Looking for all the world like a high-end audiophile stereo radio receiver as much as pro audio equipment, the shiny, new Symphony I/O has arrived from Apogee. It’s a top-of-the-range audio interface designed for low latency, high-quality digital-to-analog conversion, and quality clocking, as well as flexible input and output, coming from a company known in the category. With Pro Tools HD support, it’s also a rival to Avid’s own audio interfaces, while also working with all major Mac DAWs – even Ableton Live. You’re talking an investment of a few grand here, depending on configuration, so this isn’t likely to appeal to every bedroom producer. But pricing, starting at US$3690 with the I/O modules, also isn’t astronomical.

Another big highlight: Ethernet and USB releases planned for later in the fall mean the Symphony I/O is a viable alternative for mobile, laptop-based users, not just PCI as on Avid’s Pro Tools HD interfaces. That makes the Symphony interesting as a solution for the road. (The Symphony also works as a standalone converter, not just as an interface.)

Your best bet – check out the full specs from Apogee.
Symphony I/O

I’m mostly ignorant of high-end audio boxes; I can speculate about them a bit as I would pro baseball. I can, say, however, that the trend in converter quality has absolutely been to greater quality for dramatically lower price. It’s also notable that configuring and using converters is much easier than it used to be. The Symphony I/O makes it easy to switch DAWs (though sadly only on Mac, not other OSes), and even plans 64-bit kernel support on Mac OS later this fall. It’s a far cry from the days in the 90s when you’d spend a couple of days mucking about with Mac classic drivers and expansion chassis just to get a Power Mac to do any audio recording at all. (I’m unfortunately more knowledgeable about that than I care to be; I’d like to leave that in the 90s with memories of the Lewinsky scandal.)

What I can offer is the first-hand thoughts of a very biased – but also very interesting – source. Kevin Vanwulpen is one of the engineers at Apogee, responsible for firmware, software, and digital engineering. He was excited enough about his baby that he wrote me an extended explanation of why it’s cool and why it matters. Note that this is not an official PR line (I’m sure PR’s not going to be terribly happy to see it – blame me, not Kevin, guys). And it should be taken with a grain of salt; this device is basically family to Kevin. But taken as such, I do enjoy hearing engineers talk about their creations, so here’s what Kevin has to say.

Executive summary of the highlights from Kevin:

• The converters sound a lot better.
• “Modes” for working with a variety of DAWs makes switching Logic, Live, and Pro Tools far easier. (That’s not news for your basic audio interface, but it’s new to interfaces of this class.)
• Analog fans, this is DC capable. Route control voltage to your heart’s content.

the proverbial cat is out of the bag: SymphonyI/O is online. As usual, I won’t bore you with the stuff you might as well read on our website …but I do want to highlight some other points about the product you may find of interest, which is one of the things I love about your blog.

Also note this was not written by marketing but by myself and thus there is some of my bias/opinion/whatever in there.
Ok here it goes, in random order:

a. The sound….yes I am sure marketing covers that, but I am sure it will take a little while before people ‘get it’.
I do not have ‘golden ears’ (but some who do agree)…I truly can not tell doing a blind test whether I am listening to the analog source or AD-DA. Don’t get me wrong the previous generation was great…but well this is truly a major step up, which I am excited about (I am not in the business of designing the same thing in a new jacket…and neither are some others here, including Lucas our analog wizard)

b. I am excited about the Modes (marketing called it Audio Interface Mode). I personally compare it to multi-booting a computer (such as bootcamp and many others)
In the past Apogee’s products often got complicated very fast, because they are used in very different contexts and we had a hard time squeezing features and trying to make them make sense to everyone. In the end of the day if you’re using Logic you don’t care about ProTools HD specific features and vice versa for example.
Symphony I/O can be restarted in a mode of the users choice and allowed us to keep the box make total sense and easy to use…for the context it’s living in at that moment. Rather than all contexts all at once

I personally will use it with Symphony64 at home…but it’s nice to (down the road) hook it USB to a laptop as that’s plenty in most cases (for me at least) when on the go, which I am not all that often anyhow.

c. As you know I am personally an Analog-synth and modular (eurorack) geek…until now us poor CV-needy souls had to more or less pick between the DC-capable MOTU with it’s crappy sound (for some reason with modulars that is sooo obvious) or better sound quality. I am talking about use with Expert Sleepers’ Silent Way (which I use) or MOTU’s Volta.

