Home / Universal Audio Thunderbolt 3 Option Card (Mac/Win)
Product Overview
Modernize Your Classic Rig with Blazing-Fast 40 Gbps Bandwidth
As professional studio demands evolve, tracking with high channel counts and extensive UAD plug-in chains requires data connectivity that can scale without bottlenecking your computer's CPU. The Universal Audio Thunderbolt 3 Option Card is engineered to future-proof your investment, breathing high-performance modern speed directly into your existing rackmount audio infrastructure.
This card replaces legacy connectivity setups, switching your digital pipe over to Intel's hyper-fast Thunderbolt 3 architecture. By using dedicated PCI Express protocol handling via a single USB-C connection layer, it offers speeds up to four times faster than USB 3.1 and double the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2. This high-capacity throughput allows tracking environments to handle extreme processing loads at sample rates up to 192 kHz with stability.
Product Description
Seamless User-Installable Upgrade Path:
Universal Audio designed this card with longevity in mind. Instead of forcing creators to replace an otherwise pristine audio interface when a computer port generation changes, the Thunderbolt 3 Option Card slips directly into the back-panel expansion bay. The upgrade process is completely user-installable; it requires no professional engineering modifications and comes with all necessary mounting hardware and simple instructions to get your studio up and running in minutes.
Extensive Hardware Compatibility Matrix:
The expansion module is compatible across multiple generations of rackmount hardware, including:
Apollo 8, Apollo 8p, and Apollo 16 MkII
Apollo x6, Apollo x8, Apollo x8p, and Apollo x16
Classic Silverface Apollo FireWire (DUO/QUAD) and Silverface Apollo 16 (bringing high-speed Mac and Windows compatibility to vintage units)
Advanced Multi-Device Daisy-Chaining & Built-In Bus Power:
The rear faceplate features dual Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports that act as a high-speed serialization hub for your digital workstation peripherals. Rather than using up multiple valuable ports on your host laptop or desktop machine, you can run a single cable to the input port, and use the adjacent output port to chain downstream hardware in series.
The option card delivers a reliable 15 Watts of continuous bus power, making it fully capable of driving portable external hard drives, multi-drive SSD arrays, solid-state RAID structures, or high-resolution dual 4K monitor displays without needing dedicated wall adapters. For complex setups, this multi-port configuration allows you to effortlessly bridge additional multi-channel Apollo interfaces or UAD-2 Satellite DSP Accelerators directly into a single, unified audio stream.
Key Features
NEXT-GEN THUNDERBOLT 3 CONNECTIVITY: Upgrades rackmount Apollo interfaces to high-speed Thunderbolt 3 communication for Mac and Windows setups.
40 GBPS ULTRA-HIGH BANDWIDTH: Operates at blazing speeds—twice as fast as Thunderbolt 2—to manage large track numbers and plugin loads.
LOW LATENCY PERFORMANCE: Leverages high-performance PCIe audio drivers to drastically reduce UAD plug-in latency and driver overhead.
DUAL USB-C EXPANSION PORTS: Features two dedicated ports to easily daisy-chain multiple Apollo units, UAD Satellites, and modern studio peripherals.
15W BUS POWER DELIVERY: Supplies continuous power through the downstream port to run external portable storage drives and expansion gear.
USER-INSTALLABLE BAY DESIGN: Quick, tool-assisted installation fits directly into the interface's built-in expansion slot in minutes.
BROAD HARDWARE EXTENSION: Restores and extends the operating lifespan of legacy FireWire and older Thunderbolt rackmount devices.
