The results are in from the shoot-out between the Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt and the new Quantum Thunderbolt audio interfaces undertaken by Russ Hughes, from our sister site Studio One Expert. 

The Test

The aim of the test was to focus was on audio quality,, so they set up so that they could record the same audio using both interfaces and then compare the audio quality.

They used an AKG414 mic sent to a passive splitter to feed both interfaces, each running on its own Apple Mac computer.  All audio was recorded in PreSonus Studio One 3.51 at 96/24.

The Results

Examples 1 were the Ensemble and Examples 2 were the Quantum. The results of the listening tests are as follows.

Summary

Who are the winners and the losers? in numerical terms, the Quantum claims first place by a whisker, but all three are very close.

What this shoot out confirms, is something we have been saying for quite a while, especially when we get questions about "which interface should I get?" that it's hard to differentiate now between most of the modern high-quality audio interfaces - even when there is a significant price difference.

What all this shows is that the real winner is the user. This shootout and the results show that the price for a high-quality Thunderbolt audio interface has dropped considerably, in a relatively short space of time.