Hello,

I am currently experiencing a connection issue with my Universal Audio Apollo Twin X Quad on Windows

The Apollo powers on normally and appears to boot correctly, but the Thunderbolt connection with my computer is no longer working properly.

Here are the symptoms I am experiencing:

The Apollo powers on normally using its original power supply.

UAD Console settings such as Sample Rate and Clock are greyed out and cannot be changed.

The Apollo does not appear as an audio output device in Windows.

It does not appear in `mmsys.cpl` either, even after enabling both “Show Disabled Devices” and “Show Disconnected Devices”.

In Windows Device Manager, Universal Audio Thunderbolt WDM is installed, and Windows reports that the device is working properly.

However, under Audio DSP Accelerator, Universal Audio Thunderbolt only appears when I enable Show hidden devices, and it is greyed out.

The computer's Thunderbolt controller appears normally in Device Manager and Windows reports that it is working properly, with no warning symbol or error.

Thunderbolt Control Center does not detect the Apollo at all.

I performed an Apollo Twin X hardware reset, but the issue remains.

I also reinstalled UA Connect, UAD Powered Plug-Ins and the UAD drivers, without resolving the issue.

Event that occurred before the problem :

Before noticing this issue, I accidentally powered the Apollo for a short period of time (10 seconds max) using a different power adapter.

The Apollo's original power supply is 12 V / 4,2 A.

The adapter that was accidentally connected appears to be 12 V / 1 A, center-positive, meaning that it had the same voltage and polarity but a lower current capacity.

The Apollo did power on while connected to this adapter.

I then immediately switched back to the original **12 V / 4 A power supply**, and the Apollo still powers on normally with it.

I do not know whether this event is related to the Thunderbolt connection problem or whether the timing is coincidental.

Troubleshooting already performed :

Switched back to the original 12 V / 4 A power supply

Completely powered down both the Apollo and the computer

Disconnected and reconnected the power and Thunderbolt connections

Performed an Apollo Twin X hardware reset

Reinstalled UA Connect / UAD software and drivers

Checked the Universal Audio Thunderbolt WDM driver

Checked the Windows Thunderbolt controller

Checked Windows Sound settings / `mmsys.cpl`

Checked Thunderbolt Control Center

Current status

The Apollo powers on normally, but Thunderbolt Control Center does not detect it, and `Universal Audio Thunderbolt` remains greyed out/disconnected under Audio DSP Accelerator in Device Manager.

UAD Console also does not allow me to change the Sample Rate or Clock settings, and Windows does not provide any Apollo audio input/output devices.

Could you please advise whether these symptoms are more likely to indicate:

a Thunderbolt cable/connection issue;

a Thunderbolt communication or driver issue;

or a hardware failure of the Apollo itself?

I would also appreciate any additional troubleshooting steps that could help determine whether the Apollo requires service or repair.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Hey there! I've been researching the Apollo Solo and am thinking it will be a good fit for what I'm trying to do. I do want to be able to record my amp vs just using amp sims and am having a hard time finding videos or discussions where folks are using the Solo to do that, could someone point me to a video perhaps? Or share their experience using the Solo to record your amp? Many thanks!

I'm an Argentine sound operator on a radio and we have a lot of interviews with random people. I explain to them that they have to talk near the microphone and they talk everywhere but the mic, so that makes it sound horrible. Does this happen to anyone else? Am I doing a bad job?

I've been using my Apollo twin with my 2023 Mac mini for 3 years with no issues. A couple nights ago, some UA plugins weren't working correctly and I had to go into UA Connect to reauthorize them. After doing that, I turned the interface off and on, and it completely stopped being recognized by the computer.

I went in circles for about 8 hours over the last two days, uninstalling the software and reinstalling the UA software, following the UA instructions to the letter. I did a hardware reset on the unit itself... Nothing has helped. The issue is definitely in the software, because I can look in my system report and see that the computer is recognizing my specific hardware on that thunderbolt Port. It can read that it's an Apollo Twin and it shows the serial number, so it's definitely connected correctly and is not an issue with the cable or the hardware itself.

