I just got a basic apogee one for Cubase, sounds brilliant, now that UR22 is out I am tempted to get that instead, but the sound quality of the apogee is way there, any ideas about the UR22 sound Quality, thats more important to me than bells and whistles!
Hi bashar,
That is a good question. This forum has been surprisingly quiet so coming from a guy that has tried both I will give you my honest opinion. The Dpres on all that Steinbergs I have tried are fantastic. I think they are true pro quality and if you can’t make a pro record with them, its not the pres. I think you need to look at single dedicated pres $800+ before you are in the same league as other pres. You need to know that all of the pres on all Steinberg units are not defeatable should you want to use outboard gear.
The only other budget pre that I think can compare is the Focusrite ISA one lunchbox. There’s other nice pres out there in the budget range like Black Lion’s Auter. But that may not be good for tracking everything through because it is very colored. Same thing as if you went for a Golden Age pre, Chinese knockoff of a Neve-style preamp. Most other budget pres are meant to sound clear and have a neutral voicing but most of them tend to sound a bit sterile. Not so with the d pres. I think the apogee pres are good but not great. They are clean but they Steinberg d pres are clean and have a bit of character to them, a bit more life if you will.
In the lower range ur28m and probably ur22???, the converters seem fantastic at the price point but they are not as good as the ur824 or MR816. I have the MR816 so I can say the converters on that are clearly better. Apparently, the higher end models have better jitter handling and for whatever mumbo jumbo you want to call it, it makes a difference - better clarity, bigger soundstage, richer sound overall
Having said that the ur28m converters are still excellent shouldn’t really hold someone with a great recording back. They might be comparable to the apogee one pres. I’m a bit partial so I might say they are slightly better than the apogee but you might find just as many that say the opposite. If you were talking about the 816 or 824, imo it would be no contest.
So in a nutshell, I think you will get pres but comparable converters. Some people say there is value in having a dedicated power source. I don’t know if that is true or not so I hope someone else can chime in.
I am wondering if they are differences in the sound quality between the ur28m and ur22. Ur22 has up to 196k sampling rate while the ur28m up to 96k sample rate. I’m wondering if the ur28m I have was worth the price difference, especially given the lower sample rate. If you or anybody finds out, let me know!
Thank you so much for all the detailed review! One thing i am worried about is how optimized are the drivers for my system “os-x”, the ONE is giving me 4.6ms latency with 192 buffer and no crackles what so ever, I had a roland interface before that, it was showing double these numbers, they are both USB 1, but somehow the apogee is deeply optimized with the system. I am not interested in high sample rates but like you said, a steady clock with less jitter makes all the difference, the UR-22 is looking sweet, i hope to read more reviews and hear it soon.