Well this thing’s DA’s are DC capable…yay.

But not only that they have an amazing sense of zero (forgot what Lucas calls it, he calls it true-zero or something)…but in short the zero offset is not comparable to the other stuff out there. The legs are veeery symmetrical which does mean you absolutely without worry can use it to get double the voltage swing (and thus octave range)

Second it’s extreeeemely temperature stable, which is clearly important in that situation. I have not ‘measured’ it versus a MOTU but in my experience once tuned I have not had issues (which i do with MOTU as my rig happens to be near the AC airflow in my relatively small appartment where there are physical constraints where I cna put my modular)
I actually last week got an Expert Sleepers ES-1 with DB25 to use with this puppy. I pre-ordered my personal SymphonyIO. I like my Ensemble and all I use right now, but well this is a good notch up.

Obviously it can go out quite hot (+24dBu) so you get a nice large range to play.

d. We do see this not just as a product but more so as a project or platform or whatever you call it.
That does imply we decided to not ship it all at once….yes it doesn’t do everything under the sun today and for those people they can hold of. Likewise for many it is everything they wished for.
Likewise the box is very modular in design in many aspects which will allow us to adapt and allow people to invest in this without the stuff that is valuable obsoleting as fast as technology in general does.
Personally I like the Hasselblad analogy where they had an impossible time selling such expensive digital cameras…untill they figured out to make the digital part a slide-in part that gets updated whenever new stuff comes out and evolves with digital camera technology…but the body/optics and all that stay.

Don’t get me wrong there are many great aspects to this box, but well I know you know how to read and can go through our website and all that…the above is sort of my own input and highlight of less obvious stuff that I find cool about it.

If you’re an Apogee user or in the market for this kind of device, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this offering and how it stacks up to the competition. And what do you think of the staggered release schedule as far as features, which starts now but extends through 2010?

Connecting stuff is one of the things musicians naturally do with gear. So, there’s really no reason that musical gear shouldn’t network as easily as Web servers. And yet a basic protocol, built largely on existing standards, meets with responses like this:

“We’ll support OSC when there’s hardware out there.” “Name one piece of hardware that supports OSC other than the Lemur.”

OSC has some major advantages as a network protocol, as a way of connecting software with software, software with hardware, and yes, even hardware with hardware. It doesn’t have to “compete” with MIDI – you can even send MIDI message data over OSC, thus taking advantage of features OSC has that MIDI doesn’t (like time stamps, which your tools could use to calculate latency even if you don’t use them directly). Yet I’ve been listening to this argument for years now. “Any computer” counts as an OSC device, but even when tens of millions of iPhones and iPod touch devices hit the market (not to mention other mobiles), software developers were still pointing to a (completely absurd) “lack of hardware.” How tens of millions of gadgets can count as “nothing,” I don’t know, but maybe it’s because a lot of them were phones, not music devices.

Well, here’s a combination that ought to get someone’s attention. With the iPad about to launch next month – likely to be followed by more multitouch devices running Android, Linux, and Windows – we’re not just talking phones any more. And the folks at Symbolic Sound, makers of the insanely-powerful sound generation Kyma environment, are adding a proper OSC implementation. Even if you have no interest in the (wonderful) Kyma, now available in more-affordable Paca(rana) devices, this is one to watch.

What you can do:

Use OSC directly, via a direct connection and even onboard Ethernet on the Paca(rana). That opens up the use of devices like Lemur, and, yes, iPad.

Use MIDI over OSC from your existing MIDI devices and software. Explanation (again, worth reading even if you aren’t in the market for a Kyma):
http://www.symbolicsound.com/Learn/BidirectionalMIDIStreamsOverOSC

In this case, the OSC connection acts as a virtual MIDI devices, with three merged inputs and one output. The same is possible on other devices, too, however, meaning that combining OSC and MIDI doesn’t have to be a chore.

Details on the software update:

OSC-enabled Kyma X.74 is a free software update for registered Kyma X owners. OSC communication requires the Paca or Pacarana sound engine. Kyma X.74 also comes with additional features, including an 11-times speedup in the Virtual Control Surface, support for the MOTU Ultra Lite Hybrid mk3, TC Electronic Impact Twin, and Prism Audio Orpheus converters, track-pad compatible menus, refinements to the Tau resynthesis, and more.

