What do most musicians really need out of an audio interface? The answer to that question can vary wildly, but for a whole lot of people, it’s as simple as wanting to get an instrument and/or vocals in, and a basic, high-quality stereo mix out. That’s it.

That’s part of why Apogee’s new compact ONE audio interface could be a huge hit on the Mac. Let’s reduce its specs to the basics:

• It lets you plug in a mic, with a preamp and phantom power
• It lets you plug in an instrument (high impedance — so think your guitar or bass)
• It has an internal condenser mic, so you can record on the go even if you don’t have a mic handy
• It has a stereo output for headphones or powered monitors
• It has a nice big, shiny knob and lights for levels.
• It’s really small.

Apogee’s converters are some of the most respected in the business. If this is up to their usual quality, that could make this a really special box – as a basic audio interface or an addition to your gig bag. This interface does 44.1/48kHz, 24-bit.

And it plugs in via USB with USB power support, so if you got one of Apple’s FireWire-less MacBooks — before the recent refresh returned FireWire — you can actually use this.

There is some bad news. This is really a single-input box; you can’t even use the instrument in and the mic in (even the internal mic) at the same time. That seems an odd choice, as it wipes out a whole bunch of singer-songwriters. The output, likewise, is unbalanced and out of a single 1/8″ jack, which isn’t always what you want out gigging. And the ONE, pretty as it looks, has some stiff competition in the affordable USB market. On the other hand, if these specs do fit what you need, the ONE’s stablemate Duet had fantastic quality and uncommonly plug-and-play operation and Mac OS integration, making this really appealing for the Mac crowd.

And you’ve got to love that optional mic stand mount and design. It’s also really, really small – 4″ W x 6.3″ L x 1.5″. Apogee says “pocket-sized” which is a stretch unless they mean overalls or someone’s metric conversion is off, but it is nonetheless very portable.

Now, Apogee, if we could just get a ONE AND A HALF for people who like this but want balanced 1/4″ outs and two simultaneous ins instead of one… (Yeah, I know, you can’t please everyone.)

The ONE ships in late July.

http://www.apogeedigital.com/one

Thanks to Kevin Vanwulpen for the tip!

As you no doubt heard, Apple today refreshed their MacBook lineup with across-the-board adjustments to pricing. I’ll let other sites comment on the news more generally, as this is a music site, not a notebook site. But the big news for audio in terms of I/O, just so you don’t miss that:

• FireWire on more models: Finally, you can again get a 13” MacBook (now called MacBook Pro) with onboard FireWire – a FW800 connector. That’ll restore the use of audio interfaces and certain high-speed storage, and means the MacBook is again a good choice as an audio machine at the US$1199 base price point.
• ExpressCard on fewer models: Oddly, the addition of a lowly SD card slot (nice for photography and mobile recorders) has supplanted the ExpressCard slot on the 15” MacBook Pro. If you want ExpressCard, you have to buy the 17” – which, in turn, loses the SD card slot.

Now, generally the news here is pretty good. For music, you probably aren’t too concerned about the GPU, so the 15” MacBook Pro at US$1699 is looking like a nice deal. But PC users are no doubt puzzled, given that all of these connections are standard equipment on the vast majority of PC notebooks, including ones that cost less than a grand. And there still aren’t as many USB ports as you’d like – you get two ports on all but the 17” model, which has three, and very often only one of those may actually be usable because of power issues.

MacBook Pro [Apple]

The battery life is also greatly improved, but unfortunately is no longer user-upgradeable. See further comments on CDMotion.

Is your MacBook Pro a rightie?

Something’s going on with the one or two left-hand USB ports on all MacBook Pros. I’ve heard some issues with hard disks, and now some problems with audio. (Controllers are evidently just fine.) The solution: use the right-hand USB port for audio instead.

Updated: Reader Adam suggests that this is probably due to a difference in power delivered to the respective ports. USB audio requires more power, and so odds are you’re under-delivering on the left-hand ports. I’m inclined to think that this is exactly what’s going on – unless someone knows something else. (Easy way to test: try plugging in the power adapter. Note that this can be an issue with FireWire, too.)

In fact, even if for some reason M-Audio has found another reason behind this, Andy Ihnatko noted the issue with different USB ports and power variation way back in 2008. It affects non-Pro MacBooks, and I expect likely many PCs, too.

