It’s an amazing audio interface with unparalleled sound, but first I’d like to give some well deserved kudos to Thomann’s excellent support.
The first unit arrived dead on arrival (DOA), as it would not power on at all. The issue was the power switch, which is incorporated into the main multifunction knob. While the knob itself feels high quality, for some reason it appeared to be pressed all the way down from the factory, making it impossible to power on the unit. After contacting what is arguably the best support team in Europe, the return process was completely hassle-free and scheduled for the very next working day. A brand-new replacement unit arrived 10 days later.
-The Good Stuff:
The sound quality is on another level, and having used many audio interfaces throughout my career, this is not a bold statement. The A/D conversion, headroom, and transparency are simply outstanding and fully justify the price tag.
The touchscreen is a joy to work with, intuitive, responsive, and well thought out. The dual-path functionality is implemented in a truly unique way. The Symphony Desktop includes three DSP preamps, an excellent channel strip, a simple but great reverb, and six high quality DSP plug-ins that can run in dual path mode (PrintFX and MonitorFX). It’s worth noting that the native versions of these six plug-ins are sold separately if you want to use them in post-production.
Since this is a 10-in / 12-out interface, I connected my 8-channel preamp via ADAT, and all DSP plug-ins are also assignable to the optical inputs (channels 3–10), giving you a total of 10 DSP-enabled inputs. Simply amazing.
-The (Not-So) Bad Stuff
In my humble opinion, Apogee had the opportunity to make this interface absolutely perfect, but a few compromises were made.
First, this is a USB interface rather than Thunderbolt, like my previous Apogee Element series. On the plus side, this opens Apogee products to Windows/PC users. However, it also means that the Symphony Desktop relies heavily on its dual-path/software approach to achieve near-zero latency. With my Thunderbolt Element, Logic Pro integration was extremely straightforward thanks to the direct monitoring button, whereas with the Symphony Desktop the routing is more complex.
The second drawback is the absence of a DSP-based reverb. Despite including the excellent Clearmountain Spaces, it only runs natively in the DAW. After speaking with Apogee support (excellent support, by the way), I was told this decision was due to DSP power limitations. That said, they did not rule out adding a DSP reverb in a future firmware update. Apogee also provided an alternative method to route a native DAW reverb directly into the mixer, but this could have been easily avoided by including Clearmountain Spaces in DSP form.
- Final Thoughts
Despite these corporate decisions and limitations, from a sound-quality perspective this is the best audio interface available at the moment, paired with very solid build quality.
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