Apogee Duet 2 vs $600 mic to improve recording quality?

at this price point you're in diminishing returns.... the apogee converters are better, the clock's more stable, but the preamps aren't any better (in fact the Focusrite scarlet pres sound pretty good for the money and the apogee's connectors are a real pain, don't get me started).... I'm not familiar with that mic you're talking about but I would suggest that at the 600 dollar mark there are lots of other options besides the NT1... I like Rode, but the NT1 is not my favorite Rode. The TLM 102 and 103 ae not my favorite Neumanns for any purpose either. What's your signing style? I gotta tell you for a lot of male vocalists in the rock genre (and almost every female in like ANY genre) I recommend the Shure SM7B or EV RE20 broadcast dynamics. You can probably score the Shure for 300 and bank the remaining money to put towards the Duet at a later date when you're able to budget in some more for it. You know, if having apogee converters makes you feel like you're making better quality music. The real truth is that none of this matters though. Quality these days is great on all sorts of mics, preamps and converters, really. Its fun to amass gear and all, but don't expect it to make your enxt recording more special than the last. Maybe you'll ehar a difference, but Joe Listener won't.... if it makes you fel better go for it, but I would probably look at a very DIFFERENT SOUNDING microphone (or two) rather than just a fancier large diaphragm condenser or an interface with better covnerters and word clocking. Or I would invest in more isntruments to inspire me. To me striving for a quality song and quality performance is more important than quibbling sound quality. Everything sounds fucking nice these days. If you can't afford a channel or 2 of Neve and an old U47 or something modern and great like a Bock mic why sweat the smalls tuff.

I would say that there's more going on there than the microphones. I would work with my mic positioning for a more even tone going on and then be really conscious of compression settings as well as the Esses and also the low end going into the recorder and also while mixing.... there's also a preponderance of certain midrange frequencies in both vocals that would be best addressed with mic placement and distance too... you could try EQing, but if in future you pay really close attention to those critical mid frequencies when placing that microphone you will find the vocal will sound more antural even with a junk mic

but hey, for what you're doing the Rode NT1 will likely make an audible improvement in vocal 'air' --- given the toen of youtr voice I would stay away from a modern Neumann with those ultra hyped upper mids. You'll find yourself EQing out the Neumann-ness

you may like an older style Neumann based around the M49 capsule like a 47 or a 67 or maybe a C12 type of mic, my favorite is the tele elam251. Look up ADK for budget clones.

you would be surprised but for what you're doing you might really like an RE20.... great mic for this type of vocal. TheHeil large diaphragm dynamic mic is good for this sort of thing. Big and open sounding but not hyped up like a lot of condensers.

If you can find one second hand the discontinued Rode NTV would really suit you. I had owned a used one about 10 years ago that ran me around $700 US at the time. I sued it extensively on male hip hop and RnB vocals where it regularly beat out the studio's U87, TLM103, AKG 414, a U67 clone, Blue Bottle... I could go on. Great top, very open mids. a little compression when hitting it ahrd thanks to the tube. but being modern I has a very low nosiefloor. The NTK just doesn't sound as good, I don't know why.