There can be only One…

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Thursday 24 September 2009 at 3:36pm
Tags: digitisation | equipment | hardware | microphones | sound recordings |

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The Apogee One has recently been announced, and we for one (sorry) are very excited by the prospect. 

Apogee are well known throughout the music industry for the unimpeachable quality of their analogue to digital converters and audio interfaces, but they have thus far resided in the 'esoteric' bracket - both in terms of features and price. No more! Though it only has a single mic/intrument input and a 1/8" stereo headphone/monitor output, the One is engineered to their high standards, and has a couple of unique tricks up its sleeve too. It connects to and draws its power from USB, and all level setting fuctions are accessed through the single large encoder dial on the front.

But the big surprise is the built-in microphone. While you can of course connect your favourite condenser to the phantom powered microphone input, if all you need is to capture a quick location recording then you can use the One's built-in omnidirectional mic. While we haven't tried it yet, I suspect that Apogee wouldn't include it if it were not up to scratch. Though not a large diaphragm mic, so probably not up to sensitive voiceover work, this could be of real interest for recording lectures, podcasts, seminars etc, and makes the One a cross between a serious recording interface and a compact USB microphone, without compromising either role.

Sadly for PC users however, the One is only available for Mac OSX 10.5 onwards, and no Windows drivers are - or are ever likely to be - available.

The first shipment of the One arrives in the UK in November and we've been promised the early trial of an evaluation unit by Sonic Distribution, Apogee's UK representatives - personally I can't wait!

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