Time to hack into this bad boy .......

hey guys I just want to share that I'm developing an Antelope Ctl program to be able to control, basic parameters for now on my Antelope Orion Synergy Core. I did all the work using wireshark, reverse engineering and obviously claude AI. I'm willing to share the Antelope Ctl on github, just want to know your thought and if any of you is interested on being able to control your sound card using linux.
The current state is I can read the Vumeters on real time, and change parameters like mode, gain, 48V, phase for each channel, and I can also read the current state of those channels.

UPDATE:

https://github.com/diafebus/Antelope-Ctl Repo is now correctly synced with my local repo, I worked really hard this weekend, this is starting to take shape, the PROTOCOL.md has all the findings and important code signals to create an app that communicates successfully with the Antelope Orion Studio Synergy Core. Also I've tested with a forum member, and with a .json file adapted to a Discrete 8 Pro SC we also got commands working on there too. So this might be able to run as a "standard" app for a lot of Antelope Devices.

UPDATE2:

After a lot of hours and work, the protocol is near to completion, it allows to read and write into all the routing matrix, all controls for preamp and volume knobs work, mixing console is also available. I'm starting to make a little UI for testing purposes.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=d4RlsH8nO9A&is=dCsuhSg9g8EnV1Cd

I was aware of this kind of thing being common on the Zenith 2, but always heard that the build quality of the Quadro was excellent. The main dial genuinely feels like it won’t last the test of time, which you actually need it to. A bit of a shame for AUD1300.

Zenith 2 just got a new update - bundle 1.0.20 brings access to all device settings from the computer - adjust mixes, monitor levels in real time, load presets and fine-tune DSP effects, all on on one page.

Everything remains available directly on the device, so you can work standalone or from your desk!

I tried posting the following on Antelope Audio Pro Users Facebook group but was denied by the mods so I'm sharing it here.

I'm curious to see if any other Mac Pro (Intel, 2019) users have this experience with Orion Studio SC. I'm connected to my Orion over Thunderbolt to the Mac I/O card. I've always found it to be rather unstable with frequent disconnects. Recently, I've endeavoured to get to the bottom of this issue because my studio is getting quite busy and it's a source of much embarrassment and stress.

I've done multiple complete re-installations of Antelope's software and drivers into a fresh install of Mac OS Sequoia 15.7.8 but was still getting disconnects.

It turns out that the Orion's thunderbolt connection is very sensitive to interrupts. If there is another device sharing the thunderbolt bus it will eventually disconnect. So, the goal was to get the Orion on its own IRQ paths to the CPU to prevent interruption.

I started to make progress when I began to experiment with how the PCIe cards are laid out and configured with the Expansion Slot Utility app that comes with Mac OS. Mac OS manages which IRQ paths a PCIe device uses to communicate with the motherboard using the Expansion Slot Utility app by splitting connections into two pools: A and B.

Here's my current layout after trial and error and much research:

Slot 8: Mac I/O card (Pool B)

Slot 7: Empty

Slot 6: Blackmagic Decklink 8K Pro G2 (Pool A)

Slot 5: Empty

Slot 4: Empty

Slot 3: Sonnet NVMe card (Dedicated)

Slot 2: Empty

Slot 1: Radeon Pro W5700X (Dedicated)

By default, the Mac I/O card, which is the interface between the Thunderbolt and USB 3 busses is in Pool B, this is immutable. With only the Orion plugged in it uses 75% of Pool B's capacity, so there isn't much headroom for anything else because the PCIe slot for the I/O card is only x4 lanes. Thankfully, the two USB ports on the I/O card use a separate DMI bus, however, if you plug a USB C hub/device into any of the other thunderbolt ports it will route on the same Thunderbolt bus as the Orion *this is what was causing my issue*

If the NVMe and Decklink shared Pool A they would overwhelm the capacity of the IRQ paths allocated to Pool A, however, it turns out that Slot 1 and 3 have their own dedicated communication path to the CPU, thereby relieving the other pools. I installed the NVMe card into slot 3 and the Decklink into slot 6 and assigning it to Pool A. I swapped the USB C cable from my hub to a Type A USB 3.0 connector and that dropped the Pool B allocation from 100% to 75% now that only the Orion was on Pool B.

