Apogee Duet?, Question - what to purchase for Logic Studio/iMac Options

[sounds2me]

Hello....

I will be running Logic Studio on iMac 20" 2.16. Korg keyboard, Kirtzweil Micro Piano, and possibly the Yamaha Drum machine.

Has anyone had experience with Logic Studio and Apogee Duet?
The Duet does not have faders... looks like a knob..
Apple says it is designed for Logic...

I am also looking at PreSonus Firebox with Alpha Track USB controller..

Will appreciate your ideas.

Also... What firewire external Hard drive is the Best for audio production on the iMac?
(Firewire, 7200, size GB? manufacturer?)

Thanks,

sounds2me

[lepetitmartien]

It's not just a reputation, there's better converters but… price then is one of a Space Shuttle, and Apogee itself is not cheap. In fact it's the first time Apogee makes a converter for the rest of us without you having to pay the extra price for the brand name. Now, Apogee has this reputation of being b…y good for a reason: very good converters, and very good controlling clocks. If something is to say against them, it's sometimes you can wonder if they think people using their high end converters should have a rocket science doctorate to survive the menus and settings…

To bring to an accessible price level such product has been a great move from them, now if you want it you can have Apogee sound and it's a good thing!

[lanning]

Sorry to intrude (I am a very new member) but I do have a couple of things I can say about Duet:

1) If you have a FW800 disk or anything else on the FW800 port (I have iMac24) Duet may not work very well if connected to the FW400 port - apparently 800 and 400 share the bus ... I found it worked well when I daisy chained it to the FW400 PORT on my FW800 Disk.

2) It seems that Duet or its drivers my have memory leaks - I find that after a couple of hours the Duet's output starts to stutter and give out all kinds of unpleasant noises. Rebooting the computer fixes the problems. I only have 2GB RAM.