Review: Prism Sound Orpheus

Dec 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jason Blum

THE BENTLEY OF AUDIO INTERFACES CRUISES INTO THE UPPER CRUST OF PROJECT STUDIOS

If you've never heard of Prism Sound, you're not alone. The boutique manufacturer makes some of the most respected A/D/A converters in the world, building bridges between analog and digital in major commercial recording studios and soundstages worldwide. Prism's lack of street cred in project studios isn't surprising given the sky-high price tags on most Prism gear; the workhorse ADA-8XR is nearly $12,000 fully loaded, and the specialized AD-2 and DA-2 converters are more than $9,000 each.

That's awfully expensive, but Prism has kindly built a converter for less — miraculously not sacrificing any pristine audio clarity or rock-solid reliability in the process. In fact, Prism upped the ante in some respects over its far more expensive gear. The Orpheus is a Mac- and PC-compatible FireWire 400 audio interface, complete with mic preamps, peak limiters, surround-sound volume control and a comprehensive software mixer. At $5,000, it isn't for the weak-walleted, but it's relatively inexpensive for a Prism product. So is this really a box worthy of the Prism name, and more importantly, is any audio interface really worth five grand? I took the Orpheus for a spin over the course of a month and walked away thinking that good things never come cheap, as well as that the Orpheus may be the benchmark against which all other FireWire interfaces are judged.

THE PHYSICAL

One thing is immediately clear: Prism built the Orpheus to stand the test of time. The 1U metal chassis is finely machined, with a burnished front panel that looks as professional and expensive as it is. The most prominent feature — the large soft-knob in the center — primarily controls output volume, but you can assign it to input channels as well.

A basic display panel showing I/O level, input source, word clock status and other basic status indicators bears the Prism logo and sits just to the left of the volume knob. Studios recording live musicians will appreciate the dual headphone outputs with individual volume controls. A pair of ¼-inch instrument jacks offers convenient access to the first set of analog inputs, dispensing with the hassle of digging the Orpheus out of a rack and swapping cables.

As with most audio interfaces, the real business is around back, where the Orpheus packs enough I/O for any modern project studio. With eight analog inputs and outputs, optical and coaxial digital and BNC word clock connections, the only thing missing is AES/EBU, which is available by using the included adapter and software setting that pipes AES/EBU over S/PDIF.

Scoping the back of the unit, analog inputs 1 through 4 had XLR connectors. With such a hefty price tag, I expected balanced XLR for each of the eight inputs and outputs; however, four is all right for a 1U rack, and they all sport quality microphone preamps and phantom power. These XLR jacks are dual-connector for both XLR and ¼-inch connections. The remaining four inputs are ¼-inch, as are the eight outputs, all of which accept balanced and unbalanced signals. Each of the eight input channels feature Prism's Overkiller technology, a basic (but effective) peak limiter that keeps hot signals from clipping the converters.

THE DIGITAL

The Orpheus stars as an A/D converter, but also admirably handles digital I/O with both optical and coaxial connectors. Digitally, the optical interface can operate with 2-channel S/PDIF at a maximum of 192 kHz, 8-channel ADAT as high as 8 kHz or 4-channel ADAT at 88.2 or 96 kHz. If you have multiple instruments in your studio with optical interfaces, simply daisy chain them all into the optical input and route them in the Orpheus control panel, leaving the beautiful converters on the analog I/O free for mics, acoustic instruments and old-school electronic gear.

The coaxial digital input is standard S/PDIF at a maximum of 192 kHz, but the Orpheus has the unique ability to switch that output to AES/EBU digital format with the supplied RCA-to-XLR adapter. A simple setting in the Orpheus control panel on the host PC makes the necessary change.

Another unique feature is Orpheus' real-time sample rate conversion (SRC), which you can apply to either S/PDIF output — useful when older outboard gear can't keep up with today's high sampling rates. A good example is my old TC Electronic Fireworx. It's one of the earlier effects processors with built-in I/O, and it only handles sampling rates as high as 48 kHz. I typically work in 88.2 kHz, so I've been patching the Fireworx with its analog connections. With the Orpheus' SRC, I'm able to switch over to 48 kHz transparently at the optical output and send pure digital audio straight from my DAW to the Fireworx, with the return audio coming in analog through two channels of the Orpheus' beautiful A/D conversion. As an added bonus, Orpheus can apply four types of dithering (or noise shaping) on the S/PDIF output.

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