I still have a pair of Stax electrostatics from the '70s! They were the cat's ass of that era.Love those Holy Sh!t moments. My first was with a pair of 1970's version of planar headphones: Koss ESP 6 electrostatics. They didn't need a dedicated headphone amp since they drew power, a lot, directly from the amplifier speaker terminals. There was just so much more detail in the music.
I ran them from amplifier speaker terminals, too. They sounded wonderful. When I started using powered monitors 20 years ago, I put them I the storage room. I don't even know if they work after 20 years in a box in the basement.
I think the Apollo Twin is their desktop models now. It's not a rack mount. My son's traveling unit is like this one. Two mic/line inputs, two sets of outputs.If you have Thunderbolt on your DAW computer you might consider getting what Laszlo and I have, an early Apollo rackmount unit. They were originally Firewire but run Thunderbolt with add-in cards which brings them up to date so that they're supported with the latest UA software (the only feature that's supported on the most recent Apollo x6/8 but not older units is Dolby Atmos processing). The major advantages over the Twin are 8 analog ins/outs, 4 mic preamps, dual headphone amps, cue feeds & Hi-Z inputs and coax SPDIF in & out. The SPDIF works perfectly re-amping thru the Fractal FM9, actually better than re-amping the FM9 thru USB directly to/from the computer. I got mine earlier this year off the Verb for $1k, mint with TB3 card installed and TB cable included.
Incidentally, Logic for about a year has had its own version of Dolby Atmos (dolby-approved) and it works fine on any stereo interface using their headphone algorithm, which btw sounds quite good. I think any rack mount 8-output-plus-stereo-monitor-output Apollo will handle 9.1 Atmos via Logic.
Apollo Twin Mk II | Thunderbolt Audio Interface | Universal Audio
Record with the Apollo Twin Mk II for world-class Apollo A/D and D/A conversion, classic analog tones and cutting-edge features. Learn more.
www.uaudio.com
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