Antelope Zen Go Synergy Core

I am Windows 10 user, I don't have MAC so I will speak from Windows/PC side only

Handling: 2/5
As other mentioned volume control knob is 1 for all 3 outs. There is a button you have to click to choose which out you control. Not practical at all. I swap 2 headphones very frequently + my monitos and this is big issue.

Features: 3/5
This device claims to have some great features like internal effects (DSP) on channels, but for example there is no MIDI IN/OUT , Software is complicated and buggy - Antelope constantly update it, but still it looks unfinished, made in a hurry. It has little screen with very nice level indicator. There was a BUG with screen brighness, when it was <100% it creates noise in monitors. Antelope was able to fix it with firmware update, but come on, this is untested hardware.

Sound: 2/5
I read many reviews about how great antelope converters are, and how good is their sound. This was not the case for me, I had very bad ground loop noise on USB, in my monitors, and it went even worst when I move my mouse. No matter what I switched off and changed it did not disappear. Contacted support on this, and after all the tests, they recommended to test the device on other PC system. It works on my Laptop in the office fine. Thou my 2 desktops had this ground loop noise in monitors. Support is slow, and was not able to help me, and the fact I can use this only on my laptop is not fine too.

I have Focusrite 4PRE usb and 2 Pre USB too. Both work great on same PC/monitors.

Headphone Out is weak, they made an firmware update which helped a little, but my 250ohm Neumann NDH20 must have almost 100% volume to sound good.

Quality: 3/5
Construction looks good, supplied cable is good - but something like electrical filters is missing IMHO

Overall: 2/5

Really bad experience with this device. This is my 6th or 7th Interface, and most of the others were cheaper. I never had such bad experience.

You need to register and activate device even for simple drivers to work.

The promised promotion code was delayed more than 7 days in my mailbox, and that was after I opened a ticket in support site.

Control panel is kind of complicated, they fixed load time a little - my started in 10-12 seconds.

ADAT has only 2 channels as INPUT - so you can't really expand it.

After uninstalling software, I had to clean services manually because they were not removed even after PC restart. Bad software quality for sure.

Oh and did I mention - no MIDI IN/OUT

Product need a lot of software polish and some hardware rework, maybe V2 or V3 will be good with promised features.

I'm a technical science communicator, reliant on using Linux. Linux has very poor audio support, and so the thing I was most interested in with this device was being able to build a nice vocal channel for streaming, presentations, calls etc. that is not dependent on the computer.

As the device is class compliant, it works totally fine with Linux, you just don't have ability to configure the plugins. However, I can do that in Windows, save to a preset and then I can select which preset to use for my task while using Linux.

I have 3 presets I use the most:

1/- clean - nothing, using for recording videos that I will process later
2/- voice channel - gentle compression and limiting, eq and a bit of a boost
3/- extreme monitoring - I often get a sore throat when I have lots of meetings, so I use the 2nd headphone monitor as an extremely loud monitor of my audio. That helps me talk softly, but an unprocessed version is sent to the conference. As the gain is so high, the background noise is loud, so I also add a gate on my monitor to make it less fatiguing.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of the flexibility of this unit.

The build quality is great, very solid. As others have said, the screen is a bit hard to read especially if there are reflections. The knob clicks too loud. And there could be more knobs/buttons, to make less combinations to change presets, adjust levels etc.

Sound quality is excellent, very low noise and a lot of mic gain. 2 monitors is also very nice. I never send the mic through the first monitor so I can't ever get feedback issues when I have my loud speakers on.

The bundled plugins seem good, but I'm just learning how to use them tbh. I would have liked some more 'basic' stuff like the ableton limiter, gate. Everything is 'vintage'. It would be amazing to load a VST into it and have it stored for use without the PC.

I had problems with some of the plugins not working, but the antelope support has been very fast to help and by using an older firmware I have all the plugins working now.

Expensive, but does the job and lets me do pro level audio processing without a windows / mac computer.