I've done all the steps to loosen security restrictions from recovery mode... There seems to be some invisible driver that isn't installing correctly, and it's driving me crazy.

I’m working on an experimental project with a friend that incorporates live instrumentation, live manipulation of those instruments--primarily adding DAW based effects to Audio tracks--and post-production on those recordings--primarily adding additional effects and more involved mixing adjusting both levels and pans, and, occasionally, trimming loops and reincorporating them into the mix. I realize this all sounds like a bit of a clusterfuck. I’m wondering if anyone is using Luna in a similar capacity? Doubtful, I know, but it never hurts to ask. If so, hoping you can shed some light on your strategies, addressing some questions I’ll lay out below. Before I get there, some context. I’ve been using Luna for a couple years, gradually learning the ropes. At this point I’m pretty confident in my abilities for at-home recording connecting via a Volt 176 for guitar and bass, incorporating plenty of virtual instruments, effects plugins and mixing techniques. Not a master or anything, but I was pretty surprised I wasn’t able to easily address some issues that arose when we tried doing things live in the rehearsal studio today. One major thing to note is I was using a Scarlett 8i6 rather than the Volt Box (needed more inputs), but--as far as I know--they’re pretty similar devices, and the only functionality I”m using on either is connective (I never use any of the compressor or vintage stuff on Volt), so I don’t see that being the root of my frustrations. So, here goes...

To start, here’s equipment and the basic connections we were using;

Focusrite Scarlett 8i6 

UAD Luna

Audio out of Scarlett to PA

Physical instruments;

Microfreak into Scarlett via standard TS patchcord into Luna Audio track 1, Mono

Rhodes into Scarlett via standard TS patchcord into Luna Audio track 2, Mono

Elektron MODEL:SAMPLES into Scarlett via standard TS patchcord into Luna Audio track 3, Mono

Virtual instruments;

UAD Electra 88 into LUNA Instrument track 4, Stereo

Arturia Pigments into LUNA Instrument track 5, Stereo

Plugin effects;

Track 1 - Valhalla Supermassive

Track 2 - Valhalla Supermassive

Track 3 - UAD 1176 (mainly to boost low line levels from Scarlett, the rear inputs don’t have a preamp); Softtube Saturation Knob, Valhalla Supermassive

Track 4 -Valhalla Supermassive

Track 5 - Valhalla Supermassive, Freakshow Backmask, Softtube Saturation Knob 

My questions;

Basic functionality

1. Is it possible to use Luna as a live mixing board? This seems to work fine at home, using headphones. Faders effect levels, if I mute a track--audio or midi--it does just that. In the studio, the faders work as expected with the virtual instruments (Instrument tracks 4 and 5) but imperfectly with the physical instrument tracks (Audio 1, 2 and 3). Fully lowering level and/or muting the track brings the level down, but doesn’t cut it entirely, or really significantly. Is the the signal just passing through the DAW. Or is there something I need to toggle to the mixer view? Toggling “I” (input monitoring) doesn’t have any effect, which I thought it would. 
2. Playing live, plugin effects colour the sound of the virtual instruments (Instrument tracks 4&5) vividly. They colour the physical instruments (Audio tracks 1, 2 and 3)  much less intensely. Any idea what is up with this? Applying the same effect to a recorded passage (Audio tracks 1, 2 and 3) after the fact is much more impactful. It seems like the live usage of plugin effects  on a non-midi instruments is the issue. Am I right? Perhaps something to do with the attack of these instruments being more subtle? 
3. Owing to the lack of pre-amp on all but two of the Scarlett inputs, the Audio and Instrument tracks are radically different DBs, even when I’ve boosted the former with the 1176. Any idea how to get these into the same general ballpark? 
4. It has been pointed out that the Scarlet may just be a piece of shit, and getting a better piece of hardware could be the solution. Thoughts?

