I have not used the duet, but my basic recommendation is to keep saving your pennies. There is nothing the equipment companies like better than to have you "climb the ladder" making little incremental improvements. First a $300 interface, then $500, then $700 ...$1,500 out of pocket and you still don't have an interface worth $1,500. Save your money. Buy once; cry once.

Leaving aside the sonic quality, as sonics are a very subjective matter, the main problems I encountered with the Duet were that the internal noise levels don't match up well with the amount of gain they have made available, and also that it is very sensitive to conducted interference from components such as display monitors connected to the computer. This latter problem manifests itself as buzz or "birdies" or "warbles" in both the recording inputs and the monitoring outputs.

I have to qualify this by saying that the unit I tried to use was a couple of years old, and it could be that Apogee have attended to these effects in the interim, but postings on other audio and Mac sites would seem to indicate that at least the interference problem is still a concern.

Here's another suggestion. Why not just look into one of the Mackie Onyx, FireWire enabled mixers, now compatible with ProTools M-Powered. You get good converters along with decent microphone preamp's not to mention some good old-fashioned analog equalization. The money you'll save over the boutique preamp will get you a multi-track/multi-input FireWire enabled analog to digital converter. If you're not make a good recordings with your current equipment don't blame the equipment. It's technique. Technique is everything. So is talent. And some of just takes time & experimentation.

On the other side, I purchased an Alesis HD 24xr. The xr is no longer available, unfortunately. It had fine sounding converters. In that respect, I am able to feed it from my Neve and/or API front end. These are very colored preamps with great variable character and lots of gain. Of course I've also used the standard HD 24 which I deem to be more than adequate in the same application. And since those are dedicated purpose built recorders, it's almost like having an analog deck. Because I also use a proprietary file allocation table, those bistros are not compatible to simply plug into your computer for transfer. The disk drive must be copied to a pre-formatted Fat16/FAT 32/NTFS and/or Macintosh format. I on the other hand have combined my HD 24xr with a MOTU 2408. This way, I am recording to the HD 24 while streaming its optical outputs to the 2408. The 2408 in turn, also records to NTFS hard drives in the computer. Making an instance deliverable backup, no waiting. In a sense a redundant backup but not exactly a backup if the HD 24 poops out altogether.

Take risks with audio it's fun
Mx. Remy Ann David

hey thanks alot for the information . i just made a new thread on the pro audio gear section can u guys take a look at please and let me know what you think . thank yoU