Universal Audio Releases Apollo Solo Audio Interfaces for Mac and Windows
by The Press Desk 11th August 2020

Deleted f4d7f22 · 11th August 2020

Have they announced the price?

But basically this is the Arrow rebranded and with a USB version. Good call to kill the Arrow name, it was just confusing.

But I still think it's too similar to the Apollo Twin. Same inputs, if you don't count the optical possibility, and 1 less stereo output.

They would have to make a competitive price to justify it, in my opinion.

Ziko123 · 11th August 2020

Are the converters and preamps exactly the same as on x8p, x6p?

citrusonic · 11th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ziko123 ➡️

Are the converters and preamps exactly the same as on x8p, x6p?

if it wasn't noted in the sales pitch, i would assume this is probably still gen 2 (black unit) coversion. UA would be heavily promoting their "NEXT GENERATION SUPERB CONVERSION" if it was the case.

hate to say it, but UA is truly the Apple of audio. not the most bang for buck, but solid and by far the best implemented user experience. could see this being a killer desktop unit for the novice who wants something that looks sleek on the desk and can get on with the UA workflow, but you're not getting far with 1 dsp chip, and native round trip latency gets smoked by stuff well under the price point of this. killer one channel device though for singer songwriters, or musicians/mixers that want something solid for traveling (if that ever happens again)

i'm personally getting ready to get out of the Apollo pool here pretty soon. too many awesome native plugins that get used during tracking and the lack of integrated room-tuning EQ is legitimately mind-bending for me. the fact that i've got multiple DSP chips sitting there untapped but cannot insert a simple 3-5 band eq on the master outs is really a shame. i'd even settle for better native drivers at this point. i can't pull off any reliable native tracking in Protools with anything less than a 256 buffer @ 96k- latency is definitely noticeable enough to kill a vibe. the coding-muscle over there is definitely mostly allocated towards building up LUNA.

maybe i will check back in on Apollo/LUNA in another few years, but as of now the system is too restricted to get on doing consistent work.

nikoli · 11th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by citrusonic ➡️

if it wasn't noted in the sales pitch, i would assume this is probably still gen 2 (black unit) coversion. UA would be heavily promoting their "NEXT GENERATION SUPERB CONVERSION" if it was the case.

hate to say it, but UA is truly the Apple of audio. not the most bang for buck, but solid and by far the best implemented user experience. could see this being a killer desktop unit for the novice who wants something that looks sleek on the desk and can get on with the UA workflow, but you're not getting far with 1 dsp chip, and native round trip latency gets smoked by stuff well under the price point of this. killer one channel device though for singer songwriters, or musicians/mixers that want something solid for traveling (if that ever happens again)

i'm personally getting ready to get out of the Apollo pool here pretty soon. too many awesome native plugins that get used during tracking and the lack of integrated room-tuning EQ is legitimately mind-bending for me. the fact that i've got multiple DSP chips sitting there untapped but cannot insert a simple 3-5 band eq on the master outs is really a shame. i'd even settle for better native drivers at this point. i can't pull off any reliable native tracking in Protools with anything less than a 256 buffer @ 96k- latency is definitely noticeable enough to kill a vibe. the coding-muscle over there is definitely mostly allocated towards building up LUNA.

maybe i will check back in on Apollo/LUNA in another few years, but as of now the system is too restricted to get on doing consistent work.

What makes you think you can’t EQ the master out?

All you have to do is send your audio out of a virtual channel.

tearyhistory · 11th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ziko123 ➡️

Are the converters and preamps exactly the same as on x8p, x6p?

