analog

Apogee designs the final stage of digital audio, the analog portion of the digital audio converter, with the same precision as the first stage. Want to experience beautiful audio? Simply connect your headphones to Apogee’s headphone amplifier and the results will speak for themselves.

At every stage of the process, the name Apogee defines digital audio performance. Your music, your performance, and your audio deserve the best. When the defining moment of performance arrives, who will you trust to capture the sound forever?

 

Sound Technologies

 

SoftLimit: Eliminate digital overs

This superior analog design prevents the digital clipping that causes distortion by instantaneously rounding off transient peaks before they hit the analog-to-digital converter. This technology allows several more decibels of apparent level to be recorded while subtly providing an analog-like warmth to the sound.

 

UV22HR: Get every bit of your audio

You have finished your mix and are now ready to deliver audio on CD or via the web. You don’t have to lose the best of high resolution 24-bit audio when you convert to 16-bit, 44.1 kHz for CD or to a compressed format for web delivery. Use Apogee's UV22HR technology to retain the superior quality of 24-bit audio within a 16-bit file. The resulting sound is amazing and ready to be burned to CD or compressed and encoded for web delivery.

 

Learn more about UV22HR>

 

Apogee hardware products that include SoftLimit and UV22HR are Symphony I/O, AD-16X, Rosetta Series, and Ensemble.