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This review was written by Vintage King Audio Consultant Cody Angel.
While working at Vintage King, I’ve become a big fan of Antelope Audio. In my humble opinion, Antelope is on the cutting edge of audio interface design, which makes it easy to recommend their products. All of Antelope’s interfaces stand out from the crowd thanks to their intuitive workflow, versatile I/O options, and creative features.
For me, sound quality is a pass/fail proposition, particularly with converters and interfaces. Unlike preamps, mics, and outboard gear, the “tone” of an interface is a binary analysis; it either adds something (1) or doesn’t (0). If an audio interface has a distinguishable tone, I’m either drawn to it or away from it for that very reason.
In particular, I find Antelope Audio’s Orion Studio Synergy Core audio interface to be very transparent. It doesn’t add anything undesirable or take away from the sounds I expect from my instruments and gear. In fact, some of my clients who have upgraded to the Orion Studio have reported that it sounds better than some of today’s most popular interfaces.
OK, I think we’re ready to get into the really nerdy stuff – ready?
I use an Antelope Orion Synergy Core as my primary interface and have been very pleased with the results. Starting with workflow, the software component of the Antelope Universe is extremely user-friendly; just drag the signal from a source to a destination. For some, this makes sense as a digital patch bay, but if all that routing spins your mind out, you can “set it and forget it.”
To use Antelope’s powerful DSP and plug-ins in your recordings, just drag the Mic Line Inputs into AFX and drag the AFX output to a computer record channel. To set up headphone mixes, combine your playback and record channels into a mixer and drag its outputs to headphones or line outputs. There’s no complicated routing or menu diving – everything is color-coded and dead simple.
When it comes to I/O versatility, Antelope Audio interfaces are unparalleled by their competitors. With the Orion Studio, I have 12 mic/line inputs with inserts on two channels, 16 analog outputs, two sets of monitor outputs, two headphone outputs, plus ADAT, SPDIF, and Word Clock I/O.
I can see a world where this is the last interface I need for my overdub/mix setup. I’ve got 16 channels of analog summing, more inputs than I’ll personally use, plus SPDIF and ADAT I/O in case I want to expand or add some colorful converters for mixing/mastering.
I also referenced creativity, which is another area where I think Antelope is crushing it. The brand’s extensive catalog of class-leading analog-modeled plug-ins, which can even be used for tracking, are some of the best in the business. It’s so great to have the colorful sound of classic studio gear at your fingertips.
And while the Orion Studio itself doesn't offer support for Dolby Atmos, Antelope is on the cutting edge when it comes to immersive audio with innovative products like the MRC immersive monitor controller and Atlas i8 studio monitors—not to mention the Atmos-ready Galaxy 64, Galaxy 32, and Orion 32+ audio interfaces.
One of the only hurdles my clients have with Antelope Audio interfaces is that there are a fair amount of posts on Gearspace and other recording forums regarding stability and support. However, almost all of these posts are from several years ago and these issues have largely been eliminated. In fact, Antelope now offers 24-hour support via phone, email, or chat.
Still, I think Antelope may be charging ahead at such a fast pace that some things get missed in updates. If rock-solid stability is your only priority, other more expensive and less versatile options are available. However, I will say that any time I have run into an issue, the support has been fabulous.
I have one client who realized he had an issue while setting up for a session, filled out a support ticket on the Antelope website, jumped into a TeamViewer session, and was all set up and ready to track before the band was finished loading in. Try that with any other interface, I dare you!
At $2995, the Antelope Audio Orion Studio Synergy Core is a major contender for any professional home studio. It has enough analog I/O to really pack a punch and the digital connectivity is future-proof.
That said, if any interface were perfect, we’d all know it. But for my dollar, I’ll take the intuitive workflow, versatile I/O options, and creative features of the Orion Studio any day.
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