UNIVERSAL AUDIO Apollo X4 £1,599 STREET

Dedicated DSP processing in an audio interface is very much in vogue at present, with a number of mid-to-high-end units coming out from new entrants to the market over recent months. Interesting though these offerings have been, none have yet quite achieved the seamless integration between DAW and external DSP offered by Universal Audio’s platform. This isn’t really a surprise given how long UA has occupied this particular niche of the market: audio quality is largely a given with these higher-end interfaces, but UA’s DSP technology is mature, and the platform is flexible and open enough to allow third-party developers to create plug-ins for it (albeit under license from UA).

INS AND OUTS

The latest addition to UA’s ever-growing range of Apollo audio interfaces, then, is the Apollo X4. This compact desktop unit