Should i get a Prism Orpheus or Lynx Aurora 16

[Blused]

Is the Prism Orpheus really that good, i have read all the previous posts about the Orpheus, is it really a all in one solution, is the firewire interface stable, does it live up to its price tag, i am stuck between a Lynx Aurora 16
and the Prism Orpheus, with the Lynx i have to get the aes 16 and a monitor
controller, the Orpheus is plug and play, i will be using the Orpheus mainly
for the converters and monitor control with outboard pres, anybody wanna help me make up my mind

[creative.control]

I own the Orpheus and think its a great all in one solution for applications like Cubase and Logic and even Pro Tools LE (via optical).

It only has 8 analogue ins and outs, but had 2 digital on SPDIF and further 8 digital on Optical. Sound wise its commonly thought that the Orpheus is perhaps slightly better than the Aurora, but there's probably not much in it and of course its a very subjective issue.

The monitor controller is excellent, as are the headphone amps and onboard midi i/o.

The firewire is very stable, I've only ever had a couple of glitches with mine, which were solved by doing a quick power cycle.

However if your using pro tools HD, the Aurora is the way to go, as its direct replacement for the Digidesign interfaces. Either that or take a look at the epic Prism ADA-8xr interfaces.

It really depends how many analogue channels you need. Also you get the 4 excellent onboard pres with the Orpheus.

[jwleeman]

here's the problem i have with the orpheus: it costs $5,000 and its daw connectivity (firewire) is built into the unit.

in another thread, i read someone was worried about firewire being phased out of macbooks. granted, i don't know if that's true for macbook pro's, but the concept still holds true: how can you be assured that a certain technology won't be superseded in another few years? you can't, unfortunately.

converter manufacturers, such as lynx and apogee got smart by facilitating daw connectivity through an expansion slot, so that they support any interface, even ones yet to be conceived. prism did do this for the ada-8xr, but not the orpheus looks like.

is it worth it to spend $5000 on an converter with such a restriction? couldn't tell you, cuz i've never used one before.

i could see that if you're doing live recording or working remotely, the orpheus might be a reasonable option.

but for the aforementioned reasons, i would probably go with a lynx aurora.

[Doc Mixwell]

Originally Posted by jwleeman

is it worth it to spend $5000 on an converter with such a restriction?

Restriction? Not really sure I see the same perspective. But I guess YMMV.

I don't think Fire Wire is going anywhere. There is still FW on the new Mac Books and Mac Pro's as well as PC's. People tend to keep their computers even though they're always becoming obsolete by the second. I know I will keep my last generation Mac Book Pro for a LONG TIME. I really don't think you can compare a stand alone AD/DA to the Orpheus considering the electronics that it offers.

[wildpark]

in chase apple will replace the firewire

with something faster (like long awaited usb3),

there is still a card slot for a firewire connector card !? so go for the orpheus

if you need some additional outboard routing get a aurora 8 beside

Originally Posted by jwleeman

here's the problem i have with the orpheus: it costs $5,000 and its daw connectivity (firewire) is built into the unit.

in another thread, i read someone was worried about firewire being phased out of macbooks. granted, i don't know if that's true for macbook pro's, but the concept still holds true: how can you be assured that a certain technology won't be superseded in another few years? you can't, unfortunately.

converter manufacturers, such as lynx and apogee got smart by facilitating daw connectivity through an expansion slot, so that they support any interface, even ones yet to be conceived. prism did do this for the ada-8xr, but not the orpheus looks like.

is it worth it to spend $5000 on an converter with such a restriction? couldn't tell you, cuz i've never used one before.

i could see that if you're doing live recording or working remotely, the orpheus might be a reasonable option.

but for the aforementioned reasons, i would probably go with a lynx aurora.

[Art Johan]

I own both units.
Funny how lynx advertises the aurora as uncolored.
That is until you hear the Orpheus.
If you have high end pres and mics i would reccomend the Orpheus.

[cinealta]

The hardware is not the only factor. Also research and consider who has more stable Drivers, and who provides timely updates.

[cinealta]

Originally Posted by Roc Mixwell

I don't think Fire Wire is going anywhere.

Look for Apple to ditch FW (including 1600/3200 protocols).

USB3.0 will be on Intel chipsets by 2011. Apple will follow until Light Peak debuts (approx 2012).

[trashman]

Id think it would be an Aurora 8 and not a 16. Do you need a lot of channels? SSL alpha link gets a lot of love and costs less per channel then both the orpheus and lynx.

Dont forget metric halo. The uln8 gets a lot of love and sex here. Plus it has a software environment that is well regarded.

Weiss makes a firewire interface box that would allow you to connect any converter ... So you could actually use any number of converters. I think tc electro makes something similar.

[imaginaryday]

Interesting answers. Thanks.

[salomonander]

the prism has its flaws. connection wise it is extremely limited. it is for instance not possible to record in 24/96 on all channels using anything but their firewire drivers. and this is a big problem!
first of all firewire is a dying breed. it won't be supported for much longer. but this also means that you can not take your converter to another studio and simply connect it to their setup -which is a major drawback. the thing doesn't even have aes connections. so be aware of this before you buy!

also you should really compare them to other converters first. i personally believed that prism was the holy grail of converters until i actually used them (two 8channel units for drums). honestly i was not blown away. they had a slightly artificial quality to them and transients just didn't come through the way i hoped they would.
i honestly prefer my myteks - especially when considering the costs.

