AES Partner News Blog

Award-winning film composer Justin Hurwitz has invested in a Prism Sound Lyra 2 for his private studio and is using it as the audio interface between his preamps and his digital audio workstation.

Based in Los Angeles, Justin Hurwitz is the composer of this year’s movie hit La La Land, which won in all seven categories for which it was nominated at the 74^th Golden Globe Awards. The film also received 11 nominations at the 70^th British Academy Film Awards, winning five, and received 14 nominations at the 89^th Academy Awards, winning six. Among these Oscars were two for Hurwitz – for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (City of Stars).

Hurwitz, who also scored the Oscar-winning movie Whiplash, chose a Prism Sound Lyra 2 interface after taking advice from various sound engineers whose opinion he trusted.

“I heard that Prism Sound made great interfaces with the highest quality A/D conversion,” he says.  “I wanted really high-quality A/D conversion for the one or two channels that I'm recording right now, so this unit was the perfect solution. It is now set up and an important part of my recording chain.”

Based on the company’s Orpheus interface, Prism Sound’s Lyra allows music recording professionals to access the power of the Orpheus audio path and clock circuitry, but in a smaller package and at a lower price. 

The Lyra 1 interface has two analog input channels – one for instrument/line and one for mic/line – plus two DA output channels and optical-only digital I/O. Lyra 2 includes two AD input channels with switchable microphone, instrument or line input modes and four DA output channels. Both versions incorporate new ARM Cortex processor design offering class-compliant USB interfacing that allows for integration with both Macs and PCs. Both versions also offer digital volume control, a low latency ‘console-quality’ digital mixer for foldback monitoring and optical SPDIF capability.

Although he records orchestras on the larger scoring stages in Los Angeles, Hurwitz is currently building a project studio and is now set up to record vocals and overdubs there.

“I’ve also been recording some solo instruments for my next score, which is a film about Neil Armstrong,” he says. “The Lyra is proving really useful for this type of work and I love it - it’s working great.”