Arrow £443

Web uaudio.com Format Mac/PC Universal Audio’s Apollo range of audio interfaces are a firm fixture in countless studios around the world. Stellar AD/DA converters aside, it’s the access they give to the everexpanding UAD-2 range of classic hardware emulation plugins that really fuels their popularity. There’s always been a snag, though. As laptops have become more powerful and music production has thus become more mobile, Apollo has remained resolutely tethered to the wall via its external power supply. Happily, all that changed in 2018 with the release of Arrow: essentially a more compact and – most importantly – bus-powered Apollo at a lower price point. The bus in question is Thunderbolt 3, transferring both power and data over a single cable (not included, shockingly).

When it comes to I/O, you hardly lose anything by opting for Arrow over Apollo – just a pair of line outs and the eight-channel ADAT optical input. That means you get two XLR/1/4” combi mic/line inputs, a Hi-Z guitar input, two line outs and a headphone out. Arrow also features the same Unison preamps as Apollo: these reconfigure the impedance and gain staging of the pre to make it sound and respond exactly like the hardware being emulated by the loaded UAD-2 plugin. And speaking of those plugins, Arrow is compatible with the full UAD-2 range, and bundled with it are the same 14 that ship with Apollo, including emulated vintage greats by the likes of Teletronix, Pultec and Marshall. Mind you, with only the Core Solo DSP chip onboard, you won’t be running that many of them at a time. A mobile Apollo with no significant compromises, Arrow performs like a champ and sounds pristine, and firing up those gorgeous UAD-2 plugins on the plane never gets old. 256 » 10/10