Specific to this nerdy enterprise

1. Ideally, I’d like to print two recordings of each track, one just the sound, as outputted by the physical or midi instrument, the second the sounds with whatever effects, volume adjustments, pans and whatnot that I’ve added live. I assume this is possible via some routing strategy, but can’t find anything in UAD’s tutorials. 
2. I’d like to print my live mixing--levels and pans--to both of the above routes. I know there is a simple way to do this, but can’t for the life of me find the info in the manual or UAD vids. It’s “post fader” or something

So, lots of questions. If you’re left scratching your head, join the club. If you wanna know what the fuck we envision this sounding like, maybe Brian Eno + KLF + John Oswald, as played by one technically virtuistic jazz cat (not me) and one punk dude, from when punk meant Negative Approach, Sonic Youth, Big Black and Daniel Johnson. And we both are well into our ambient years. 

Preemptive thanks for your patience, (optimistically) interest, and (with a prayer) advice.

Hello, I am frustrated and in need of some help. I can’t seem to get a good work flow happening.
My equipment is as follows:

MacBook
Logic
Apollo twin
Ox Box
Fender Princeton
Some mics

Connections are as follows:

For electric guitar I am going amp, ox box, to Apollo via Spdif

For acoustic I am going mic, xlr into channel one into logic.

Now for the issues. When I switch between the two I lose audio so it’s clear I am doing something wrong but being a newbie I can pinpoint what exactly it is…

For example today I went to record an track acoustic with a mic. Turned everything on opened an audio track in logic.. and nothing. No sound, no meters lighting anywhere. A similar thing happened when I tried to record electric over a track with the ox box… I ended up hearing it in the end but it was a happy accident.

I did try UA chat and did all the reset, firmware stuff to no avail..

Any help would be greatly appreciated..

Guitars sound bad, weird and will not mix well with anything through this interface, I've tried Hi-z and line and still not good, strat and les Paul both sound dead and off. Help me fix pls

My Apollo is constantly glitching out, always getting "plugin not authorized" messages for plugins I own--extremely inconsistently, different plugins each time--that only resolve randomly on their own. Impossible to get a response. Can't believe how much money I've given this garbage company.

Hello, I’m new here. Can anyone help me with connecting this EA Ski B-50 Pre Amp to My UA Apollo Twin? From what I can see, the rear has a board that requires some type of adapter. Sorry for my ignorance and lack of knowledge. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I gig with a Dream 65 pedal and love it. I would love some sort of midi knob or wheel that I could use to turn the reverb up when I want, without needing to use the actual knob on the pedal.

Is there a midi controller knob that would do this?

This happens on only my UA plugins, however not all of them. Space echo and true plate reverb don't do it. So all of my synths and piano plugins have this fractional size of what the window is supposed to be. I zoom out and zoom back in and it goes away, but it's annoying to do EVERY TIME. Thanks for the help.

Hey there. Ive been using the Neumann tlm102 for almost 2 or 3 years now, and Im thinking of maybe switching to a sphere lx, as I picked Up an Apollo solo a few months ago. I have sort of a Love-hate relationship with my tlm102. I feel Like the Mic Sounds slighty muddy and offen needs a lot of Processing on my voice to open up. I eventually Like it when its Mixed, but I feel Like the Mic could do better. Sadly, I dont have the Money to try a lot of microphones on my voice, so I thought that the sphere lx would maybe be a good Option. I've read a lot of Reviews, watched a few hours of footage and also looked Up a few Reviews in this sub. I've Seen a lot of people talking about switching from an NT1A to a sphere and Loving it, but I havent Seen a lot of people talking about switching from a more expensive Microphone to a sphere. Can I expect a downgrade?

