Recording and Production in the News

Steve Levine uses Orpheus and MMA-4XR to record an exclusive Patch William live track

Cambridge, UK: Internationally acclaimed music producer Steve Levine has been singing the praises of Prism Sound's Orpheus computer FireWire interface after he used one to great effect during a recent demo at the Apple Store in London's Regent Street.

Patch William performing live at Apple's Regent Street store

Apple was launching its monthly City Showcase Sessions, which are designed to demonstrate the brand's recording products. Steve Levine was ably assisted by Ivor Novello nominated band Patch William, who Steve manages and produces.

The evening started with Patch William playing three acoustic songs. Steve then played multitracks of the same songs, which had been recorded in the studio, before explaining to an audience of nearly 200 people how he mixes and creates a master of a recording using Logic.

This was followed by a fascinating demo, during which Steve acoustically recorded Patch William performing their song Jealousy, recently featured in several episodes of TV drama Hollyoaks. He laid down a multitrack and mixed it live using a combination of Logic and Orpheus, plus an additional Prism Sound MMA-4XR 4-channel mic pre amp. The first four microphones were handled directly by Orpheus with additional channels connected through the MMA-4XR into the remaining four Orpheus line inputs. He also did a separate overdub recording of the vocals and explained all of the microphones he was using and why he had placed them in their various positions. Patch William then performed Jealousy live in full.

Commenting after the session, Steve said: "Prism Sound's Orpheus is a marvellous piece of equipment and, without doubt, the best FireWire interface I've ever used. It has incredibly solid build quality and is very simple to use. It's easy for a manufacturer to make something work well in the calm environment of a recording studio, but when you are recording live, as we did at Apple, you really discover just how good a piece of equipment is. The Orpheus rose to the challenge and was sonically excellent, despite the less than perfect acoustic environment we were recording in. The drivers are great and we didn't have to reboot it, no matter what we did. I had it linked up to a 17" Mac Book Pro and it performed flawlessly."

The Apple event ended with a lively Q&A session that gave the audience an opportunity to hone their own recording techniques. You can listen to a 320kbps MP3 version of the recording using the player below.



If you would like to hear a short section of the original uncompressed audio Click here.

For further information about Patch William, check out the band's official website at www.patchwilliam.net