The Apogee A/D and D/A units (in many flavors) were simply in every major studio, Major Label project studio, or Mastering House due to their pristine quality in audio production. I used the 800 and the Minime on a regular basis back in the day, but if I didn't I may ask the same question, "Why pay $2000 for a single pair or A/D or D/A converters." The only reason you are confused is that you never got to actually hear, or A/B final mixes where Apogee equipment was used.
I am not going to go deep into this as my hand is hurting, but the UV22 algorithm burnt into hardware (yes the same one integrated into Cubase VST 5 emulated into software) created by Apogee was just one of the many reasons Apogee stuff was worth every dollar... to magically mix 24-Bit Audio files down to 16 bit and not loose any perceived quality... well that alone shook the Audio world.
Also many Rosettas and MiniMe were used at the Mix stage to go directly from analog (from a huge console) and go to many different devices at the same time. It was not uncommon to Mix and print to a DAT (via digital and NOT use the DAT converters), go to larger Digital tape like DLT (via Digital), and go to 2 track Tape, and Hard disk all at the same time with an piece of Apogee gear (even though they were only 2 track). When a Real studio that costs $250 and hour in New York City is being used... time is money and this actually saved a ton of money and lowered the risk factor that the mix would get screwed up by some inferior equipment.
Again... this is another discussion of converters / clocks.... and quality... so either all these big production houses were crazy for paying top dollar, or the pros heard the difference and bought it, and paid a price that we may not understand... but we sure loved those mixes on the radio and they were done at this level, with this equipment... Telefunken vocal mics costing up to $15,000 each, racks of Rosettas at $2000 each, a few Pultecs worth $4000 each, some UA LA stuff at $3000 each, 24 Track reel to reels, a $150K console... this was the norm... and the results are still enjoyed today
Also, I personally was involved in printing to hard drive drum sub mixes that would go thru 2 rosettas (at 4 tracks) and let me tell you...that is hard to type into words... shit was amazing... a full spectrum of tones I never heard before... live printed to disk.
Just as a side note about A to D, when the first 2408 came out to go into macs... I remember 2 different studios that were buying as-is Tascam DA78HRs (with bad tape transports) and just using them for the A to Ds and clocking (remember it's all in the converters). The Tascam stuff was so far ahead of the computer interface stuff at the time as far as quality, that they would daisy chain 4 Tascam DA78HRs together (24-track) and not even record to tape, but use the Tascam digital I/O in the back of the Motu 2408 to get the analog tracks into the digital world and without using the MOTU converters.... very slick, buying broken Tascam multitrack recorders, just to use them for their converters.
Apogee 200
By default, all the digital outputs are at 24-bit resolution, but pressing the Coda Process button introduces the UV22HR dither algorithm to transcode all outputs to 16 bits. However, the process only operates if the sample rate is 44.1kHz or 48kHz, the assumption being that all high-sample-rate recordings will always be at 24-bit resolution.
Used by mastering houses for the final stage into 16bit digital.
Topic: A-D/D-A Converter (Read 7115 times)