Hardware-wise, everything’s solid—great build, stable mixer, and routing. No complaints there.
But on a MacBook, the software side is a letdown. It runs class-compliant out of the box, no drivers needed. I expected better performance after installing the native drivers, but the only changes were a new device name in the menu and the hassle of granting kernel extension access. No real improvement.
The main issue: after sleep or reboot, the interface vanishes from macOS. Only way to bring it back is to unplug and replug the USB—no power switch. It happens often. I used an IK Multimedia AXE I/O before and it ran for months without issues. With the ZQ, I’m unplugging it several times a day.
If you’re on a desktop that stays on, this might not be a problem. But the ZQ is marketed as portable, and this flaw kills that promise. I’ll keep it because there’s nothing else in this price range that compares. Still, Antelope needs to get their act together—making a stable USB 2.0 device isn’t rocket science.