Betty Bennett, CEO and co-founder of Apogee Electronics, along with renowned engineer Bob Clearmountain, chat with Sam Inglis during a recent visit to London to talk about the 40-year history of Apogee and to give a teaser of their first product releases in five years which debut at NAMM 2025.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:54 - Founding Apogee
03:26 - Bob Clearmountain's First Apogee Product
06:12 - Developing The First Converters
10:12 - Adapting To Hard Disk Recording
13:28 - Launching The Duet Interface
19:25 - Switching From High-End To Mass Marketing Products
21:30 - From Firewire To Thunderbolt And Other Formats
24:09 - Symphony Desktop And New Features
29:07 - The Popularity Of Atmos
32:30 - The HypeMiC
37:21 - Trade War And Tariffs
40:31 - Incorporating AI
44:45 - Apogee's 40th Anniversary
Apogee Biog
In 1985 Apogee founders Betty Bennett, Bruce Jackson and Christof Heidelberger developed technology that addressed the inherent brittleness and distortion heard on the new listening medium of the day, compact discs (CDs). Apogee’s unique 924 and 944 anti-aliasing filters were used in high-end Sony and Mitsubishi digital recording systems to make the CD format sound warmer and more like analogue. These Apogee products were important factors in the acceptance and acceleration of early digital recording and forever established Apogee as a leader in the field.
Apogee continues to innovate with technologies and products for the home recording market, starting with Duet and Ensemble interfaces, followed by MiC and JAM, the first pro products for iOS recording. More recently they have introduced the Symphony Desktop interface and HypeMiC to their range.
Sam Inglis Biog
Editor In Chief Sam Inglis has been with Sound On Sound for more than 20 years. He is a recording engineer, producer, songwriter and folk musician who studies the traditional songs of England and Scotland, and the author of Neil Young's Harvest (Bloomsbury, 2003) and Teach Yourself Songwriting (Hodder, 2006).
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