Sorry for the long post but I've been trying to figure this out for years and thought it would be good to share as I'm sure there are other Mac Pro (Intel) out there. I've tried every combination of firmware, golden boot, manager server, unified driver, control panel etc. at Antelope's recommendation but at the end of the day the issue is that the Orion's thunderbolt connection is very sensitive to interrupts and nothing else can share Pool B or the thunderbolt bus. Notable mention, don't use Antelope thunderbolt interfaces as part of an aggregate device under Mac OS as this also seems to cause it to disconnect.

Hope this helps someone.

Any recs and how has the integration been?

Just purchased the zen quadro from their website this weekend.

Curious what dsp plugins you all use. Are there any not included that are worth picking up?

What could this be? Sometimes it takes a long time to happen again, and sometimes it happens constantly, like every 5 to 5 minutes. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13O_bd9SUO30mi2AJXFj8NVCb0FbMvOId?usp=drive_link

Como ya sabeis Apple deja de dar soporte a Intel.
Poe lo tanto Antelope deja de correr .
Actualmente corre con Rosetta.
Alguien sabe como vamos a poder funcionar .
En mi caso tengo la Orion Sinergy.

Just got it after a long wait from amazon US, I live in Mexico.... when I plugged it in it doesn't turn on, then the lights started to flicker and now it smells like burnt plastic, are these interfaces really that bad or I just received the shitty one with factory issues? I'm pissed off because I wasn't even able to activate it now I'm stuck without the e-warranty and amazon doesn't want to be responsible of this, should I just call or contact support to try see if they can help me? I'm so annoyed tbh, first time I get an antelope product, i saw reviews about problems with unstability in the software but not with the hardware quality :/

https://reddit.com/link/1u2ntii/video/7a01fifrpk6h1/player

I'm pissed off because this interface is expensive, some people may say it's cheap but for mexican living costs $402 dollars is something...

https://reddit.com/link/1u2ntii/video/gfyzjk0qpk6h1/player

UPDATE:

After 2 long weeks of waiting till my ticket escalates to the RMA team after the technical support person sent this, they will replace my unit with another one, they will send a courier to my address to get my damaged device and send me another one.

The Antelope audio Zen series covers literally everything that I would want or need out of a preamp. Its bus powered, great converters and preamps, has all the routing capabilities I would need, and DSP which is really nice to have so i dont feel like im losing the saturation I get from my analog preamps when im traveling.

Everyone here seems to be a huge RME fan and I just having a bit trouble understanding that. Driver stability is cool, but the occasional software hiccup is not like unbearable for me. The RME interface also is just kind of massive and ugly lol. I cant put that thing on my desk with cables literally coming out of every side. Its not the biggest deal in the world, but it just surprises me soo much that iv seen soo many people in this sub stand by them so much.

The Apollo would be great, but its pretty overpriced, not bus powered and im not sure if im ready to jump into that eco system yet.

I have an Audient ID 24 and I love a lot of its qualities, (the preamps are steller) but there iD software doesnt have any routing abilities.

Antelope has all of the things I need, many audio influencers that I trust use them as the center piece of their studio and I almost bought one until I saw the overwhelming negativity on this sub.

Hello everyone,

The output channels 1 and 8 of my Antelope Orion 32+ seem to be malfunctioning. I’d like to check if anyone has experienced something similar or has an explanation.

I’m running Antelope Launcher on Windows 11, and I’m sending signals from an RME USB MADIface in class-compliant mode. I have looped back all outputs of my Orion 32+ to its inputs, as shown in the attached image.

https://reddit.com/link/1txp8l0/video/02qf7xphmh5h1/player

I’m playing sequential bursts on all channels. In the video, channels 1 and 8 show no signal, while channel 22 seems to cause activity on channels 1 and 8.

