Universal Audio Apollo Twin X DUO Heritage Edition 10x6 Thunderbolt Audio Interface with UAD DSP

The Most Powerful Apollo Twin Yet!

Place the Universal Audio Apollo Twin X DUO at the center of your studio, and it’s guaranteed to turbocharge your productivity. The Twin X DUO’s performance rivals UA’s rackmount Apollo X audio interfaces, but eschews extraneous features like 5.1 surround monitoring and +24dBu operation for a streamlined, desktop design that’s tailor-made for project studios. Track and mix with spot-on emulations of tried-and-true studio classics, thanks to UA’s powerful DUO Core processor. Experience top-shelf sound quality, by way of the Apollo Twin X DUO’s upgraded elite-class AD/DA conversion. Dual Unison preamps allow you to track through models of the industry’s most legendary gear. The Apollo Twin X DUO Heritage Edition comes with a premium suite of five award-winning plug-in titles, along with the Realtime Analog Classics bundle, arming you with accurate emulations of vintage analog hardware. Beyond that, you get sub-2ms latency and ample expandability, thanks to the Apollo Twin X DUO’s ultra-fast Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. Finally, the Apollo Twin X DUO boasts compatibility with UA’s LUNA software, giving you a tightly integrated recording, editing, and mixing environment, with full software-based control over your interface’s parameters, global console and tape emulations, and advanced real-time tracking. If there was ever a time to upgrade your Apollo Twin, now’s the time!

Track and mix with powerful DUO Core processing

There are times when your computer doesn’t have enough power and speed to run all the plug-ins your recording session requires. That’s where UA’s powerful 2-core DUO Core processor comes in. This processor enables you to track in real time with Neve, Manley, or API channel strips, or run large UAD plug-in counts while mixing in your DAW. The engineers here at Guitar World appreciate being able to inject guitars with the tube warmth of a Pultec EQ, add the musical limiting of an LA-2A to a vocal, and pump up drums with an 1176 or Fairchild 670 — all in real time. It’s the closest thing to having the real hardware.

Elite-class AD/DA conversion offers ultra-pristine sound

Apollos have always sounded great, but the Apollo Twin X DUO’s AD/DA conversion takes it to the next level. When they were designing the latest generation of Apollos, UA engineers auditioned the latest leading-edge AD/DA technology, ultimately pairing elite-class 24-bit/192kHz converters with overhauled analog circuitry. The result is an ultra-pristine signal path with 127dB dynamic range. Dive in, and you’ll hear it for yourself — the Apollo Twin X DUO’s AD/DA rivals any high-end standalone converter on the market.

Capture the sound of legendary preamps with Unison technology

The Apollo Twin X DUO’s Unison preamp technology goes so far beyond traditional software modeling and emulations that it’s really in a category all its own. In essence, Unison is a bidirectional communication between the Apollo Twin X DUO’s mic preamp and a Unison-capable plug-in, such as the included 610-B plug-in that re-creates the sound of UA’s classic 610 tube preamp.

The plug-in actually adjusts the preamp circuit itself, including parameters such as impedance, analog gain structure, and much more. When you adjust the Apollo Twin X DUO’s preamp gain knob and physical controls, the plug-in adjusts the preamp’s behavior to match the target preamp. So you’re not simply filtering your audio to approximate the character of a famous preamp — your microphone is now interacting with the Apollo Twin X DUO’s input the same way it would behave with the “modeled” preamplifier.

UAD plug-ins astounded the recording world with their incredible ability to sound like analog processors, eliminating the need for large racks of gear in the studio. Unison preamp technology will do the same thing for your mic inputs, eliminating the need to collect and maintain expensive hardware preamps just for sonic variety.

Thunderbolt: ultra-low latency and unrivaled bandwidth

Thunderbolt is one of the most important technologies to impact audio production in years, and UA was one of the first to adopt it. Thanks to its blazing-fast connectivity, Thunderbolt offers lower latency and greater stability than USB or FireWire, clocking in with the speed and ultra-fast performance of a PCI Express system. In fact, the Apollo Twin X DUO’s Thunderbolt 3 connection runs projects with high track counts at latencies of less than 2ms! On top of that, up to four Apollo interfaces can be networked over Thunderbolt to add fast, high-bandwidth I/O and DSP to your studio. You don’t even need a brand-new computer — the Apollo Twin X DUO’s built-in Thunderbolt 3 port is backward-compatible with Thunderbolt 1 and 2 Macs (does not support Thunderbolt 1 or 2 on Windows — adapter sold separately).

Compatible with LUNA — UA’s complete music production environment with ultra-tight hardware/software integration

This Universal Audio Thunderbolt-equipped audio interface is compatible with UA’s free LUNA software. LUNA is a complete music production environment for tracking, editing, and mixing. And thanks to its ultra-tight hardware/software integration, you can take control of your interface’s monitoring, talkback, and headphone systems, track and overdub with UAD DSP-accelerated plug-ins in real time, and benefit from full software-based control over Apollo’s Unison mic preamps, all without leaving your production software. LUNA is the closest you’ll come to an analog workflow in the software realm. It delivers spot-on analog sound, along with the creative immediacy of real-time processing.

LUNA also includes Accelerated Realtime Monitoring, which supplies fast analog-style tracking and overdubbing using Apollo’s onboard DSP acceleration. Anyone who’s used a high-end DSP-assisted hardware/DAW recording system will appreciate the super-tight integration between LUNA and Universal Audio interfaces. LUNA also supplies you with unlimited track counts, contextual editing and browsing, UAD and AU plug-in compatibility, a session auto-save function, and AAF importing.

LUNA software comes with the Shape Creative Toolkit, a superb virtual instrument with modern and vintage keys, drums/percussion, guitar/bass, orchestral content, and real-time synthesis, plus the Oxide Tape Extension, a killer saturation effect, right out of the box. But to get the most out of this system, you’ll want UA’s LUNA Creator Bundle (sold separately). This bundle includes ultra-realistic Neve 80 Series console and Studer A800 multitrack tape extensions, plus two software instruments. The best part about LUNA extensions is that once you install them, their sound is baked right into LUNA’s mixer — no need to instantiate a bunch of plug-ins.