The Symphony System by Apogee Electronics gets carded at the 125th AES Convention with the introduction of the Symphony 64 PCIe Card. It's a 64 channel, 24-bit / 192 kHz PCI Express card that serves as an interface to Apogee's X and Rosetta Series converters right to the Apple Mac Pro.

The Symphony 64 card adds an upgraded piece to the System, providing a flexible, stable solution for customers in need of a high-end solution for Core Audio applicable workstationery. The Symphony 64 even uses the Mac Pro's power to process plugins, eliminating the need for an additional DSP processing component.

One of Symphony 64's main features is extended routing thanks to VBus and SBus technology. VBus handles routing to process-hungry, standalone software instruments directly between Core Audio based applications rather than running these as plugins. SBus does to the DSP power of the Symphony System what spinach does to Popeye -- strengthens it. SBus effectively doubles the DSP power by making communication between Symphony System components happen with a single cable. This allows you to route audio through another computer and back for plugin processing, sample libraries, soft-synth players and session transfers between two different Core applications.

Fast Features:

• 64 channels of 24-bit / 192 kHz Digital I/O per card
• Up to 128 channels of I/O per Mac Pro
• Near zero latency performance
• Connects directly to Apogee's X-Series and Rosetta Series converters via the X Symphony option card
• Apogee's VBus -- virtual routing within a Core Audio application or between multiple applications
• Apogee's SBus -- 32 channel, 192 kHz digital audio network between two Mac computers
• Apogee's Maestro Software for advanced control and routing
• Compatibility with any Core Audio application