Apogee Ensemble vs Metric Halo ULN-2 / 2882

[dialashop]

I presently use Focusrite Saffire and I believe its time to move on to a new audio inteface and the race is between the following:

Metric Halo ULN-2
Metric Halo 2882
Apogee Duet
Apogee Ensemble

Apogee Symphony system seems attractive latency wise and sound wise, but to get the set up it costs alot (need preamps, monitoring etc).

I need 2 inputs minumin and Adat for the future.

Vic Stathopoulos
http://www.dialashop.com/vic/index.html

 

[bradbass]

I cannot speak to the Metric Halo piece, but I do own the Apogee Ensemble.

Pros:
* Great sounding Apogee convertors. Not as good as Rosetta, AD16x, DA16x, but PLENTY good!
* The Maestro Software is killer, and Apogee always has updates and patches available immediately after any OS update. Apogee and Apple seemingly work together better than others....

Cons:
* Unless you can justify the Apogee mic pres ( I do not) , it is an expensive box.
* It utilizes the firewire bus, and I have NEVER had good luck with Firewire Interfaces. I find myself having to reset the Ensemble more than I should have to...

As a former PT HD3/Apogee AD16x HD card/ DA16x HD card user, I miss those convertors (and low jitter C777 clocking built in...), and am strongly considering moving up to the Symphony system. However, it is indeed difficult to justify approx $1900.00 vs. $7000.00 or more!!!!