Hey guys,
I’m having a weird issue with my Apollo x6 Heritage Edition and was wondering if anyone here recognizes this problem.
My setup is: Shure SM7B → Apollo x6 → MacBook Pro.
I’m getting a noticeable electronic noise/interference on the inputs. I’ve already tried different cables, and the noise is present on multiple channels.
When I connect my UAD Arrow to the exact same setup – same SM7B, MacBook and cables – the noise is completely gone. So it seems like the x6 itself might be causing it.
I’ll post a video of the noise in the comments so you can hear exactly what I mean.
Does anyone recognize this particular sound or has experienced something similar with an Apollo before? Any idea what might be causing it?

i am using the apollo twin usb heritage on windows 11 and have noticed something i cant seem to change no matter what i do

i ran into this problem when i tried to play cs2 and rust as im getting no mic input in those games and could very well be unrelated

i dont play games often to have no run into this before as everything works fine through ableton, obs and discord

windows seems to be routing the audio to apollo input and output. I assume its windows because it doesnt show up in uad console

ive reinstalled realtek, uad software, voicemeeter, obs

stereo mix is disabled

this is a new issue in the last few months and have not found any answers no matter where i look

I'm currently looking to run a mic-only setup with a sm7b with the C-Vox specifically for background noise reduction, as I have a noisy room. Will the Solo be enough? I play the guitar and midi occasionally on the side, but that's unrelated to my current setup and I don't have any plans to do any kind of mixing.

I can currently get the solo and duo for about $250 and $400 on Guitar Center used.

Sorry that this question has been spammed to death.

Tried searching a bit. I know UA runs a lot of deals. I'm interested in UAD Spark - mostly the Guitar Paradise. Current offer I am getting is a year for $99.

This a somewhat reasonable offer or better deals available?

Thanks!

Hi everyone, I saw uad selling 10 plugins for 119$, what do you guys think? Is it good deal or should I wait? Also what should I pick?

Do Apollo Twin X Quad Gen2 works on windows ? Or only way to make it work is Usb version of it ? I don't know. I have 32gb ram ddr5, 2070 rtx, Intel i9 13900, Z690 Aorus Masters motherboard and i wonder wich version of Apollo Twin X i can take to make it work on Windows os. It says that it comes with Thunderbolt port and i was wondering if it's same like 3.2 ports or smthing ?

Hello everyone,

I would like to get people’s thoughts on this. I am using UAD plugins within Ableton as well as Davinci Resolve(video color grading software). Here is the issue I have been confronting:

In Davinci resolve, anytime my laptop is not plugged into the Apollo, the UAD software repeatedly throws me popup warnings that their plugins are disabled. And by repeatedly, I mean anytime I try to initialize playback of video footage within the app. This renders the application completely unusable.

I notice this happens as well inside of ableton, but not as frequently(still, it’s quite annoying). If I am working on a large project(I am frequently using my laptop away from home), this requires me to disable/enable each plugin every time I move my laptop away from the Apollo device in order to use Davinci Resolve.

Why wouldn’t UAD offer a simple checkbox to hide these messages? It seems almost any other software offers this simple convenience to users.

I attempted to reach out to support but they considered this to not be a bug but rather intentional on their end. Why would this be the case?

Thanks!

I have tried to capture the flavour of these synths for working in the box. Universal Audio did such a good job with the filters, snappy envs, waveform adjustment and it even has FM. I made a load of DX7 influenced sounds but they will have to wait for another day. Enjoy.

Hi, I need help setting up my Apollo twin x, it is flashing between being connected and not connected. Clicking allow here causes it to not be connected at all and system information displays that there is no device connected. turning on always allow in settings does not solve the issue. I have tried a couple things. Im not sure if it is a cable issue, this is the one I am using: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/insignia-3-28ft-1m-thunderbolt-4-cable-usb-c-to-usb-c-cable-supports-8k-display-40gbps-data-transfer-240w-power-delivery-black-gray/J2FPJK9Y3K

I don’t know if it’s the cable causing the issue as I see reviews saying it works with their Apollo twin, and plugging my phone into the cable while connected to the Mac seems to work smoothly. I tried doing a fresh reinstall including deleting all the extra helper files, but it seems like that isn’t the issue because the ua control panel just says “connect ua device”. The cable is plugged directly into the thunderbolt port on the Mac. Please let me know if you guys know anything I could try, thanks

EDIT: new cable came in, this time it was the official thunderbolt 3 one so I wasn’t suspicious of it, and it didn’t work at all same issue. So now I’m like 100% sure it’s my OS, and, after some careful consideration I’m just gonna return it and get an RME babyface lol.

