Tips and Tricks for Using Multiple Universal Audio Apollo Interfaces

One of the biggest strengths of Universal Audio’s Apollo line of Thunderbolt interfaces is the fact that the driver will seamlessly aggregate (allow you to simultaneously use) up to four units. As far as your computer is concerned, it is just one big interface. This makes the Apollo an ideal choice for someone who wants to start with a small, high-quality interface like the Apollo Twin MKII but wants the ability to track the London Symphony Orchestra with their Universal interfaces someday.
This approach gives you lots of features, and some of them get even cooler with more than one Apollo. The Universal Console control app expands to show you all the new I/O you have acquired interconnected with a single cable.
Managing multiple monitor systems
The Apollo interface gives you the ability to switch between up to three pairs of monitors, and the new Apollo X series will handle surround monitoring as well. This feature set keeps you from having to spend more money on a separate system to control levels on your playback system.
Unfortunately, audio engineers tend to have a lot of different kinds of projects going on at the same time. You might be mixing a game soundtrack in surround today and tracking drums tomorrow and need to switch between big and small stereo monitors. A single system makes this challenging, but a pair of Apollo rack units makes it very easy.
Simply hook your surround monitoring system up to an Apollo X, and hook a maximum of three sets of stereo monitors up to a second rack Apollo. To completely change your monitoring path, all you have to do is open up the Settings app for Console, go to the first tab, labeled Hardware, and drag the Apollo that has the monitors you want to use to the top of the stack. The system will only ever feed audio to the speakers that are attached to the Apollo in that top slot where you see the little monitor icon (fig. 1).

Figure 1: Drag the Apollo X to the top position, and it becomes the source for all your monitoring.

This page also lets you set how many additional pairs of monitors you want to use and has a very handy drop-down menu labeled Digital Mirror. If you turn this setting to ON, the stereo digital output (AES on the Apollo x16, and SPDIF on the others) gets the same signal as the main monitor speaker outputs. If you have a pair of reference monitors with digitals inputs, you could use this connection instead and use the analog monitor output to feed another headphone system for those times when you need to come up with a way to build five separate stereo mixes out of the Console app.
Simplify, simplify, simplify
While having more than one Apollo gives you a lot more inputs, it also increases the complexity. This can distract you from the work at hand. I strongly recommend that you simplify what you are looking at to focus on your work more efficiently.
Console can look like a mess (fig. 2) when you open it up the first time after you connect another Apollo to your system.

Figure 2: The Console view after adding another interface.

First things first: click on the View menu and select Show/Hide Inputs (or hit Command+I if Console is in focus) and click on the little green power buttons on the scribble strip to hide the inputs you don’t use. You can always turn them back on if you need them, but you may be happier if you start with simplicity. I have turned off all the inputs in Console except for the mic pres and some virtual inputs. This really streamlines the view in Console.

Figure 3: The more simplistic streamlined view.

This means that I can see all the channels I am using (14 mic pres and four stereo inputs) without ever needing to scroll on a 1920 x 1080 screen. This view is much more efficient. While you can’t change the order of the strips within Console, if you make sure to use any additional inputs on the last Apollo in the chain, then they will fall to the right of everything else. This is the primary reason why I have the Apollo Twin in the middle in the example shown above.
In this example, I am showing the four mic pres from the silver Apollo Quad and the two mic pres from the Apollo Twin, and I am hiding everything else. This keeps all my mic pres in a group, and I can always un-hide something if I need access to it later. If you have mic pres that you generally use as stereo pairs, then you can also save some screen real estate by linking them in Console. Just right-click or Control-click on the label for the channel and check the Link selection, and they will be merged into a single channel strip.
Of course, Console is only half the challenge. The way your DAW views the inputs could also use a bit of clean up as well. Go to the Settings page within the Console app, go to the second tab labeled I/O Matrix (or Core Audio in older versions), and take a deep breath — this is not as daunting as it looks.

Figure 4: Whole lotta inputs and outputs going on.

