Technical information

Apollo Software Manual Chapter 8: Unison 144
Chapter 8: Unison
What is Unison?
Unison is an exclusive analog/digital integration system that’s built into every
Apollo microphone preamplifier. It’s the first and only way to truly emulate
classic analog mic preamp and pedal behaviors in an audio interface.
Unison is an audio processing breakthrough that starts right at the source, the input
stage, allowing Apollo’s mic preamps to sound and behave like the world’s most sought-
after tube and solid state preamps — including their all-important impedance, gain stage
“sweet spots,” and component-level circuit behaviors.
Apollo’s mic preamps are designed for high resolution, ultra-transparent translation from
microphone to converter. This clean hardware design is the foundation for adding soft-
ware color with UAD plug-in processing.
Unison-enabled UAD preamp and pedal plug-ins reconfigure the physical input imped-
ance, gain staging response, and other parameters of Apollo’s mic preamp hardware to
match the emulated preamp’s hardware design characteristics.
Because the hardware and software are intricately unified, Unison provides continuous,
realtime, bi-directional control and interplay between Apollo’s physical mic preamp con-
trols and the software settings in the Unison plug-in interface.
Controls on Apollo’s front panel dynamically adjust the Unison plug-in’s parameters to
match the target preamp/pedal behavior. Correspondingly, changing a setting in the Uni-
son plug-in interface will modify Apollo’s front panel settings.
Because Unison can be active on more than one mic channel, a complement of premium
mic preamps is available concurrently.
Unison is enabled by loading a UAD preamp or pedal
plug-in into Console’s dedicated Unison inserts
Dedicated Unison Inserts
(preamp channels only)