Apollo X Series Gen 2 Release Tomorrow

Where did you see this?

www.dtmstation.com/archives/67850.html

Interesting, seems like a "little" bit of a refresh. Looks like Sonarworks is implemented inside of it now, which could potentially be nice as I've been looking at interface options for Atmos. That would make things a little easier for calibration and correction... 

(EDIT: Looks like they're going to implement Sonarworks for the First Gen Apollo X hardware as well)

Still married to the ancient sharcs that can't even run the UAFX amp plugins they are releasing tomorrow.

It's been how many years since the X Apollo's came out. What are they smoking at UAD?

On the plus side they finally acknowledged the preamps suck by giving you the option to fully bypass them. Should have always been that way.

Maybe the conversion will be usable now.

Maybe the headphone amps won't sound like total trash...

The auto gain function for console would be interesting if the preamps are better sounding now...

I personally haven't had a problem with the use of Sharcs, in principal. They do the job they were intended to do. That said, UA has definitely gotten to the point that their latest and greatest plugins simply can't run on the old Sharcs, because they simply are too large to run on one chip, so they were going to have to make a switch sooner or later, unless UA is just giving up on developing for DSP anymore. I assumed, that it would be sooner, whenever the new Apollos came out, so I was frankly really surprised to see that they stayed with the same old DSP as before.

This whole refresh isn't much of a refresh at all. It seems like it's mostly really just a cash grab, to bring in some more money without actually making any substantive change to the design. I'm underwhelmed, to say the least.

I personally don't have an issue with the Apollo conversion, but maybe that's because I'm on an x16. I don't know. I've never used an Apollo preamp in my life, to whatever extent those have a negative impact on the sound. I've never used an Apollo headphone output either.

I really thought they were going to switch to ARM processors for the new Apollos. They're already doing it with the UAFX pedals, so the proof of concept is there, and now they're releasing the UAFX pedals as plugins, which can't fuckin run on the new Apollos with their old Sharcs DSP in realtime. You kidding me?!?

So when Drew has repeatedly stated that DSP was going to be the backbone of the UAD ecosystem for years to come, that apparently was just more of his usual gaslighting bullshit. It would take some real twisted mental gymnastics to continue to take those previous statements seriously, while observing what is actually currently happening.

Consider yourself lucky my friend. 

I find this update truly sad, has UA quietly fired all its interface design staff or is it’s new motto, if we tell you it’s good: it is good ?

My opinion? This is UA slow walking their way out of DSP. The signs were already kind of there, but nobody knew for sure, with so many different moving parts going on right now. But the number of new plugins they've released for native only were certainly eye brow raisers, especially stuff that totally would have made sense to develop for DSP.

But with this new Apollo release? I don't know anymore. That sure does seem to be a troubling sign that this was a half hearted attempt to release a "new" Apollo that took no real effort to design, because it's basically the same as the previous generation, which is probably what a company would do if they just needed to milk another five years or so out of a dwindling product category like DSP.

Why expend a bunch of resources developing for a platform you have plans to abandon? That's sure what this seems like...



Oof... And the Apollo/Luna low latency workflow was mostly the thing that was keeping me around anymore, as a serious UA customer. Hmmm...

I guess I was hoping they could figure it out by the 4th generation. I mean really, how hard can it be to make a headphone amp that isn't embarrassing?

So glad I ditched Apollo after the mkii’s. All I have is a satellite to run my plugs. Eventually I won’t need that cause everything will run natively. They really used to be one of my favorite companies. The 610 was my first outboard pre!

Same on all counts. Still love my 4-710 though, great piece.