Say „Apogee" and you think of a company that fixed the sound of the CD before anyone had time to get used to it sounding bad. It was founded in December 1985 in Santa Monica out of a conversation among three industry veterans: Betty Bennett, then president of Soundcraft USA, Bruce Jackson, Bruce Springsteen's live sound engineer for a decade (his business interest in Fairlight is actually what introduced him to digital audio in the first place), and Swiss digital designer Christof Heidelberger. Their starting point was a common complaint at the time — listeners said CDs sounded „metallic" and „clinical," lacking warmth. The three founders concluded the culprit was the anti-aliasing filters in digital multitrack recorders (the Sony PCM-3324, the Mitsubishi X-850), and after months of prototyping and consulting mastering engineers like Bernie Grundman, Bob Ludwig, and Doug Sax, they built pin-for-pin replacement filters: the now-famous 944 series.
The sonic difference was drastic enough that studios installed them even though doing so meant desoldering the original filters out of expensive machines and voiding the manufacturer's warranty — and mastering studios worldwide did it anyway. That rebellious start shaped the brand's reputation for decades, later leading to the breakthrough UV22 dithering algorithm and a full line of digital-to-analog converters. Interestingly, Apogee remains a woman-led company to this day — Betty Bennett is still CEO, and her husband, renowned mix engineer Bob Clearmountain, helped convert part of the company's office space into a recording studio, where radio station KCRW has recorded live sessions with artists including Norah Jones, Beck, and John Mayer.
At Wired Tunes we carry the full Apogee lineup — the Symphony, Element, and Duet audio interfaces, the MiC and HypeMiC USB microphones, and software built on the legacy of those famous filters and conversion algorithms. It's a brand for anyone who wants their digital audio to sound as warm as analog tape — because that was its very first mission.