1. Appearance - 10/10. Compact, cool display.
2. Build quality - 9/10. Made reliably. The only thing is that the main encoder is slightly tilted. As if it was not installed correctly. And so everything is cool.
3. Sound - 10/10. So far there are no complaints. Pleased with two headphone outputs. Working with the sennheiser hd 600 is quite comfortable, there is a volume margin.
4. Soft - 8/10. The plugins individually work well, in real time, and that's good news. You can even assemble a whole chain of devices. But, there is a crack, sometimes a wheeze. For example, a chain: A fast compressor and then a slow one can cause unpleasant phase distortion. Or a pre-amplifier and then a tube compressor can also cause this distortion.
5. Support - 10/10. Live chat, email, everywhere answer any questions. They even helped through TeamViewer.
6. Additional options - 10/10. Awesome Promotions. Nice gifts.
Outcome: 9/10. Great device. I am satisfied with the purchase. We are pleased with the quality and price. Let's see how it shows itself in the long run. If you have a budget desktop interface, and you do not want to buy additional external equipment, and you want something one level higher, then this device is for you

I have purchased two antelope zen go units in total, after returning the first one due to several issues..first of all whenever you remove the power cable from your laptop(even when it's turned off) your monitors will do this loud pop. Whenever the interface starts up it pops again..never expected such cheap decoupling from an interface in this price range. Also the drivers on Windows are just abysmal..Laggy, buggy, crackly...when it comes to sound quality though I admit that this interface has a surgical precision in reproducing frequencies but it is Unfortunately invalidated by the issues of digital processing which in my opinion, if you don't have the Mac system, you are better off with an analogue interface that doesnt have so many bells and whistles like DSP and such but does the job well and doesn't damage your speakers whenever it's powering up. Pity, the sound quality is amazing and the build quality as well but that's kind of it when it comes to Windows users, nothing makes me want to buy this again
Especially after two consecutive issues and 2 months of my life without a functional audio interface..

I'm satisfied with the features and performance as there are no other options including DSP in this price range. But it comes with drawbacks as I think the interface design is flawed

* I don't like handling at all, especially because the unit is placed on my desk. I'm looking at it at an angle from 75cm distance and the display is useless cause it is not very good quality and in this scenario is completely unreadable. So whenever I want to change volume or anything I have to stand up to look at the display from above to see anything which is annoying. It cannot be placed vertically as the headphone outputs are on the front side
* I personally don't like the control scheme where you have to push buttons to switch mic/monitors/headphones volume and then change it via the control wheel. It's simply tedious also because there are only two buttons for 2-headphone-outputs/2-mic-inputs/monitors-outputs so the buttons have to be pressed more times to find the thing you are looking for. I think the scheme of classic interfaces where you have more knobs with dedicated functions is soooo much better than this. Looks cool maybe but is painful to use
* the unit shape prevents it from stacking. I you want to stack it you have to place it on top of the stack
* software is ok but it seems very rough around the edges and I encountered some bugs although to be fair Antelope is releasing updates from time to time
* I'm satisfied with sound quality and dsp effects

Overall I'm thinking about selling this unit cause I'm not sure DSP effects beat the day-to-day usage problems and the overall experience is not very good for me. Especially compared with Motu M4 which I bought for my second computer - that is a completely different story and I love that unit! I can easily work around missing DSP effects in Motu but I cannot work around usability of ZenGo

Handling: 2/5
1 volume control for 3 different outs is about as practical as you'd expect.

Features: 4/5
Ticks a lot of boxes, but really buggy software. If they fix it eventually it could be great.

Sound: 2/5
Line out sound quality is good, but ground loop noise is passed to the monitors. You can hear your mouse moving when connected to a pc. Headphone outs are underpowered and low quality.

Quality: 3/5
Solid construction, looks pretty. High quality usb cable included is a nice touch as well. But with all the other problems I mention, I can't give it more than 3 stars. Not filtering ground noise is ridiculous.

Overall: 2/5

This is advertised as a 4x8 interface, yet there's only 6 discretely routable outs. 8 of the 16 available asio out channels are not mapped to anything and can't be utilized in any way, indicating they probably cut an ADAT out at the last minute.

The advertised 65dB mic gain turned out to be around 46dB. I hope this was down to receiving a bad unit.

Software controls are clunky. The mixer needs around 30sec to load, sometimes more, on a top of the line computer. Many features are buggy and work only partially or not at all. FX randomly stop working without any indication. The internal server running the fx engine crashes often, launcher loses access to the interface, restarts required, it's all very unstable.

The interface I received was nowhere near ready for launch. Could've been great if they worked on it a little longer. As it stands, I can't recommend it to anyone.