I have the same question

ultrasource · 11th August 2020

Watching the livestream now. It's really just a rebranded Arrow (with a USB C option, of course) which makes sense since the rest of their interfaces are named Apollo something or other. I own an arrow and I believe at one point someone from UA clarified that the conversion/pre's were in the same "class" as the previous generation Blackface Apollo line. Maybe Drew can confirm.

porgporgporg · 11th August 2020

ok the fact that it's $500 and includes UAD plugins makes me genuinely interested (as much as I like my Focusrite Scarlett I've been looking at upgrading)

If it really is just a rebranded Arrow I might look into buying one of those used...

jono_3 · 11th August 2020

I would like to know what the differences are between the new Solo and the Arrow as well. I bought one on the weekend to do a remote thing and I can still return it, so it would be great to know what, if anything significant has changed. I do see that they can take a power supply now as well.

Deleted f4d7f22 · 11th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by jono_3 ➡️

I would like to know what the differences are between the new Solo and the Arrow as well. I bought one on the weekend to do a remote thing and I can still return it, so it would be great to know what, if anything significant has changed. I do see that they can take a power supply now as well.

You can look at the UAD forum for official answers.

But they have already said it's just a rebranding and different thunderbolt connection. All in all, it's the same thing.

jono_3 · 11th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by SameOh ➡️

You can look at the UAD forum for official answers.

But they have already said it's just a rebranding and different thunderbolt connection. All in all, it's the same thing.

Perfect, thanks!

B.R. · 12th August 2020

No info on converters ANYWHERE...nice to be living in the Information Age ?

djwaxxy · 12th August 2020

Your better saving up and getting a Apollo twin.
A solo is pretty useless especially if you want to use some of the newer cpu intensive plugins.
I have a solo dsp card and a Apollo twin usb and you can quickly run out of cpu power ,some of the guitar amps really eat it up so you will constantly have too keep rendering which a lot of people may not like and soon get frustrated.
It’s also bad that u only get Luna with Mac products it’s not compatible with windows which is bad.
I would rather uad would have dropped the price of some of there older Plugin products and Create some budget friendly studio products instead of rebranding arrow interfaces.

JGM · 12th August 2020

I wonder if these new Apollo Solos can integrate with other Apollos in an Apollo ecosystem? I know the Arrows could not.

acuriousdan · 12th August 2020

Compared the spec sheets of Arrow and Apollo solo... 100% identical. So just name rebranding and a new interface colour + USB option... but this makes sense and with LUNA included it's a really nice mobile package

Melgueil · 12th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by djwaxxy ➡️

Your better saving up and getting a Apollo twin.
A solo is pretty useless especially if you want to use some of the newer cpu intensive plugins.
I have a solo dsp card and a Apollo twin usb and you can quickly run out of cpu power ,some of the guitar amps really eat it up so you will constantly have too keep rendering which a lot of people may not like and soon get frustrated.

Amen to that. I have an Arrow device. A total, laughable joke if you want to use anything but the most rudimentary, non sexy plug ins. Barely enough gas in the tank to get you anywhere. My advice to you if you buy one of these? Don’t throw away your iLok just yet

This unit? An arrow with a new paint job. Has anyone noticed how the near hysterical obsession with Luna has brought UAD’s plug in development to a grinding halt. What have we seen over the past 8-9 months? A retread on an existing Neve channel. And this from someone who genuinely likes and had invested in the UAD platform.

Cdlt

Neptune45 · 12th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melgueil ➡️

Amen to that. I have an Arrow device. A total, laughable joke if you want to use anything but the most rudimentary, non sexy plug ins. Barely enough gas in the tank to get you anywhere. My advice to you if you buy one of these? Don’t throw away your iLok just yet

This unit? An arrow with a new paint job. Has anyone noticed how the near hysterical obsession with Luna has brought UAD’s plug in development to a grinding halt. What have we seen over the past 8-9 months? A retread on an existing Neve channel. And this from someone who genuinely likes and had invested in the UAD platform.

