Antelope Zen Go Synergy Core

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

Hatte das frisch erschienene Zen Go als Ersatz für das UAD Apollo angedacht und Antelope macht sehr viel richtig und sogar besser als das Vorbild von UAD:

Die Plugin-Auswahl ist sinnvoll zusammengestellt, sowohl für Gitarren- als auch für Sprach- und Gesangsaufnahmen, die starken DSP-Cores bieten genug Performance für bis zu 32 Plugins gleichzeitig und die Steuersoftware versteht sich wunderbar mit der Treiberstruktur von Windows, sodass man jedes Kanalpaar inkl. der Loopbackkanäle als eigene Quelle auch außerhalb der DAW ansteuern kann.

Allen tollen Features zum Trotz hakt es leider genau dort, wo es am meisten drauf ankommt:

Der Mic-Preamp bringt bei dynamischen Mics eine eher unterdurchschnittliche Leistung, die Headphone-Amps kommen beim DT770 250Ohm hart an ihre Grenze und die Line-Outs verursachen eine unangenehme, deutlich hörbare Masseschleife in den aktiven Monitorboxen (alle 3 Kritikpunkte entfallen beim Apollo, wahrscheinlich weil keine Abstriche aufgrund der Stromversorgung gemacht werden mussten, da dieses über eine externe Stromversorgung verfügt).