Connect up to 8 microphones or a combination of instruments, external mic preamps, and other analog audio devices. Most importantly, the built-in mic may be used for talkback. Ensemble delivers the full potential of Thunderbolt 2 performance with the lowest latency, unmatched CPU efficiency, 2 ports for expanding your system and a revolutionary bit playback signal path.
Latency has been reduced to an astounding 1. This implementation allows the driver to crunch an enormous amount of data at an amazing speed, while making a very light demand on your Mac CPU.
You benefit with lower latency, more plug-in power, and a transparent and encompassing listening experience. Connect a second Ensemble Thunderbolt or an Element Series interface to your Ensemble Thunderbolt and expand your studio. Element series interfaces feature Ensemble sound quality at unprecedented prices.
Watch this video to see how easy it is. Apogee is an award-winning industry leader in digital recording technology with over 25 years of experience. Ensemble is built solidly on this reputation. With components carefully selected in critical listening tests and a highly efficient circuit design, Ensemble was built by Apogee engineers to make a difference you can hear.
Whether recording powerful drums, dynamic vocals or delicate strings, your recordings retain the full impact, intricate detail and lifelike dimension of the original performance. This superior FET-based analog design prevents the digital clipping that causes distortion by instantaneously rounding off transient peaks before they hit the analog-to-digital converter. Soft Limit allows several more decibels of apparent level to be recorded while subtly providing an analog tape-like warmth to the sound.
Karin Park is a singer, songwriter, and producer based in Leksand, Sweden, and has a particular intrigue with Apogee Ensemble. With vast experience as a producer and artist, Karin has extensive knowledge with recording equipment and what she likes in an audio interface. The Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt is the centrepiece of my studio.
Thanks Apogee! Get answers now in the Apogee Knowledgebase. Have a Question? Ask an Apogee Expert. Find a Dealer with the Apogee Dealer Locator. Shop for Apogee Products and Accessories. Superior Sound Quality. Powerful Plugin Performance. Lowest Latency. Ensemble Thunderbolt Highlights. The Best of Apogee. The Power of Thunderbolt. Great-sounding plugins for Ensemble that work the way you want to. Previous Next. Pressing and holding the encoder again will release the mute. While this is a somewhat pedantic point in respect of what is a pretty well-designed front panel especially the colour-coding of the LEDs , I really wish it was possible to configure the Main output encoder to mute on a simple press, rather than a simple press switching the selected output for level adjustment.
Although this behaviour keeps consistency with the input encoder, I found the press-and-hold action for mute annoying, because I would use mute all the time, whereas selection of headphone outputs was something I rarely if ever needed to do.
Some people might find the selection behaviour more useful if they use headphones , but I wish Apogee would provide a quick mute option for those who might prefer it. Photo: Mike Cameron The supplied Maestro software serves two purposes: firstly, to provide hardware mixing and routing capabilities so that hardware inputs can be routed directly to hardware outputs; and secondly, to allow you to access and configure all of the Ensemble's internal settings.
The mixing and routing aspects of Maestro were covered in the Symphony review, so it's worth referring to that article if you're unfamiliar with this functionality.
One thing to bear in mind, though, is that while Symphony and the Ensemble both make use of the Maestro software, certain Symphony features, such as the V-Bus routing, are not available on the Ensemble. One routing improvement that's been made since our last review is that it's now possible to route one hardware input to multiple software inputs, and, similarly but perhaps more usefully, it's also now possible to route one software output to multiple hardware outputs. This is great if you want to create different headphone mixes, for example.
The Maestro Control window allows you to configure all aspects of the Ensemble's hardware setup, and this is where you have full control over the built-in preamps. Each preamp has a gain control, and a particularly useful feature is the ability to assign each preamp to one of two groups, enabling gain adjustments to be linked between preamps assigned to the same group.
There are also phase-invert and 48v phantom power toggles, and you can also set whether to disable a preamp and use line level for an input instead. To get started, simply install the Ensemble's software — although, as always, it's probably a good idea to make sure you download the latest version from Apogee's web site, rather than using any supplied versions. You can then plug the Ensemble into your Mac via one of the two Firewire ports found on the back panel.
The second port is handy if you want to daisy chain other Firewire devices. The Ensemble goes into standby mode when it's connected to a power source, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, pressing the power button on the front panel powers up the unit for operation. A status LED on the front of the Ensemble lights up in blue if the device is successfully connected to your computer, or green if it's working in stand-alone mode without a computer connection.
The status LED also has the potential to illuminate in red if you're really unlucky, and this can happen if you plug the Ensemble into your computer and a successful connection can't be established. In this case your Mac will probably kernel panic and the Ensemble will go into stand-alone mode. I found that having a kernel panic when connecting the Ensemble was not a completely uncommon occurrence with my MacBook Pro running Mac OS Apogee's helpful manual shows the Ensemble being connected to a Mac prior to being powered up, although it doesn't seem to explicitly warn against doing this the other way around, which is what I would normally do, as I'd leave the Ensemble in stand-alone mode when not connected.
According to Apogee, the majority of Ensemble users don't experience this issue, but Apogee are aware of it and are working with Apple to find a resolution.
When you adjust the volume using the Mac keyboard or the menu bar extra icon, you're then actually adjusting the Main volume on the Ensemble, and the Ensemble's output-level LED ring on the main output stays in sync with your Mac. Like Symphony, the Ensemble is also supplied with Apogee's Maestro software, which is used to configure the onboard routing and settings.
While this is functionally no different to using Maestro in conjunction with any audio application, the neat thing is that the settings for the Apogee Control Panel in Logic are stored with your Project. This means that you can easily recall whatever mic-pre settings you had for a given Project, by simply clicking the 'Recall Setup from Project' button in the Control Panel once you've loaded up a previous Project.
In terms of audio quality, you would expect the Ensemble to be of a high standard, and it certainly doesn't disappoint. If you're looking for some unquantifiable adjectives, I would say the converters maintain a good image, the bass frequencies sit well, and there's clarity in the high end.
While the difference was admittedly subtle compared to my trusty Fireface , the Ensemble seemed to have a little more depth, with fractionally more space at the top.
The only real problem I encountered when testing the Ensemble was when I decided to see if the record offset latency was handled correctly. On connecting one of the Ensemble's analogue outputs to one of the analogue inputs and recording a test signal a click , I noticed that the input signal would be placed as if it was recorded before it was technically played.
Obviously, this is physically impossible, so I contacted Apogee's technical support to see what was going on. The Fireface is slightly cheaper, but offers 10 analogue inputs and outputs, along with a second ADAT input and output, while the Orpheus is basically Prism's answer to the Ensemble, but with a price tag equivalent to more than the costs of two Ensembles.
A version with onboard DSP effects is also available for roughly the same money. One area where the Fireface and Orpheus have a distinct advantage over the Ensemble is that they also offer Windows support, which could be important if you run Windows on your Mac via Boot Camp, or have additional Windows-based computers to which you'd like to attach a Firewire audio interface on occasion.
However, if you exclusively use Macs, this obviously won't be an issue. Again, this might not be important to you, and Apogee's focus is clearly on providing best-in-class audio functionality; but it does seem a shame that for mobile use you may need to pack a MIDI interface alongside the Ensemble. Ultimately, though, despite a few remaining driver issues, Apogee have done a great job with the Ensemble, incorporating high-quality audio components into a Firewire interface that's easy to use, integrates well with Mac OS X and Logic Pro , and offers flexible routing via the Maestro software.
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