Apogee Ensemble -vs- Apogee Rosetta (200 or 800)

I had an Ensemble on loan for a week while waiting for my Symphony System with a Rosetta to come in.

I went with the Symphony only because it was supposed to be the better of the two in latency. I know the analog section of the box in the Rosetta is better on paper than the Ensemble as well.

In the real world, in a less than perfect control room (which I have!)....I did not notice a huge quality jump. I can't frankly remember whether I noticed any. In fact, I have often wished I kept the Ensemble because it had nice clean mic pres built in and way more I/O options. It is a great box, and you couldn't go wrong with it.

We all get way to caught up with improvements that are barely noticeable (if at all, consistently) considering that our end product generally ends up on radio, TV, or an iPod.

Can anyone hear the difference in a record made with a Rosetta vs an Ensemble on the radio?
TV? iPod? Less than perfect listening environment? I am betting a real big "no," and for the difference in costs you could buy another mic, or software, or...dare I say...put it in savings.

JMHO.

TH

Have you tried Duet to compare?

The biggest difference in sound came when I started using Apogee, from using things like a Digi 002, etc. Years back I went to an Apogee PSX 100 and that was huge. I've gotten so used to the Apogee sound that you can really hear it when it's not there, especially on playback. Everything is more solid and everything just sounds bigger with good converters.

Once you get good converters, then it starts to be splitting hairs as to whether the difference between them is worth hundreds (or even thousands) unless you are in a mastering room and every other part of your chain is world class.

Tom

DIGI is simply GREEDY!