Imagine that you turn up for a gig with your band and you are the guitarist. You start to unload and set up your beloved amp and start plugging in all your trusty pedals. Then the sound engineer breaks some bad news to you, that because of some technical issues you can’t use your amp or your pedals, you can only DI into the sound desk.

I’m guessing that wouldn’t impress you, so you protest, he says there is a way around it, if you want to use your amp, then you have to play in the room next door, if you want to use it all, then you have to play in the parking lot. However if none of the options so far have been satisfactory then give him $5000 and he’ll get it working for you.

Now you would think that was plain nuts!

But that is exactly what none HD users have had to settle with for years. As computers have improved, we’ve got closer, but never exactly where we wanted it to be - a recording solution we don’t have to adapt to.

Apollo is the answer.

What beggars belief is why Avid didn’t make it first, in fact we saw the potential of this kind of solution in the Eleven Rack. With people like Max and Bobby and the amazing coders on the Avid team, it certainly wasn’t for lack of talent or vision at their level - so it must have been driven from a higher level within Avid.

So here’s my take after using Apollo for a week, Pro Tools is still the King of DAWs, couple it with an Apollo and you have the dream ticket. HDX has a place, there’s no doubt about that, but if you’re not going to buy HDX, then get an Apollo and Pro Tools.

If the Execs at Avid start complaining that Universal Audio are stealing their business, then my response would be, UA didn’t steal anything - you gave it away!