Apogee Duet 3
High-end audio recording
£599 FROM apogeedigital.com FEATURES 192kHz recording, Symphony ECS Channel Strip NEEDS macOS 10.15 or later, USB-C
The Duet 3 is the newest member of Apogee’s pro audio family, a supremely portable high-end audio recording interface for Mac and PC, though iOS is not supported. Beautifully constructed, its low profile is decidedly Apple-like. It has two USB-C ports and is bus-powered, the second port being usable for external power if you’d rather not power from your Mac. USB-C and A cables are supplied.
To maintain its compact frame, I/O is mostly handled via a breakout cable. The proprietary plug splits off to two instrument inputs and two line outputs as well as two mic/line inputs in XLR format. A headphone output can be found on the body. So despite its small size you can connect stereo monitor speakers and up to four mono or two stereo inputs at once. Inside are converters and preamps with up to 65dB of gain.
Duet 3 also has onboard digital signal processing (DSP) circuitry which it uses to power the ECS Channel Strip, a plug–in you install in your digital audio workstation (DAW) to tweak compression and EQ during recording. The processing done on board the Duet means this is latency– free, so recordings are crystal clear. Although the large multifunction dial and LED meters are perfectly good, Apogee Control software running on your Mac also provides in-depth control over every parameter, making life simpler. It’s not cheap, but the Duet 3 represents the pinnacle of portable recording at the highest quality. Hollin Jones