Cdlt

Yeah BX and Softube's licences with UA seem to all be expiring now one after another and they are jumping on the chance to make more money by taking advantage of being able to port their plugins over to native. That's why I went with an RME FF UFX II interface but am looking at just getting a UAD Octo-Satellite to go with it and be able to use the plugins still unique to the UAD Platform when mixing etc. Obviously this set-up means I can't track with UAD's plugins but can't have everything I guess. ;-)

mprey · 13th August 2020

Re "gas in the tank", surely it's at least enough for a single amp sim and perhaps one more plugin, right? According to UAD's published CPU usage data it should be...I am not really looking to do any more than that as I do most stuff with native plugins and just looking for a solid upgrade over a Scarlett 2nd gen 2i2 that's similarly compact. So would that be a waste of money unless I go all in with a Apollo Twin?

djwaxxy · 13th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melgueil ➡️

Amen to that. I have an Arrow device. A total, laughable joke if you want to use anything but the most rudimentary, non sexy plug ins. Barely enough gas in the tank to get you anywhere. My advice to you if you buy one of these? Don’t throw away your iLok just yet

This unit? An arrow with a new paint job. Has anyone noticed how the near hysterical obsession with Luna has brought UAD’s plug in development to a grinding halt. What have we seen over the past 8-9 months? A retread on an existing Neve channel. And this from someone who genuinely likes and had invested in the UAD platform.

Cdlt

Yep uad have been so focused on luna theyve seriously took there eye off the ball and havent released many plugins.they also need too be honest and show how hindered the arrows are ,i posted this on another forum and someone from uad chipped in and said theres a compariison chart showing how many instances you can run on each hardware..i said yep i know that but alot of newbies who are buying a interface for the first time wont see that or understand how under powered a solo is compared too the other products.

really uad should stop focusing on solo intefaces theres a reason why they no longer do solo dsp pci cards and its because you hit brick wall after brick wall very quickly..i have a uad solo pci card and i had too put the uad plugins on group channels and fx busses and i was at the edge everytime..so i then bought a uad apollo twin so now ive got 3 cores which is great and i cant remember ever running out now.

i really love the uad plugins but i wish theyd release more plugins at a more wallet friendly price.a few years ago they used to have some brilliant sales but those too are drying up and not as good as they were :(

BeatsWilsonian · 13th August 2020

To me, the whole point of an Arrow was being bus-powered. I didn't buy it to use extensive UAD chains - it was meant to track a vocal or single instrument on the go with some UAD fx. This is the only reason to buy one of these.

nikoli · 13th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeatsWilsonian ➡️

To me, the whole point of an Arrow was being bus-powered. I didn't buy it to use extensive UAD chains - it was meant to track a vocal or single instrument on the go with some UAD fx. This is the only reason to buy one of these.

That would seem self evident... but apparently there's a bunch of slutz here that are upset they can't mix their 50 track project using UAD only.

If I didn't have a twin already I'd be all over getting an arrow for the very reason that it's bus powered.

habbe · 13th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeatsWilsonian ➡️

To me, the whole point of an Arrow was being bus-powered. I didn't buy it to use extensive UAD chains - it was meant to track a vocal or single instrument on the go with some UAD fx. This is the only reason to buy one of these.

Unfortunately the Apollo Solo USB is not bus-powered.

BeatsWilsonian · 13th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by habbe ➡️

Unfortunately the Apollo Solo USB is not bus-powered.

Yeah, the USB version would not appeal to me. The TB3 version is a good buy for something simple and portable imo (if you use UAD stuff).

Pavilon · 14th August 2020

Finally some USB device again, this also includes the access to
the DAW.
But solo is a no go for me.
Does anyone know if a quad is coming?

doom64 · 14th August 2020

UAD-3... when?

Melgueil · 15th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikoli ➡️

That would seem self evident... but apparently there's a bunch of slutz here that are upset they can't mix their 50 track project using UAD only.

If I didn't have a twin already I'd be all over getting an arrow for the very reason that it's bus powered.

Have an Apollo 8XP + Satellite Octo TB3 - that's 14 cores. I also bought an Arrow - yeah it's buss powered, OK - that was kind of the reason. That and just to track so stuff for my amusement. Load up an Amp sim. Want to add Reverb?. Nope.

