Recording and Production in the News

Musician Stephen Heil describes his joy at winning an Orpheus

'Amazing!' That's how musician Stephen Heil describes his new Prism Sound Orpheus FireWire interface, which he won after entering our summer on-line give-away competition.

Orpheus winner, Stephen Heil

"When I first heard that I'd won I almost didn't believe it," he says. "I had previously read one review on the Orpheus and it sounded great but I didn't look too deeply into it because I never thought I could afford one on my limited budget. When I learned I had won, I did more research and found plenty of stellar reviews of the Orpheus. I can't believe I now actually own one! It's just amazing!"

An electrical engineer by training, Seattle, Washington-based Stephen says music and music electronics have been his serious hobby for over 30 years. He plays guitar and occasionally keyboards and has a home studio set-up that consists of a laptop PC with Mackie's Tracktion software as his DAW and a couple of Audio Technica microphones.

"My mixer is an old 8-channel Kawai rack mount mixer, which got a massive upgrade with the arrival of the Orpheus," he says. "Winning this competition was really timely because I was in the middle of refreshing some of my gear and the Orpheus has now become the central point of my recording rig."

Stephen says installing Orpheus was very fast and simple. It hooked up easily to his Windows XP laptop and works well with both the Mackie Tracktion and Adobe Audition software he is using.

He explains: "The device itself is incredible considering how much is packed into the 1U chassis. Having the two instrument-level input upfront is great. I just plugged in my classical guitar, which has a built-in piezo pickup, and the sound was incredible. The only way to describe it is "completely transparent". The automatic switching between MIC/INST/LINE is a wonderful feature. I'm impressed that Prism even built in RIAA equalization. I haven't tried this feature yet but I'm looking forward to is as I've got a lot of old vinyl I'd like to digitize. The attention to details is terrific, down to things like the "Identify" button on the UI that when clicked will flash the power LED on the device to help you manage multiple Orpheus installations."

Although he admits he has only scratched the surface of Orpheus' capabilities, Stephen says he can already tell that it is perfect as the centrepiece of a small studio - and that it is already delivering great sounding results.

"If someone is setting up a high quality 8-channel recording/mixing rig this is the perfect turn-key solution," he adds. "I am now shopping for new monitors because the Orpheus is putting what I have to shame."