Customer Reviews

Apogee ONE USB Interface with Microphone

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'm a new MacPro owner and bought the Apogee One so that I could plug in my guitar and use Garageband. I did a bunch of research on the different interfaces and picked the "One" because of the reviews and the price. I'm certainly not disappointed. This thing works way better than I expected. It is sleek, low profile, simple to hook up and sounds great. I was kind of worried that I read USB connections had more issues with latency than Firewire. That is certainly not the case here. I can detect ZERO latency. I plugged my Bose computer speakers into the One's headphone jack and my guitar sounds great. And it works great with the Mac and Garageband.

Anyway, I could ramble on but need to get back to practice. Excellent product. Thank you Apogee!

First let me start by saying I am a (very) long time pro audio geek. I'm very demanding, have NO tolerance for BS and I do know what I'm talking about. I use Logic Pro 9 on a 13 inch MacBook Pro, and a Mac Pro tower.

I already own an Apogee Duet and that is a fantastic product. The ONE is no exception. I am very impressed with the internal mic. I have been setting the ONE on my right leg while seated recording my acoustic guitars and it works great! I need to purchase a stand adaptor! I'm sure this will sound great on any acoustic instrument.

I now keep my Duet connected to my desktop computer and this little ONE is in my laptop bag. It is a lot of fun and sounds like an Apogee. High quality. There is a bit of a noise floor with the internal mic, but it is within acceptable limits in my opinion. That is the price to pay for convenience I suppose. I have not tried this with an external mic yet, but I have used it with my electric bass and could not be happier.

One thing I would add or change [if it were up to me] would be to add a line output that is independent of the headphone output. I have not found a graceful way to switch between headphones and speakers.

Latency is reasonable, quite low really for a USB device. There is a bonus to using a USB audio device in that it leaves your firewire bus free for an external hard drive.

I am quite sure even though I have not tried, that the internal mic will be next to useless outdoors in any wind. Singers will have to be extra careful not to exhale or pop their "P"s near it. There is also a ton of handling noise. When you touch, move or even look at it you hear it.

A big beef I have is the USB cable which is not standard. (am I wrong?) If you misplace the supplied USB cable you will need to purchase another from Apogee. The dongle is a little "flimsy" as is the USB cable. Time will tell how these hold up, and I know very well from years of experience that solid connections are the single most important aspect of any audio system...

It would be nice [and profitable] if the people at Apogee were to write drivers for Windows users. Why they don't is a mystery. Maybe there is some type of agreement with Apple. There are times when I'm forced to use Windows so that would be nice.

Closing - I love it. The Apogee products are in a different league than their competitors. The M-Audio, Presonus, Lexicon crap may have more in/out bells and whistles, but the quality is lame in comparison.The Logic/Apogee combination is a really fine system. It's also wonderful with Garage Band or anything else that works with Apple Core Audio. The ONE concept may not please everyone, but it works for me. I prefer clean simple and elegant. Goes well with my mac!

Now I have a studio with me always. Just wish I had the musical talent to make use of it!!

I just picked this up and WOW I play Flamenco and Classical guitar as well as rock. I have a recording studio as well. I downloaded Apogee's update for ONE and was up and running in less then 5 min. The internal "Tuned Aperture Microphone" sounds amazing as well. This will be so easy to capture ideas when on the go. I can see using this for podcasts and voice overs as well. This is the best 250.00 on pro audio gear that I have spent. I have owned Apogee's products Ensemble and Duet. I just love this ONE for me its perfect, I take my Mac Book Pro and One and I have a studio ready to go anywhere when I travel. You may need to play with the levels but this is by far the best audio interface out there in this price point.

Thanks Apogee.

I have been using Apogee hardware since the 90's in my day job so I felt pretty confident at the time of purchase. Even at that the ONE outperformed all my expectations. I bought this device for one reason, to plug it into my Macbook Pro for live audio. Little did I know I would be using it for scratch vocals and acoustic instruments on everything I do sometimes even keeping the takes in final production.

The microphone in this thing is absolutely fabulous, I can't believe how great this tiny little microphone sounds on vocals, guitar or Mandolin. I'm just completely blown away by it but there's more. The amount of latency as a USB device is also quite a surprise. I've always ruled out USB 2.0 as pretty useless for Analog to Digital Conversion because it's latency issues and I still feel the same with the exception of the ONE. The latency is manageable and is really the only USB interface I've seen that was useful.

If there were 6 stars this item would receive it. I highly recommend apogee products to anyone!

I hope this review was helpful to all who read it.

