Still confused: Apogee Ensemble or Symphony or Rosetta or ? with new setup

Hmmmm. First off, Hi.
I've been known for gear-l(u)sting and would love to pair an ensemble with a Rosetta 200, personally.

In addition to your inputs, you need to consider how you're going to monitor the output of your DAW. The ensemble would suffice for that - I don't think apogee converters are meant to handle that task alone.
So my answer would be the ensemble (+Rosetta optionally) for a complete I/O and proper listening. However, I hope someone else can either verify my suggestion or write something more appropriate for your situation, cause I don't use this stuff... yet.
peace

The Symphony system uses the Rosetta converter. You pick which Rosetta (2 ch or 8ch or 16 ch) you want. The Symphony system is a card that goes in your Mac, and is coupled to the Rosetta. It has lower latency than the Ensemble and better converters.

That said, the Ensemble is great, probably all you need and people seem to love it. I had one on loan until my Symphony came in, and it was very good. I had used an RME before that and the Ensemble had much better mic pres and was just a much nicer package. It has a volume control on the front of the unit which comes in handy too.

Tom

Either the Ensemble or the Rosetta 800 would suit your needs fine, but to make it work with the Rosetta 800, you'd also need the optional X-firewire card. Symphony is out unless you have a BIG budget, because it is designed to be used with external converters, meaning it still requires a Rosetta or an AD-16, etc.

Points to consider:
1) Rosetta is stated to be a step up from the Ensemble in terms of converter quality. I have an Ensemble and I think it is VERY good from a converter standpoint though.
2) Rosetta has no headphone outputs, but Ensemble has 2 independent headphone outs.
3) Rosetta has 8 channels of ADAT SMUX I/O (at 88.1 or 96k), while Ensemble has only 4 at 88.1 or 96k. However, for normal ADAT I/O (44.1 or 48k), both units have 8 channels.
4) Rosetta has no microphone preamps, but Ensemble has 4 very good ones. In your setup, that means a Rosetta would need to use your Octopre inputs, and I'm pretty sure the Octopre isn't as good as the Apogee converters. Still, because you need 8 at a time, then you'd still need to use at least 4 preamps from your Octopre along with Ensemble since Ensemble only has 4 preamps.
5) Budget: If budget is a concern, there's no question that the Ensemble is the best choice because the street price difference between an Ensemble (about $1950) and an X-Firewire equipped Rosetta 800 (about $305) is about $1100. Plus, with Rosetta, you still need to buy a headphone preamp and either run it alongside Rosetta, or sacrifice one of the Rosetta outputs to be used for headphones.

I hope this helps.

Note that the card with Symphony is a PCIe card, not firewire, which is why the Symphony system has a lower latency than the Ensemble.

TH

correct PCIe for the MacBook Pro slot or the other version if you use a MacPro.

In my case I use the symphony card in my MacPro with a Rosetta 800 and cannot say enough about the combination. Forget Ensemble if you have the budget for Symphony and Rosetta. The low latency symphony gives you is ridiculous. Go get that and be happy tracking at 44.1 with 1.4ms latency, even if you shove your buffer in logic at 1024... that means you can track with super low latency and keep your effects and everything on.

R

Band On The Run wrote:
.... Go get that and be happy tracking at 44.1 with 1.4ms latency, even if you shove your buffer in logic at 1024... that means you can track with super low latency and keep your effects and everything on.

Just curious BOTR,

Is this monitoring through Logic (software monitoring on), or via Apogee's monitoring software (if there is any)?

I'd like to know as well. If BOTR can make software monitoring work with 1024 buffer, this is a magic I'd be REALLY interested in...

Jim Frazier wrote:

Band On The Run wrote:
.... Go get that and be happy tracking at 44.1 with 1.4ms latency, even if you shove your buffer in logic at 1024... that means you can track with super low latency and keep your effects and everything on.

Just curious BOTR,

Is this monitoring through Logic (software monitoring on), or via Apogee's monitoring software (if there is any)?

Nah forget software monitoring that adds too much latency. Symphony comes with Maestro. Within Maestro you re route the signal from the mic of say the guitar you're playing or singing into direct back to headphones. So the musician hears no latency, then Maestro mixes the sound outgoing from logic with it. Of course you're thinking, but wait the sound going out and back in has latency. Yes, so the way you compensate for it is by running a loop back test (which has been talked about a lot in here) and figure out how many samples you're off from the sound going out of the logic and coming back in. In my case it's 82 samples, so I set the recording delay slider to -82. What happens then is that when the music is sent out and recorded back, the incoming signal from the mic is adjusted by 82 samples, and then it lines up perfectly. So the outgoing sound is delayed regardless and the musician is playing in perfect timing to the delayed sound, so when it is recorded it's adjusted by logic.

It works amazingly well, there is no weird latency, no need for software monitoring, and you can even keep plugin latency compensation to all if you want too.

R

Well with regard to monitoring through Maestro, Ensemble works great for that too. The latency just through Ensemble (via Maestro) is so small that I can't even notice it.

...Raaad.
So let me get this straight:
You're sending the guitarist the Logic mix while s/he's listening to the direct guitar signal. to compensate for the time it takes for Logic's signal to reach the listener's headphones you use the recording delay @ -82 smps - they're technically playing later than Logic's recording, but it lines up because...
...ummm... what were we just talking about?
At any rate, I WANT ONE! 🙂

So yes... pretty much the signal is delayed and s/he's playing delayed but doesn't know it, and is grooving to the tune, and when it's in logic it's all good 🙂

The point is the artist doesn't give a poo, doesn't get bothered with latency, and you get what you need. The way that Symphony works it's a test one and run kind of thing. I never have to retest before each session. I suspect that with Ensemble because it's firewire based, you might need to retest before every session.

It is by far the best setup I've ever had, and it's worth the price. It's as close to no latency as you're gonna get short of going to high end pro tools at thousands more.

R

yes but I don't believe Ensemble is able to track at the higher buffer in logic, you need to drop your buffer or your offset will be quite large.... but I could be wrong, I don't have an Ensemble, but it's the nature of firewire v/s the much much faster PCIe.

R

I am thoroughly digging it.
thanks.

FW800 is unneeded on the Ensemble. There is no latency issue with FW400, and even if there were, the bottleneck would NOT be the bus speed.

rcook349 wrote:
Wouldn't the answer then be FW800 on the Ensemble? I.e. wouldn't that be the next logical step for Apogee? If so, anybody have a cluen when we might see that?