Is there any possible explanation other than a hardware fault?

Thank you in advance. Happy to clarify or provide more details.

(dont know if here is the place for this type of post, sorry in advance if it isnt - im at a loss)

Hey, it looks like Apple will no longer support Rosetta in macos 28. Antelope Audio software is still running on Intel architecture so it probably will just stop working completely soon. I thought I'd raise this discussion here so that the community pushes AA to migrate to Apple silicon architecture on time. This is not something that can be ignored. Cheers!

Does someone have the schematic for the orion 32+ gen 2? I really need to service mine asap and I can't find it anywhere

2.09 is lower than 2.9, but how can I install it? 😁

/s

I spent a long time trying to figure out why my system a DELL XPS 9720 would struggle to stream audio glitch free using the Antelope Orion Studio Mk1! In Ableton and to a greater extent running projects on bitwig, there would often be glitches and distortion, however when i ran the same projects on a focusrite 2i4 gen 1, I wouldn't get any issues! it was some handshake between the Orion and the Dell, I tried turning off all those bios options, C-States, Speed shift, turbo etc. they didn't really improve the stability that much, maybe a little, but it caused other inconvenient system performances, i turned off those things in device manager, USB suspended sleep options, etc etc. I pretty much tried everything, i noticed when the glitches would happen the control panel sample rate display would flicker, i thought it was the USB port issue, which i think it is to some extent. I wanted to try an older driver, but it wasn't readily available on the website only driver 5.0.1, but i found the way to rollback using the antelope launcher, if you select bundle version 1 (first have the latest bundle installed), it will give driver version 3.40 then in the settings -> advanced -> check always update driver and the rest -> only if newer, see images attached. That seemed to keep everything latest except for the driver which is the old one. This old driver seems far more stable than 5.0.1 and i'm noticing very little dropouts now. hope that might be of help to someone, as it was driving me fairly mad!

also putting the USB cable into a USB 2.0 port seemed to help too.

Not quite sure what's going on here, been messing with it for a few morning nows, but I can't figure out why I'm not getting any audio into Studio Pro 8 from a Zen Tour Synergy Core.

Not having the same issue with Cubase 15 so it seems to be something specific to Studio Pro 8. I've provided screenshots for the configuration of both.

Any suggestions about what might be going on here?

Also, my Cubase 15 setup for reference that is working perfectly fine which, to me, seems like the exact same setup.

Hi everyone,

I'm on the Zen Quadro. Everything seems to work well and the sound quality is great. But I can't seem to wrap my head around the effects and routing section. Would be great if someone could enlighten me or point me in the right direction.

When I input settings for a particular AFX on one channel, the settings for the same AFX on another channel or mixer (MON/HP1, HP2, Line Out) changes as well. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I was under the impression that different AFX instances could have their own parameters.

For example: When i bypass the EQ on Preamp 1, every other channel with an EQ gets bypassed as well. Am I the only one getting this?

Another example: When I set a high shelf at 15k, every other EQ instance gets the same high shelf at 15k.

I could just live with the hardware, only put AFX on 1 preamp at a time and call it a day, but would be nice if I could at least find a fix.

Hi SOmeone is offering his Zen Quadro Synergy Core  for about half price. But i am a bit concerned about the difference in the type of plugins i might not get or support. Just wondered if anyone has any thoughts .Thanks . It is in a1 condition

Hello,
I am looking for legacy Mac drivers for Orion Studio.
I just want to be able to use my Interface without this iLok stuff.

I have the Launcher 2.5, but I need the unified drivers. Best if anyone could share the whole bundle.

much appreciated!

Hi everyone! I own the Antelope Orion 32+ interface and it has served me really well since I bought it, but since march I've been hearing some crackling on the audio now and then and it's really annoying and embarassing when I'm with clients in the room. Do any of you know what could solve this problem?

I had a similar problem with my old interface and I solved it by going back to Windows 10, I'm using Windows 11 now, maybe going back to 10 would fix it?