ANTELOPE ORION 32+ GEN 3 MADI & USB 3.0 Interface

Let’s just begin by saying that, as a long-time Apogee devotee, I had some serious soul searching to do after a fortnight with the Orion 32+ Gen 3 audio interface. This is a professional interface for those in search of pristine conversion and hyper-flexible integration. It offers 32 analogue line level inputs, 32 analogue line level outputs, a stereo analogue monitor output and a range of digital I/Os including MADI, ADAT and SPDIF.

There are connections for wordclock in and out, and Thunderbolt and USB-A ports for interfacing to your computer. Antelope’s marketing materials claim exemplary A/D and D/A conversion, flawless clocking thanks to their proprietary 64-bit Acoustically Focused Clocking (AFC), and super-low ‘sub-millisecond’ latency.

I was keen to test the Orion in my ‘Analogue DAW’ recording rig (see AT133). The setting up process was a fairly typical affair for anyone who has integrated hardware into their DAW. Online registration and downloading all the affiliated software was par for the course, and I was up and running in a little under 30 minutes.

INPUTS AND OUTPUTS

Marrying the