Review - Apogee GIO guitar interface

Getting a great guitar sound in the studio can be challenging. It can be expensive, and time consuming. Where do you start? At a minimum you'll want to have a decent guitar and amplifier, a good microphone and pre-amp, a nice analog-to-digital converter, a computer and finally some powered speakers or headphones. Oh yeah, and guitar chops. The list goes on. Certainly the recording medium in the digital ages is more portable and more accessible to non-pro users, but it can still mean a pile of gear and a snake-pit of cables in your studio/bedroom. If you're clever, you'll connect them all properly, be able to sculpt the sound to your liking, and when something goes wrong you have the smarts to find the broken thing.

Enter the Apogee GIO, a guitar interface for computer-based recording and performing.
How does yet another shiny stainless steel box make your life easier? Well it doesn't. You still have to clean the bathroom and do the dishes later. But this thing might actually save you a bit of time and space if you need to get workable guitar sounds on your recordings.

In a nutshell, it's a 4-in-1 box.

1. Input. You connect your guitar directly to it, and it converts your signal from analog to digital, which flows nicely into your computer.
2. It's a customizable stomp box controller, so all the stompbox effects you traditionally have on the floor connected to your amp (distortion, delay, chorus etc.) can be simulated by software and controlled by the front row of buttons on this box. Connect an expression pedal for volume/filter controls.
   
3. The top row of buttons are for transport functions. Stop, play, rewind for your DAW, and other playback devices.
   
4. Output: Your digitally simulated guitar sounds can be sent to an amplifier OR you can use the output for headphones/speakers. If you want to play live, maybe just leave the heavy amp at home and connect directly to the PA system.

Software sold seperately! And you'll need some. The GIO is designed to work out of the box with Apple's flagship line of recording software; Garageband, Logic Express, Logic Studio and Mainstage. Plug it in via USB and it will automatically be detected. Ok, maybe you have to run the installer CD first. Once you're running the DAW (I used Logic Studio and Mainstage), it's beautifully integrated. The transport buttons are assigned and you can instantly start moving around in your song with your feet. Two hands on the guitar.

Now for the good stuff. Boot up the Amp Designer plug-in on a track in Logic. Choose amp and speaker cab. Tweak to taste. Insert a pedalboard plugin . Drag and drop some virtual pedals like "Octafuzz" or the "Auto-funk" filter into your pedalboard. The switches are assigned automatically to the front row of buttons on the GIO. The coloured LED's are bright and pretty. Stomp the record button. Play. Stomp the fuzz in the chorus. Stomp the funk in the bridge. Do whatever you like. Pretty cool, eh?

The sounds in Amp Designer are incredibly good. I've spent many years playing with guitar simulator plug-ins (they can be a lifesaver on a production deadline) and this is top of the line. I don't know how they do it, but as the years go by it gets harder and harder to pick out the fakes from a guitar-police-lineup. I'm not saying to throw out your amps, but this is pretty damn good. Sadly, I think pretty damn good might be as good as guitar simulation will get. It won't ever be the best. When I need to get a real keeper track, something that really punches you in the face, I always go back to a real amplifier. My computer just can't fake the infinite subtleties of real speakers pushing real air, pushing a microphone diaphragm, driving an analog mic pre, etc.
That said, the GIO is a good box. It's not hall of fame material, but it does do a few things really well. It gives you a nice input for your guitar, with the road-tested quality of Apogee converters, and it gives you elaborate foot control for your session, with minimum hassle.

I actually brought home the GIO in the hopes of making a killer looping device with Mainstage. I wanted to be able to do what the Boss RC-50 Loop Station does with my computer; record multiple phrases, play them back on command, in different orders and combinations; Verse, chorus, bridge. I was surprised to find that Mainstage fell short. It was great for layering parts. But if you have sections of different lengths (god forbid different time signatures), good luck. You'll have a hell of a time switching patches and arming auto-record on the different loopback devices. And if you're computer isn't fast enough, you'll get latency problems; nightmarish when live looping relies on the speed of your foot to get good timing. I also found the little rubber patch-switching buttons on the corners of the GIO to be underwhelming. Why not make them real beefy buttons like the rest, so that you know when you've pressed them? After many hours of trying different combinations of loopers at the concert level, set level and patch level, I couldn't get Mainstage to do what I wanted. Oh well. That's not the GIO's fault. Had I just recorded some loops ahead of time there would have been no problems at all. I just couldn't do it on the fly seamlessly.

You can assign the buttons on GIO to do pretty much anything on Logic or Mainstage. You can even layer the assignments, so one press of a button could change patches, turn on several stomp boxes and trigger song playback. Endless possibilities. I think you could do this with any foot controller though (Behringer FCB1o10?). You just wouldn't have the nice guitar input and the pretty coloured lights. You would need a second box as an interface and midi I/O.

I conclude that this is a good, solidly built device. They didn't cut corners on the design and it's responsive and customizable. It would be really awesome for a super-compact live performance rig, with complex playback requirements, or even simple ones. Flipping through patches for different parts of your song would be brilliant. It's more and more common to see computers on stage these days, and this is a good piece of hardware for that. Are computer-guitar-rigs cool on stage? Not really, but that's a different discussion. The GIO is also great in studio. It's fast and furious for tracking guitar, whether you're using the plugins or not. Plug in and go.

In the end, I returned my GIO. There wasn't much that the GIO did that I couldn't already do in my personal studio. I already have nice A/D converter, and it's pretty expensive to just use as a glorified midi controller ($450 CAD). It wasn't working out for a live loop rig. I just didn't need it. However, I can imagine lots of scenarios where it would fit in perfectly: Wife mad at you for storing your Marshall stack in the walk-in closet?