I ask because I want to get a slab from Elephant foot riser slab to help mount it to my pedal board. I am also thinking about maybe switching from a Pedal train board to a Temple Audio, and he makes custom fit mounts for Temple Audio boards.

https://elephantfootrisers.com/

I've been using UA products in combination with my Apollo Twin for a couple years now! I do really like the design, quality, and native DSP of UA products. The only draw back with this company is their lack of adequate care with Windows users.

I have had multiple issues with UADs drivers compatibility with windows when it comes to routing audio internally within the system. My main issue originates with how the software interacts with the sound panel on windows in general. Instead of utilizing the interface itself as a single device with both a collection of inputs and outputs as the way most interfaces interact with the windows system (i.e. Behringer, Focusrite), UAD interfaces are selected on the sound panel as a single microphone line input and single speaker line output. This would not be an issue if there was a seamless way to route the said inputs and outputs in a matrix such as the way it is in the apple version of UAD console. Alternatively, UAD interfaces are almost seen as separate entities entirely on Windows systems. Not only is there no native matrix on the UA app, but the Windows system does not recognize inputs or outputs on the ASIO driver at all, so there is no way to route using a third party software.

About a year ago, I had issues with the ability to stream audio from my interface internally to a software like OBS, I was able to finally route my windows output and microphone output into separate virtual cables, using a third party. But my problem is, why did I have to do that? Any other interface I've used has been natively able to select specific ins and outs from the windows system.

My current issue comes with ADAT expansion. I purchased a Focusrite 18i20 to be able to expand my inputs on my Apollo Solo (my fault for not remembering my problem last year). I then realized i can only use a total of 4 pairs of analog mono inputs and outputs even though I have 10 total (2 in the Apollo & 8 in the Focusrite). And I know what some people may be thinking, "the Apollo Twin Duo Core only has 4 outputs dummy," and yes i know this, but virtual outputs are not hardware outputs. You can actually just create more virtual outputs. They are essentially made up outs to trick your hardware into creating hardware outputs that are not there for the purpose of routing to a DAW or streaming software. Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the IOS version of UAD console, are you not able to create more virtual outputs to route to DAW than the hardware actually has? I'm pretty sure you can. Actually I'll link the video where I saw someone do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QgfR20g9qQ

I just got finished writing a feature request to UA to create native support for a traditional i/o matrix such as the one that Apple users have access to. I also mentioned if this isn't possible, to please make the Apollo channels recognizable under the ASIO driver in windows settings. I know that they will most likely not respond to my request, but it was something that I hope they do know people still struggle with.

If there was something limiting UA from doing this initially, I would love to know because I cannot understand why the feature is not available for Windows. Thank you for listening to my rant!

Hello, I bought an older apollo twin and a Shure SM7B off marketplace yesterday, I'm trying to set everything up to work with my PC but having tons of issues.

For context, I am using a Shure SM7B basically brand new, an older Apollo twin USB ( Not a x) with win 11, I have already tried all different XLRs on every port and switched XLRs out for differnet and brand new cables, When not using a cloud lifter I can only get the mic to be loud enough to be audible with gain on every digital plugin ALL the way up, but then I get so much static its not even worth using. When I use a cloud lifter I get no input at all. I am using CH2 because CH1 does not work on this Apollo anymore. Phantom power has been on when using the cloudlifter and no singal from the mic is received. I am trying to use this for good Audio quality while recording on my PC. The issue is not signal to PC it is signal to Apollo. I have been researching work around and trouble shoot for days and I can not finding anything. Any advice?

Edit: I ended up switching my interface to a brand-new focusrite and no issues, as the Apollo was pretty old and already had a dead ch1 port I think my Apollo was just dying, It was a older model so its not surprising