Every single input and output on all your Apollo interfaces is represented in this list, and this is the list that is published to all the other audio applications on your computer. We are going to turn some channels off and change the order a bit to make life simpler.
First of all, don’t turn off a bunch of channels individually — ain’t nobody got time for that! Set your input and output values to eight each at the top of the page, and then set them back to 32. You will find that this has blanked everything from slot nine forward, and now you can add back the inputs and outputs you really want to use, in the order that you want them to appear.
To match what was showing in Console, I chose to organize my inputs as you see in figure 5 below. Console gives the different Apollo units their own color scheme to help you keep track. The cascade button is also a big time-saver. When you start to do a series of inputs, like the eight mic pres from the x8p, put the first one in, and then click the cascade button. At that point, rather than repeating that process seven more times, just click the channel indicator next to the one you inserted, and drag down. Console will automatically fill down in the same category, so the next seven mic preamp routings are simple.
At this point, you should click the save button and give this configuration a name so you can get back to it easily.

Figure 5: Simplified I/O Matrix view.

In my example, I have set up 24 inputs and 24 outputs in the order that I like them. Now let’s go over to our DAW to see how things change. A lot of modern DAWs, like PreSonus Studio One, will automatically view the list that has been published, although you may have to relaunch the app in order to see the list you have just finished editing.

Figure 6: My input list simplified as seen in PreSonus Studio One.

You may have to jump through a few hoops to make this work correctly in Pro Tools. First of all, go to Setup and make sure that you have selected the Apollo as the playback engine, not a Pro Tools Aggregate I/O. Then pull down the Setup menu and select I/O.
In this window, you will see all the inputs in your Apollo system if you have already been using it with Pro Tools. On the input tab, select all the paths and delete them, and click the Default button. This will import all the inputs in the order you have them in the Console app. Then go highlight all the paths that don’t have a name and delete them. Repeat that whole process on the Output tab. Then click the OK button.

Figure 7: Just what I need and nothing extra.

Now when I select routes within the Pro Tools mixer, my choices are limited to the list that I have generated from Console. This makes life far simpler, and my selections look like figure 8.

Figure 8: I can feel my stress decreasing already.

Talkback, Volume Control, and Slate
For my money, the best reason to add an Apollo Twin MkII to my system is to have a volume control on my desk and access to a talkback mic that I don’t have to wire up separately. The fact that the Twin MkII includes two more mic pres, another headphone output, and more DSP is just a bonus. 
I continually tell myself that I am going to be better at making notes about sessions — but somehow it never actually happens. Having that talkback mic right there supplies another tool. Since you can see in the Pro Tools example above that the talkback stream shows up in the DAW, you can just record some verbal notes at the beginning of the session on a track to remind you which mic you used and where you placed it. Quick and convenient, and it saves with the session every time.
Virtual I/O
Including a couple of Apollo virtual input and output streams in your setup can make it even more flexible. Each rack unit adds eight of these channels to your system, and each Twin adds four. There are a couple of cool things to do with them.
First, use the Audio MIDI Setup app to route the outputs of your Mac into the Console mixer. This makes it easy to play tracks from iTunes or Spotify into your system and allows you to use Console to route those tracks into the headphone mixes as well. It’s great for playing some example tracks to your musicians.
Open up Audio MIDI Setup, and make sure that you are using the Apollo for playback of your Mac audio. Click on the Output tab here, and then click on the Configure Speakers button in the bottom right corner. Select a pair of Apollo virtual channels for the speakers, and you are now bringing anything your Mac would play into a channel on Console.

Figure 9: The perennial Audio MIDI Setup view is straightforward for all users.

I do the same thing with a virtual channel for the output of my DAW tracks. This allows me to take whatever my stereo mix is from my DAW to use as a quick starting point for a headphone mix.
I also like to set aside a virtual channel for live VI (virtual instrument) playback. If I am teaching background vocals to singers, it is easier for me to play the parts on a keyboard than to sing them. By opening a standalone version of a virtual instrument, I can set the buffers very low for great latency without having to fool around with anything in my DAW setup. Then I just route the VI output directly into Console so I both have control of it and have the ability to route it quickly and easily and even drop UAD plug-ins on it if I choose.

Figure 10: SampleTank routed directly to a stereo channel in Console.

Universal Audio makes rock-solid gear that sounds great, which is why so many people own Apollo interfaces. This kind of flexibility, and the ability to stretch these features over more than one interface, is why it makes so much sense to buy into the Apollo hardware universe and continue to grow your system by adding another Apollo down the road.

If you need help deciding which Apollo interface is right for you, either as a first unit or as an expansion unit, give your Sweetwater Sales Engineer a call at (800) 222-4700.
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