The MacBook. All USB Ports Are Not Equal [Wired Gadget Lab]

M-Audio (now Avid) has gone as far as to tell its customers officially to avoid the use of that port for audio entirely. Native Instruments forum users have evidently had similar discussions. Via matt_bot on Twitter:

The use of USB Audio Devices on the Left-Hand USB Port Is Not Recommended.  This applies to ALL MacBook Pro Models (Core Duo and Core 2 Duo).

•    The 15" MacBook Pro models have 1 USB port on the left side, and one USB port on the right side.
•    The 17" MacBook Pro models have 2 USB ports on the left side, and one USB port on the right side.

One of the things that attracts me to computers: choice. So it’s worth noting that you do have choices when looking to laptops, PCs included. (This sounds like those lame “We know you have a choice in your travel plans” announcements you get on airplanes. Unlike those choices, though, these are genuinely different – thankfully.)

So let’s cut straight to the chase: there is a choice between Mac and PC, and there are choices on PC that keep it competitive (to say nothing of Linux). If you’re looking for a rig that runs PC-only tools like FL Studio, and you want more hardware choice to get there without being locked into a Mac, Boot Camp, and an extra Windows license, you have options.

Rain Recording has just introduced a revised pro laptop offering. You may have seen the announcement around, but I did get to talk to them while they were developing this, so I want to offer my own, semi-biased reflections. Rain is a custom system builder focused on music and audio applications. They and a handful of vendors like them do test their configurations with actual audio software, which isn’t generally the case with bigger PC laptop makers. And they offer music and audio-specific support, beyond even what Apple can offer.

Now, that said, I have to say I haven’t actually been that blown away by what custom builders have been able to do in the laptop space. The problem is, builders don’t have the kinds of options with laptops that they do with desktops; traditionally, you’ve needed huge manufacturing scale to get many choices. Even a lot of big brands get someone else to make their machines, so custom builders really face an uphill battle with limited barebones systems. Rain and others have put together some interesting systems, but at a price premium and generally lagging some of the hardware options on the mainstream laptops. For that reason, many PC users have chosen to stick it out with “commodity” machines and try to navigate to the ones that do music well.

The current LiveBook, though, is the first that I think really makes a custom builder competitive – and it’s the first I’ve started to covet for my own desk. It’s pricier than some mass-market machines out there, but it is competitive, and with far more of a guarantee for audio performance and reliability.

• Processors are now available up to 3.06GHz on the Centrino 2 “Montevina” – so it’s about as current as you can get architecturally
• Prices start at US$1999 – and that’s already a pretty fully-loaded machine
• The body is all-aluminum and offers a laser-etched case
• The GPU is no slouch: NVIDIA 9600M GT 512M standard, with a healthy 1680×1050 resolution on the 15.4” monitor (which I think is about perfect – any higher is hard to see, any lower cuts down on real estate)
• Lots of ports: three FireWire 400 ports (with the standard ExpressCard plugged in), one eSATA, a card reader, HDMI and VGA out, and two USB 2.0 ports
• Fast, audio-ready drives: up to 320GB 7200RPM (there’s also now a solid-state option, but I prefer conventional hard drives for their price/performance/capacity ratio)

As I’ve noted, unlike the new MacBook, the MacBook Pro revision retains FireWire, in the form of a FireWire 800 port. This does represent a switch to an NVIDIA chipset, so there may be new performance wrinkles with some interfaces. But it’s not the FW800 port per se you have to worry about. It gives you one less physical connector (previous MBPs had both a FW800 and FW400 port), but even the earlier models had just one bus for FireWire, shared between those two ports. There is a little bit of inconvenience there in that you need an adapter cable and have one less port free, but it’s much less of the deal-breaker the MacBook’s lack of FireWire or expansion is.

MOTU had already published a support note out about supporting FW800 ports — executive summary: don’t worry about it. Now Apogee, makers of the Mac-only Duet, weigh in:

Connection between a “late-2008″ MacBook Pro and Ensemble or Duet is made with a commonly available FW800 to FW400 adaptor or cable. The connection of Ensemble or Duet to a FW800 port is fully supported and in no way alters the performance of the interface.

Ensemble and Duet Compatible with New MacBook Pro [Apogee Digital]

Via MacMusic; thanks to USO Project