Audient ORIA Immersive Audio Interface and Monitor Controller Certified Open Box

This interface makes Atmos easy, and is great especially if you work solely in the box. The preamps sound wonderful. The UI for the software (which you will interact with a lot) is great. The ability to adjust individual speaker trim, delay, and EQ in a very user friendly and cool looking interface is wonderful! And Audient support has been marvelous (shoutout Daniel Mills, same guy that writes all the tech updates on their website) when I ran into one really crazy niche tech issue with the unit. It looks really sleek, and the integration with stream deck has been super cool. I definitely think it's overpriced for what it is. It's well built though, and in my view quite ergonomic with its functions. Overall, great interface, but I've got a couple of gripes with it:

First and foremost, Sonarworks integration with the Oria is one of its biggest selling points, but Sonarworks is completely lackluster. There is minimal customization with how you tune your room, only the walkthrough setup. You take 37 measurements at various points in the room and the software tunes it so that (based on my knowledge) it "averages" everything to get an even response around the room. I mix atmos, I don't need it to take an "average" around the room, I need it to be accurate at and right around the main listening position. The results it pumps out seem like they're almost randomly generated. Multiple times running the measurement tool and I get totally different results each time. I can't adjust the length of the sweep (to increase accuracy), I can't adjust how many times the sweep is run (to get a more accurate result). Just listening in the room I can tell the Sonarworks result is strange and inaccurate. I have more options using a free software (room EQ wizard) than I do with a software I paid a significant amount for. I'm not necessarily sure how sonarworks kind of became the "industry standard" for room tuning, but in every studio I've gone into it has this strange unnatural profile to it as opposed to zero correction. Yet, I still decided to try it out anyways and give it the benefit of the doubt. I thought I could maybe "get it right". It boosts what seem to be random frequencies into the stratosphere, and cuts where it shouldn't be cutting. The time alignment on it seems to be pretty accurate, which is a plus. But I got a much flatter result from manually cutting a couple frequencies than I did from sonarworks. I think if this software is to make some serious improvements, it needs to have all the capabilities that Room EQ wizard has, and have a lot more adjustable options. I should be able to let the software do multiple measurements at the same point over and over to get more accurate measurements. I should be able to choose an approximate range where I want it to be accurate. I should be able to try a "quick measure" option if I want it. If it wasn't integrated directly into the Oria, I wouldn't have got it.

Additionally, the fact they haven't added system wide calibration for multi-channel after promising it years ago, and then cancelling on it, makes me distrust the company flat out. Yes, you can do your measurements and then import them into the Oria to get around the issue (if you're on a Mac at least). But the fact they abandoned a feature they promised on? Don't like it. And it makes me doubt that they actually care about making their products better.

To be clear, the only reason I'm mentioning Sonarworks in this review is because it's one of the main selling points of the Oria.

Secondly, I take issue with the way they've done software and releases for Oria. The unit has been around for a little over a year now I think and I bought it in August and only recently installed it in the last 2 months. Right now I think it's actually caught up to all its initial promises but I definitely don't like that Audient released what felt like an unfinished product so quickly just so they could progressively patch it and add the features they promised, like the iPad app and the Dante card (didn't come until many months later). Again, it's caught up now so it's no longer an issue, which I'm grateful for. I think the fact that you can't use the spare outputs on it (most people run a 7.1.4) for outboard gear is a really sad lack of oversight. It's something people have been requesting for a long time. I work entirely in the box but have some analog EQs and compressors for recording, to be able to use one every once in a while in mixing would be nice.

Shoutout to the Audient team for what I think is an overall great product, I hope they'll take in user feedback on the unit. It's really sleek, and been a great simple unit especially for educational contexts. It puts Atmos in at a much lower cost than it would otherwise (used to be like $ for an interface that was atmos capable, now there's cheap competition as well though). And I tend to trust the Audient brand. Glad the unit is a part of my studio though and helped make things possible.