It's been long enough where I'm ready to come clean about my Apogee Duet
. Despite being a (sometimes) convenient little interface with a great mic-pre, the Duet suffers from a significant design fail. The Duet is one of Apogee's first real forays into making an entry level/affordable audio interface and the device looks very attractive (as if it was designed by the magic elves at Apple or something), but upon closer inspection you see a different story. Most pics of the Duet you see look like this. But our accompanying pic is REALLY what the device looks like. You can braid them, keep them straight, put them in pony tail or leave them natural, but regardless of what you do, this Medusa-like cluster of wires is very annoying. Now for some users I realize this is not even an issue - you tuck the wires behind your desk and never see them. But for those who move the device around quite a bit, it can be a real pain. First off, the wires are not very long, so they always tend to be pulling on the main plug itself when you have your instrument or speaker cables attached - although mine hasn't shorted out yet, it seem inevitable. Further, the wires are ALWAYS tangled and even worse, all the IN and OUT plugs are white! Try finding the difference between an instrument IN and a speaker OUT in the dark (on stage) without color coding - even differentiating between R and L speaker OUT is difficult. Certainly a case of form over function, Apogee and it's users would better be served by making the device a little larger and doing away with that rat's nest of nasty wires. Gear Design Fail = Apogee Duet
It's been long enough where I'm ready to come clean about my Apogee Duet
. Despite being a (sometimes) convenient little interface with a great mic-pre, the Duet suffers from a significant design fail. The Duet is one of Apogee's first real forays into making an entry level/affordable audio interface and the device looks very attractive (as if it was designed by the magic elves at Apple or something), but upon closer inspection you see a different story. Most pics of the Duet you see look like this. But our accompanying pic is REALLY what the device looks like. You can braid them, keep them straight, put them in pony tail or leave them natural, but regardless of what you do, this Medusa-like cluster of wires is very annoying. Now for some users I realize this is not even an issue - you tuck the wires behind your desk and never see them. But for those who move the device around quite a bit, it can be a real pain. First off, the wires are not very long, so they always tend to be pulling on the main plug itself when you have your instrument or speaker cables attached - although mine hasn't shorted out yet, it seem inevitable. Further, the wires are ALWAYS tangled and even worse, all the IN and OUT plugs are white! Try finding the difference between an instrument IN and a speaker OUT in the dark (on stage) without color coding - even differentiating between R and L speaker OUT is difficult. Certainly a case of form over function, Apogee and it's users would better be served by making the device a little larger and doing away with that rat's nest of nasty wires. 
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Seeing as you've never heard of colored tape to put on the white ends [or a Sharpie to write on the ends] you might want to try this convenient little accessory known as a "break out box" http://mercenary.com/duetbreakout.html
It will solve all your Duet problems and let you get on to ranting about more important things... like why the traffic lights are never timed and what dumb son of a bitch invented "rush hour".
Peace.
colored tape on a $500 piece of audio equipment? Just charge me an extra 35 cents and put the tape on for me. That's ridiculous...
I think perhaps this user isn't mentally qualified to use a Duet. Sure, you have to be careful, so what? There's no reason to let your cables get that way.
I used to have the Duet and sold it to buy the Ensemble which is MUCH better. All these cables are really stupid.
Come on guys, you have to admit those cables are hilarious. It's the fact that everyone says the device is so "apple," but that's just until you pull out your crazy white rat's nest. I will say, however, that the flexibilty of the harness does make the device smaller and thus more portable. Moving the XLR connectors out of the unit itself is was allowed the Duet to be so flat.
I love my Duet. The onscreen display is so dope, and you will at some point laugh out loud at these cables if you own this product.
that's life. good with the bad.
the cables ARE colour coded already.
WTF are you talking about? The cables are all white. it's like an apple clone. cool looking unit (outside of the hairy rats nest cable). we all love the duet, but the breakaway cable? it was a bad idea on apogees part, let's just admit that guys.
I've owned the thing for a year and, frankly, I'm so grateful that the breakaway cable is a part of this unit.
For one, I don't need to physically SEE each cable plugged into the box. I really like that I can tuck these things behind the desk, while keeping the unit accessible on the desktop. Additionally, I like that it was designed around the Mac (cosmetically speaking). I take pride in my sound, as well as my work area, so I appreciate that Apogee went with this look, regardless of how difficult "some" might feel reading the I/O labels can be.
Furthermore, this thing sounds amazing. It's compact, durable and sounds like gold, "rat nest" cables, or not.
Electrical tape and sharpie to label.
Electrical tape to loom the cables so they dont tangle..
Not rocket science...dumb ****