Capturing a great idea within that spark of inspiration is essential to today's musicians, especially for those with bad short-term or recall memory. Since that light bulb of "Aha!" never lasts for long, fixing your musical idea to permanence is best solved by recording your sketch. It used to be, however, that your only portable recording option was a handheld recorder with low-quality output, capturing only a partial essence of your idea. Setting up many pieces of equipment while on the go is a problem too as you could lose that musical thought while setting up, leaving you without any clue on what to record. If you're a Mac user, you're in luck as Apogee ONE is now out as a instantaneous pocket-sized solution.

Apogee ONE is a pocked-sized audio recording interface. Simplicity and ease of use marks Apogee ONE's main advantages over other audio interfaces. Professional recordings can now be done anywhere as Apogee ONE will work seamlessly with Apple's GarageBand, Logic, Final Cut, or any Core Audio compliant application. ONE gives you the ability to record a single channel of audio using either its specially tuned enclosure microphone, an instrument input for guitar, bass, or keyboard, or a microphone preamp input.

Having no microphone at hand is no problem at all as Apogee ONE has an integrated internal reference condenser microphone, fine-tuned to represent Apogee's Tuned Aperture Microphone technology. With this integrated microphone and an optional custom mic mount, capturing ideas is quick plus the quality of the recording will be legendary given Apogee's impressive track record. Wanting your own microphone's sound is no problem either as ONE also has a microphone preamp with phantom power and a gain range of +10 to 65 dB. You can also plugin your guitar, bass, or keyboard into a dedicated instrument input that features extremely low noise and a transparent signal path. You also need not worry about clutter in your extremely compact setup as Apogee ONE has an instrument and microphone breakout cable that it wouldn't feel that your ONE has a lot of plugs sticking out of it. The ONE Touch Control knob offers simplicity (it has only one knob, literally) as it can select and control all of ONE's features with just a click and a turn.

ONE is powered by a USB connection so there are no hassles such as the need for a power supply or the confusion that arises regarding I/O connections. Despite the size, it can record 24-bit audio at 44.1 and 48 kHz sample rates. Priced only at $249, legendary quality at pocket-sized proportions is well within reach.