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Old 08-13-2018, 01:11 PM   #1
Amberience
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Default Universal Audio Apollo 8 VS Antelope Audio Zen Tour

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get one of these. But I'm not sure which! Things I want:

- SPDIF In/Out to work with my Helix.
- 4 Preamps
- Zero-latency monitoring through DSP plugins
- Solid drivers on Windows and OSX

Things that set the Apollo apart:

- Officially sanctioned DSP models, but you have to pay for them
- Unison preamp modelling

Things that set the Zen Tour apart:

- Reamping outputs
- Smaller form factor than the Apollo, but runs hotter
- Works with USB2 as well
- Four Hi-Z inputs
- Built in DSP is free and gets updated fairly regularly


I had an older generation of the Zen Tour and it was a B-Stock unit. It ran hot, and I felt kinda uncomfortable keeping it because of that. I don't know if it was addressed in the newer version. When I spoke to the Antelope rep, he told me it was supposed to run hot and that the clocking chips required it to do so.

I'm leaning towards the Apollo. Any thoughts before I hit the buy switch???
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Old 08-15-2018, 06:28 AM   #2
esosotericmetal
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Don't have any experience with the Zen. Feature-wise it looks awesome. I've heard a fair amount of negative experiences with Antelope stuff in general (specifically their software/drivers), but that may be an unfair representation since you're less likely to hear from ppl with positive experience on the internet. If you get it I would just make sure you have the option to return/exchange it if it doesn't work out for you.


I've owned a few Apollo's (the silverface 8, the twin mk1 and an Apollo 16mk2). Generally have only good things to say. The drivers are really solid and the sound quality, especially on the mk2's, are excellent. The plugins sounds amazing and build quality is top notch. The apollo's do run on the hotter side, but no so much that I was worried. I was able to run multiple in a rack without any spaces between for long periods of time without any issues.

The negatives of the Apollo IMO:
- Routing in the mixer app is limited compared to others. This hasn't been a problem for me, but it's nowhere near as flexible as stuff from RME where you can route anything anywhere.
- Plugins are really expensive. They've recently put out some 'budget' version that sound equally as good but aren't officially licensed. You can usually get things at a reasonable price if you wait for sales/coupons. I bought all my interfaces during a promotion that gave me a bunch of free plugins or credit towards some so I personally have managed to avoid spending too much on plugins
- Their installers are HUGE and it installs every plugin on their platform, even if you don't own it. You can manually delete them, but you have to do this every time you update, which can be annoying. Especially since they starting adding third party stuff so there's quite a lot of plugins (most of which don't sound as good as UA's stuff IMO and can be acquired natively).
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