[troxelj]

Originally Posted by Dubbin

Bumping this thread because I'm in a similar situation with my laptop.

I have Great River and API pres, mics, room treatment, etc. all covered.

I'm willing to spend the extra money if the integrity of the Prism conversion is superior enough to the Lynx, particularly on making passes in and out of the interface from/to outboard gear. And on top of that, I would get some extra mic pre channels.

Just hoping some more people could chime in with whatever experiences they may have.

I own the Prism Orpheus and it's a wonderful unit. The only drawback is that there's no insert point for running outboard gear. I'm using a PC or else I'd go with Metric Halo.

[Darius Vanhool]

Sitting here in front of a pair of Adam S4As with an Orpheus on loan to compare to my old Aurora 16. The Orpheus is staying, the Aurora will go. The Lynx bass is artificially warmed, slow and blurred compared to the Orpheus. You can make discriminations very clearly in bottom ends of different tunes I never guessed at listening with the Lynx. And the top end of the Orpheus has this incredible super-tight, lit-up clarity, that's still somehow natural, that lets you distinguish rosin on strings, breath on vocals and subtleties in reverb and stereo imaging in a way you could only dream of with the Lynx. Feels like I've just had my ears syringed. It's a clear jump up in quality on a similar scale to going from a Digi 882 to HD192.

Everything else about it is brilliant and works. Mic Pres are amazing - only difference from my BAE1073MPs are about 1.5dB difference round 160Hz and 4K. The quality of the pre-distortion warming is very similar with both. That's using a Brauner VM1 for comparison. The BAEs are going too.

Pity the knobs suck so badly, but I guess they spent every penny on making it sound good, so fair enough.

[pdiddy boy]

I've owned an RME Hammerfall, an Apogee Duet and Ensemble and now I own a Prism Orpheus and if I didnt like it it would have been sold a long time ago. Sound quality wise its amazing, drivers are soild after the updates. In OSX Lion its plug and play. I'd say the choice for you to decided would be over connectivity, I dont find it limiting in anyway but the futurist may argue otherwise.

[pdiddy boy]

Originally Posted by Darius Vanhool

Pity the knobs suck so badly, but I guess they spent every penny on making it sound good, so fair enough.

If you think the knobs are bad on the Orpheus you should check out the ones on the Apogee Ensemble ! Terrible, just plastic and flimsy, when I had mine. I was afraid to touch them, just used the software.

[VT-MHE]

Originally Posted by Darius Vanhool

Sitting here in front of a pair of Adam S4As with an Orpheus on loan to compare to my old Aurora 16. The Orpheus is staying, the Aurora will go. The Lynx bass is artificially warmed, slow and blurred compared to the Orpheus. You can make discriminations very clearly in bottom ends of different tunes I never guessed at listening with the Lynx. And the top end of the Orpheus has this incredible super-tight, lit-up clarity, that's still somehow natural, that lets you distinguish rosin on strings, breath on vocals and subtleties in reverb and stereo imaging in a way you could only dream of with the Lynx. Feels like I've just had my ears syringed. It's a clear jump up in quality on a similar scale to going from a Digi 882 to HD192.

Everything else about it is brilliant and works. Mic Pres are amazing - only difference from my BAE1073MPs are about 1.5dB difference round 160Hz and 4K. The quality of the pre-distortion warming is very similar with both. That's using a Brauner VM1 for comparison. The BAEs are going too.

Pity the knobs suck so badly, but I guess they spent every penny on making it sound good, so fair enough.

These claims are rather exaggerated to me.

[pdiddy boy]

Originally Posted by VT-MHE

These claims are rather exaggerated to me.

All I can say is if you've had the opportunity to listen to the Prism Orpheus please provide us with your unbiased findings. I'm certainly always open to different view points.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

I am a fan of the sound of Prism converters, but I have no experience with their drivers and such, which would make me a little nervous. I picked the RME AES card when I faced this same decision last spring. This can be run into any converters that accept AES i/o, including Lynx. I happen to be using Mytek.

[Resonance5]

the orpheus AD is great no doubt. but the DA?
recently i noticed my mixes were not coming out easily as when i used the rme ff 400 DA.

i struggled to finish them, so after 4 months of orpheus i decided to plug my ff 400 and wow, somehow i had more control the most on the stereo image.
a mix i was on for a week with continuos back n forth was finished in 2 h.

after this i plugged back my two orpheus and made a 16 ch analog sum.

and it's great.

somehow the prisms have a larger stereo image in DA that makes the mixes hard to nail.

my 2 cents, but i don't know where i would be without my rme!

[kaiO]

Originally Posted by Resonance5

the orpheus AD is great no doubt. but the DA?
recently i noticed my mixes were not coming out easily as when i used the rme ff 400 DA.

i struggled to finish them, so after 4 months of orpheus i decided to plug my ff 400 and wow, somehow i had more control the most on the stereo image.
a mix i was on for a week with continuos back n forth was finished in 2 h.

after this i plugged back my two orpheus and made a 16 ch analog sum.

and it's great.

somehow the prisms have a larger stereo image in DA that makes the mixes hard to nail.

my 2 cents, but i don't know where i would be without my rme!

Interesting.