Orpheus, named after the Greek mythological musician whose songs were so beautiful that they could charm wild beasts, delivers the high-end audio quality for which Prism Sound is renowned in a dedicated and highly integrated FireWire interface at a price more accessible than its forebears, says the company.
The Orpheus unit draws on Prism Sound's converter and clock synchronisation expertise and technology developed over many years in products such as the AD-2 and DA-2 and the popular ADA-8 modular converter family, but with new capabilities and features designed to reflect the needs of musicians and producers working from computer-based personal studios.
Orpheus is compatible with Mac and PC computers and offers eight analogue recording channels, eight monitoring outputs plus SPDIF and Toslink optical digital I/O ports. The optical ports can also be used for ADAT, giving Orpheus a maximum capability of 18 concurrent input and output channels plus stereo headphones.
The unit features four digitally-controlled microphone amplifiers and two instrument inputs. These are associated with the first four analogue input channels, which are auto-sensing and can automatically select the right input when the signal source is plugged in.
Prism Sound director Graham Boswell says: "Prism Sound has a strong international reputation for delivering high quality audio conversion to the professional music recording industry. Our customers include many of the world's top recording facilities such as Abbey Road, Air Studios, Metropolis and Sterling Sound. However, in recent years we have been aware that the industry is changing, with more and more musicians and producers tackling their writing and pre-production from smaller, often home-based, facilities, and only moving into commercial facilities for final mixing.
"Orpheus delivers exactly what our private studio customers have asked for - all the performance of a Prism Sound product in a dedicated FireWire unit that handles line microphone and instrument inputs with good foldback and monitoring capabilities, al a more accessible price tag."
(Jim Evans)
