I upgraded to the Zen Tour after my Audient gave up on me. I'm currently using the Zen Tour Synergy Core via Thunderbolt 3 on a Windows 10 laptop, replacing the Audient as the centerpiece of my studio.
It was hard to look for a replacement for my Audient iD44, because it was hard to find an interface that had a significant upgrade in sound while having the Audient's flexibility. I use it to record vocals, acoustic/electric guitar, bass, analog synths, and I also send a stereo signal to my outboard effects and record them. I stumbled across the Zen Tour, and decided to give it a chance, despite previous negative reviews about driver issues. After using it for a while, I'd say everything about the Zen Tour sounds pristine, definitely a class above my Audient iD44 in all aspects. All the inputs and outputs (including the reamp output) work fine and sound great.
Here's what I like:
- the control panel, being able to route anything to anything
- number of quality input/outputs bang-for-buck-wise
- it sounds amazing
- Antelope DSP effects sound great
- buying the device comes with a good amount of Antelope plugins (for me, at least. As of the time of writing, it seems like what plugins are included is quite seasonal)
and what I don't like:
- while the thunderbolt driver works fine in the DAW, requiring a 3rd party app like Voicemeeter to play Windows Audio could be a bit of a hassle
- AFX to DAW doesn't run very smoothly on Windows 10 as of the time of writing, although AFX2DAW for Windows is barely 2 months old, so I'll cut them some slack.
- There isn't an immediately visible DSP meter like UAD which allows me to see how much of Zen Tour's DSP I've used for running their plugins
That's about it. Although there are a few things that I don't like about it, overall, it's been a very positive experience using it for the past 1-2 months and for me, the benefits far outweigh the downsides.
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