There are a kazillion usb audio interfaces. I read reviews for M-Audio, Behringer, Yamaha, Lexicon, etc. I spent quality time I should have spent doing homework obsessing over the perfect affordable solution for my limited "sketchbook" recording. I asked my cousin, who makes music for a living. I said, "Hey cuz, I need a usb audio interface for my mac mini. These all look like toys. Should I bother spending $250 on the Apogee, or should I get the $60 M-Box?" And he, with no hesitation at all, said "Get the Apogee. Everything they make is f%$#*! top notch. It's worth the price, it'll be the only thing you need. If you have $500, drop it on the Duet." I was taken a little by surprise. He's pretty low key about things like this.

So I saved up and got the ONE. The breakout cable had a loud buzz in it, and I sent an email off to Apogee. With one email, just a single paragraph note- a new functioning breakout cable showed up within the week. So aces to them for that kind of service.

The actual product? WHOOO! It records into GarageBand just fine, easy to use, crisp and clear. Very low latency, very nice conversion to digital. The few things I've recorded have a presence and roominess to them. And I'm not using great equipment.

My favorite part? All my iTunes music (mostly AIFF's, I have an ear enough to get bugged by mp3 compression) sounds completely transformed. The ONE just processes sound so well, I can hear nuance in virtually every recording, played loud or soft. It's actually made me more productive doing homework, because it's a joy to sit and type papers while listening to the music. Even if you never record, I'd say get this product if you're an audiophile. It's turning me into a bigger music geek than I was before.

THe built-in mic appears to be about as good as my old MXL 2001. It does provide a challenge that you really can't move your headphone cable while recording- the mic is sensitive and encased in the plastic housing of the ONE. Any desktop skootching will come through loud and clear. If you're just looking to sketch ideas, though, and you haven't a large condenser mic, well you can just get this and save yourself the price of a beginner large diaphragm mic.

All in all, I'm really glad I made this choice. It looks nice, it sounds like pro-equipment, and the company stands behind it. Like my cousin told me, you simply cannot do better than this for any less than $500 for the Duet. The next price point with this level of pristine audio is $800 or more, and if you're using Mac, then you should get the device specifically made for Mac. I couldn't agree more.

After hearing raving reviews I thought I'd give it a try and here's my two cents. I've been recording from my home studio for years and it's certainly not the first audio interface I've ever seen. The first ONE that I got caused me some grief. It was noisy. By that I mean that when recording it had such a high white noise floor that was practically unusable. After searching the net (only to find out that many customers seem to experience noise problems with ONE) and exchanging a couple of emails with Apogee tech support (don't you love writing a two page long cry for help and three days later receiving a one-line response?) I took the unit back to the Apple store and exchanged it for another one (no pun intended). The new unit is as quiet as a church mouse, works like a charm, is immediately recognized by both Logic and Garageband and is everything they say it is. Built-in mic is very convenient and produces clean sound (to my liking anyway), although I found it being almost "too" sensitive - when I was recording vocals it was catching background tracks from my headphones!

Having said that, I'll probably take it back - not because of quality but because it is Mac only and I use both PC and Mac in my work - so I'd like to have a more versatile gadget that works on both (plus ONE is certainly not the cheapest guy on the market). But if you're a Mac-only user - and do not require more than one input at a time - you might love it!

I was skeptical considering all those reviews about the input cable being somewhat finicky. I took the leap of faith anyways being that it is made by Apogee, so why not?

Now it is true that the cable was a bit annoying being that the signal would cut in and out but placing in its proper mic stand, surprisingly it worked.

The sound quality is like no other. I mean if you're going to complain about low noise in the back round than I guess you have your particular taste which must be extremely high. That's awesome though. Know yourself. But for me, this was the one. Cliché to say,but its true.

I say get it. It's low cost is worth the performance it provides. This piece of equipment is worth far more and even than I would purchase it. I'm on route to get the Gio now since the duet is a bit out of my range, for now.

It's a neat product but it's very fragile. I've had two of these and both broke within a few months. The Amazon retun window is very short and it's really hard to get in contact with the seller (is that by design?). Disappointed.

Fast shipping and pleased with the product. Everyone says its plastic and wont last long but i disagree. It sturdy enough to travel and for being so expensive I would think that people wouldn't be playing catch with it. But other then that, I have a macbook pro and it was really easy to install and hook up. I had it recording from my external 48v phantom power condenser mic in no time and recording my guitar also. The connections are small but should be ok. Also one more thing is the internal mic is great, specially when messing around and getting ideas down. Great sound and very pleased.

I've been using a two channel usb interface for a couple years. It's permanently retired now and this is going everywhere with me. The built in mic is great. Recorded two acoustic guitar tracks via 1/4" break out cable the first night I had it for a radio advertisement. I love this thing.