Open Sound Control (OSC) for Kyma: Bidirectional communication between Kyma, iPad, Lemur, and other OSC-enabled devices & software

And if you’re using Max and Max for Live, you can use a custom external for MIDI over OSC in that environment, as well. (That said, control of Live could be more intuitive if Ableton were to evaluate native OSC control support in Live, as currently exists in nearly all mainstream live visual applications. There’s an unofficial method that demonstrates just how powerful this can be — see comments.)

Max and Kyma

Kyma is still a high-end solution, but at least the entry-level Paca – still absurdly powerful – is now down below US$3000. If I had $3 grand handy, I’d certainly consider buying one. I don’t, so I think of it as that Steinway grand I can’t afford or fit in my apartment. That doesn’t mean I can’t pay attention to what it does – and, indeed, OSC implementation like this could apply as well to a $5 or open source app, to mainstream hardware or DIY solutions, as much as the Kyma.

The phrase is overused in the media and culture today, but I think it’s appropriate here:
“Just sayin’.”

Thanks to Lowell Pickett, Martin Wheeler, and others who sent this in.

It appears that network changes in Mac OS 10.5.7 could adversely impact some hardware, specifically the Euphonix EuCon line of controllers. Here is information sent to customers today – thanks to reader Oliver Lucas for spotting this.

Please note that the new Mac OS update released yesterday, Version 10.5.7, breaks support for the feature in EuControl that automatically detects what control surfaces are attached to your network.

Euphonix is working on a fix – please DO NOT update your Mac OS until we release a software update that addresses the issue, as your MC Mix/MC Control will not be seen by your Mac.

For those users who have already updated to Version 10.5.7, you can roll back your Mac OS to the previous version if you are using Time Machine.

Update: this is now fixed.

There are no other apparent audio issues with 10.5.7 that I can see. (Visualists may be pleased about some NVIDIA driver improvements.)

My sense is this is most likely limited to the EuCon, which connects via Ethernet. It sounds specific enough that even other networked music hardware, like the Lemur, may be immune – I’m posting this partly in hopes, though, that Mac users can report back and let us know.

Here are the network changes:

• Improves network performance when connected to certain Ethernet switches that have Flow Control enabled.
• Improves stability for network home directories hosted by Mac OS X Server v10.4.
• Improves Finder search results for network volumes that may not support Spotlight searching, such as Mac OS X Server v10.4, Time Capsule, and third-party AFP servers.
• Includes several improvements to Directory Service and Client Management.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I think this happens too often on Mac OS. It seems like Apple could do more to make it easier for customers to roll back an upgrade, and more to communicate to developers what changes may be.

That’s not simply a criticism. I think Apple excels at producing an exceptionally high-quality operating system, and the expectations users have for desktop reliability set a higher bar than the norm for Linux or Windows. They also run an aggressive release schedule, one that often gets improvements and fixes into user hands sooner. But then, music users are especially sensitive, and I think the situation would be even better if developer communication were improved and rollbacks were possible even without Time Machine.

Anyway, Apple (or Microsoft, or even to some extent Linux) you can’t control. What you can control with any upgrade is to make sure you have an image of your system prior to the upgrade and that you thoroughly test hardware on which you rely immediately so you can roll back. That’s always true on any OS, period. (Apple, to their credit, says just as much in their support document.)

More information is always appreciated.

If you’re planning to build a creative new instrument or interface for music, and you don’t already have the open source Arduino project on your watch list, you should put it there. Chris O’Shea at Pixelsumo brings some great new goodies for Arduino lovers via the Italian project site / tutorial site / shop Tinker.it:

Tinker.it and Bluetooth Arduino

Lots of good stuff for Arduinos:

1. Bluetooth Arduino so you can connect Arduinos to each other, to a computer, or to mobile devices, wirelessly
2. Ethernet Arduino, which, among other things, can do OpenSoundControl (OSC)
3. DMX Arduino for lighting tricks and theatrical applications
4. Lots of prototyping gadgets and kits, for use with and without the Arduino, and more projects and tutorials on the way (including some live classes in Europe). It’s like Europe’s answer to North America’s Sparkfun.

Chris also has some great hands-on impressions of the Bluetooth board. Great write-up, Chris; can’t wait to see what you’re doing with it!

I’d still suggest another option for MIDI control; watch for more MIDIsense goodness later this spring. 2007 resolution: put more hands-on projects up here at CDM. Stay tuned!