See that promo picture with a laptop just chock full of plugs and that lonely "Solo" alongside it. If you believe in the tooth fairy - have a go of it.

An Arrow will only allow the most rudimentary of plug's and almost no combo's. The Neve pre (among the lightest of the Unison bunch) + a sexy reverb or comp? Nope. I'll say it again. Keep you iLok handy.

Speaking from experience, that's reality.

Cdlt

nikoli · 15th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melgueil ➡️

Have an Apollo 8XP + Satellite Octo TB3 - that's 14 cores. I also bought an Arrow - yeah it's buss powered, OK - that was kind of the reason. That and just to track so stuff for my amusement. Load up an Amp sim. Want to add Reverb?. Nope.

See that promo picture with a laptop just chock full of plugs and that lonely "Solo" alongside it. If you believe in the tooth fairy - have a go of it.

An Arrow will only allow the most rudimentary of plug's and almost no combo's. The Neve pre (among the lightest of the Unison bunch) + a sexy reverb or comp? Nope. I'll say it again. Keep you iLok handy.

Speaking from experience, that's reality.

Cdlt

Not sure what point you’re trying to make.

sirthought · 15th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melgueil ➡️

This unit? An arrow with a new paint job. Has anyone noticed how the near hysterical obsession with Luna has brought UAD’s plug in development to a grinding halt. What have we seen over the past 8-9 months? A retread on an existing Neve channel. And this from someone who genuinely likes and had invested in the UAD platform.

Cdlt

Well let's see… Your 8-9 month window is oddly narrow for a company that makes tools for professionals. They aren't there to crank out an encyclopedic list of items for you to check off a list every couple months. But last year they did release Capitol Chambers, which won plugin of the year at NAMM. No small feat considering the competition coming out each year. And then the UA 176/175 compressor which seems to make a lot of folks happy with a sound we haven't heard in the digital realm. The Avalon VT-737 was filling a request, they say, as the most requested gear item on the annual customer survey. Take that for what it's worth. And then the Neve 1084, which I agree is a rehash, but at least a rehash of arguably one of their most highly regarded plugins ever and they made the EQ work in even more situations.

Maybe they did pump the brakes a bit considering they do push marketing efforts into Ravel, Moog Synth, Neve Summing, Shape, etc. A significant new direction might deserve a pass, even if it is hysterical obsession.

I mean, before that it was a similar year with the Lexicon 480, V76, Century Channel, and Neve Preamp. I don't think the output has been all that different, especially with third party options thrown in like the Oxford DeEs, Tube Tech MKII, Ampeg SVT, Suhr and Diezel amps, bx_Masterdesk, Autotune, and a Vocoder.

I by no means was thrilled with all of these, but with that kind of selection over 2-3 years, I don't think non-Luna engineers are being ignored.

But I will agree with you that the solo is really too much of a stretch at its price, considering how little use one DSP chip is. Can't recommend that unless you just have money to burn and need one more UAD product. I'm always hyping the x6 if you need your first UAD interface for a starter unit.

The-Zeronaut · 15th August 2020

Sorry but in 2020 in this price point you cant sell an audio interface with only ONE headphone out...

BeatsWilsonian · 16th August 2020

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melgueil ➡️

Load up an Amp sim. Want to add Reverb?. Nope.

...

Speaking from experience, that's reality.

Cdlt

Eh, you're being a little dramatic, and it's not "reality". Reality would be you are definitely limited in your choices for tracking with a Solo chip. But I use the Fender and EMT all the time. There's other solid amp sims which chew up even less DSP (Buxom Betty, Fuchs, etc), which would allow you to use other fx in the chain. I get you don't like single SHARCs, but I wouldn't mislead newbies because of that. It would be better to point people to the UAD instance chart and see if it's a dealbreaker for them. I don't love the thing and I would've paid extra for a duo version, but it's absolutely untrue that you can't load up an amp sim and reverb.

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