The Apogee Duet is an extremely famous interface. Unlike many interfaces that I enjoy reviewing, the Duet is famous not because of how much you get or the money. Two mic and two line inputs is hardly a sizable amount for what you are paying for this. No. It is famous because of its sheer pristine quality. With preamps offering 75 dB of gain or so each, you really cannot go wrong. The singular knob on the Apogee Duet is also midi assignable, so you can use it to control parameters in your favorite digital audio workstation. It is important to note that not only is this interface powered by firewire, it is also Mac only, so sorry to those of you who own windows pc's (I'm in that category, but when you work with audio, you tend to have a lot of friends who own Macs).

UTILIZATION

The beautiful Duet has very bright LEDs on the surface to indicate parameters. What is so special about the utilization of the Apogee Duet is the fact that it has only one knob, that you push to switch between the current parameters you are messing with. You switch between input gain 1, input gain 2, output from software, output from the hardware for monitoring, and the midi assignable function. What I find odd about the Duet is the situation with phantom power. I am not quite sure what drives it, but there does not seem to be any parameter assignable to it, and yet I know people who have used it for condensers. I for one have only used the Apogee Duet with dynamics, and I find that they give adequate gain for just about any dynamic out there.

GETTING STARTED

It is as simple as plug and play. The manual is simple to use and everything about the Duet is elegant and simple.

OVERALL OPINION

I find the Duet to now be a steal when you consider that the Duet 2 is out on the market now, taking up the new sales segment. It is a fantastic deal, very elegant, and the quality is top notch.