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Antelope Orion32+ Thunderbolt 3

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Joined
Feb 15, 2011
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18
Motherboard
GA-Z270X-Gaming 7
CPU
i7-7700K
Graphics
GTX 1050
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Hi,

I know there are a couple of threads about thunderbolt issues but I felt the need for a new one.

I purchased an Orion32+ in September 2017 hoping it would work in a z270x Gaming 7 hack. I had read success stories about Apollo sound cards.

The build went smooth apart from some GPU trouble. The Orion worked straight away. It had to be switched on before boot .. and sometimes it needed an extra reboot from the computer. I learnt that As long as I just put it in stand by when I left the studio and had it go from power on > stand by > on it was rock solid everyday.

Well, I’ve moved location of my studio a couple of times since then and suddenly after a relication last week it wouldn’t come back. The computer just wouldn’t see it anymore. Suddenly it was found but no sound .. as others described their experience with Antelope interfaces.
I found an older Orion driver (3.14) on my laptop and downgraded to that (from 3.23) and it worked again. For one day. Next day it was gone again.
Now I can get the crackling noise once in a while but it’s gone. I’ve tried so much so it’s impossible to know if my setup is the same. I never documented the exact versions of everything I initially built with .. bootloader / driver / firmware etc.

So, after scanning the internet I seem to be the only one with a working Orion32+ .. for a limited time.

I’m between jobs so I have some time to pursue this. But I usually find at least ONE success thread before I jump in.

Depressing.
 
Hi,

It indeed seems you had a lucky strike here, I've been working on this for a long time and couln't get much further then where you are now.
I'm running a z170ud3 ultra, onboard tb3.
Can you figure out what firmware you had on the orion when it was working?
Also, the firmware version, did it upgrade by any chance?
Cheers,

F
 
Well. No. No updates. They released a new driver yesterday and I just downloaded the new launcher as well.
I started today rolling back firmware and see if I can kick some life in it. It takes ages to flash though and the launcher force me to update .. anyway. I have a couple of hours tomorrow so I’ll continue going thru firmwares. And drivers.
I’ll make a post after that.

Otherwise I’m intrigued by the Z390 since people seem happy with that and Apollo. But, a bit risky. I’d like to know if at least one Orion user out there.
 
No sorry .. tried a bunch of combinations. Can’t resurrect the TB thru it. Now and then I get the chopped noise but mostly silent. I must do some work so I switch to USB. Hope the round trip sync is more stable on later firmware.
So .. I’ll wait until someone confirms z390 with Orion. Maybe try a MADI solution also. Haven’t research that possibility. Expensive I bet.
 
If it works on USB, why would you still want to connect it via Thunderbolt?
 
Not to mention that Antilope was friendly enough to limit the amount of channels on usb in one of their firmware updates.
To me it seems Thunderbolt goes in the same direction as firewire and will not make it as an industry standard.
 
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