Apart from that, though, there is not much to dislike about the Apollo Solo, and I’ll refer readers who want more detail to Paul White’s review of the Arrow in SOS May 2018. This is a shame, as it can be bus‑powered from the spare Thunderbolt socket on a rackmount Apollo X, and is the perfect size and shape for a desktop monitor controller and, unlike the Twin, it’s not hampered by a power supply as well as a Thunderbolt cable.
Daisy‑chaining with other Apollos is not officially supported, and it has no talkback or mute controls that could be used in a ‘master section’ role. By contrast, the Apollo Solo functions only as a solo interface.
UA’s larger desktop unit, the Apollo Twin X, is designed to slot into multi‑Apollo setups as the ‘master section’, offering monitor control and talkback. To get proper value from your UAD‑2 plug‑ins, you’d then return to the studio to mix with a Satellite or a larger Apollo rig. It’s designed more for the engineer or artist who wants to work on the road with a laptop, and the included DSP is sufficient to load up a couple of Unison plug‑ins for tracking through.
Housing only a single DSP chip, the Arrow alone won’t really do full justice to your UAD‑2 plug‑in library at the mix. Things are pretty simple round the back of the Apollo Solo, with just a pair of quarter‑inch outputs and combi jack/XLR inputs. Earlier Thunderbolt connections are not supported even with an adaptor, as they don’t supply sufficient power, but I had no problem running the Solo from a powered OWC Thunderbolt 3 hub. This, of course, means you’ll need a Type C‑to‑Type C Thunderbolt cable, which regrettably is not included in the package. Like the Arrow, the Apollo Solo requires a Thunderbolt 3 connection, and is bus‑powered with no option to use a mains adaptor. All audio specifications are the same as those of the Arrow, which means they are pretty much state‑of‑the‑art for a bus‑powered interface. The top panel is devoted to control and metering, and is dominated by a large rotary encoder with surrounding LED display. The first input path also has a separate quarter‑inch socket for plugging guitars into, and another jack carries a headphone feed. Its two mic/line inputs are compatible with UA’s Unison modelling technology, and it sports a single pair of line outputs on quarter‑inch jacks. But now that the Apollo X range has been firmly established, UA are rounding up the stragglers, and thus the Arrow has been superseded by the Apollo Solo.Įxcept for its now bearing a smart grey livery rather than the Arrow’s black, the Apollo Solo is identical to its predecessor, and in fact UA’s firmware updater thinks it’s addressing an Arrow. The bus‑powered Arrow survived not because it was the smallest and most easily overlooked of UA’s interfaces, but because it was only a few months old at that point. When Universal Audio’s range of Thunderbolt audio interfaces received a major overhaul in late 2018, one product escaped unscathed. The Apollo Solo gives you UA quality in a bus‑powered box.