Composer uses SSL Alpha, Delta-Links for scoring ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’

When top film composer Harry Gregson-Williams took on the task of creating the musical score for “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” he turned to Solid State Logic (SSL) Alpha-Link and Delta-Link I/Os to streamline his production workflow. The units provided a reliable and sterling-quality interface between Gregson-Williams’ Cubase and GigaStudio systems into the Pro Tools systems at Abbey Road Studios.

“I received a call from Andrew Adamson, the director of ‘Prince Caspian,’ who said he wanted me and my studio over in London to create the score, as that was where post production would take place,” Gregson-Williams said. “Clearly, I had to put a mobile rig together that was efficient enough to do the job and yet was compact enough to freight over to the UK. No easy task! My assistant engineer, Costa Kotselas, took care of the interfacing and we decided to base the setup around the SSL units. They turned out to be exactly what we needed to achieve this and performed perfectly.”

Gregson-Williams used the Alpha-Link module with Cubase to record live elements and synthesized tracks, creating more than 130 minutes of music. Costa Kotselas explained, “Once Harry has a cue done inside of Cubase, we then record everything over into Pro Tools, including the GigaStudio Orchestra parts. We have always needed a lot of outputs and inputs to do this. In the past, we never had enough outputs, so we would have to record some tracks, go back and then do a second or even third pass. The Delta-Link offers such a large number of inputs into Pro Tools, and now the transfers happen all in one go. This saves us a huge amount of time and expense and is also in a smaller, more compact, simpler set up.”

The XLogic Alpha-Link Audio I/O range is a family of three fully featured multichannel audio converters with 24-channel AD/DA converter circuitry. The XLogic Delta-Link MADI HD is a professional MADI to Pro Tools HD converter that allows multichannel audio digital interface equipment to be directly interfaced with Pro Tools HD, providing simplified interconnectivity and eliminating format conversion workarounds.

“I found the entire experience with the Alpha and Delta-Link modules to be amazing,” Gregson-Williams said. “The Alpha-Link provided that great SSL analog sound. The Delta-Link has such a massive capacity to deal with all my sounds that come from Cubase and GigaStudio into Pro Tools and all this down a one-wire interface: quick, clean, easy.”

For more information, visit www.solid-state-logic.com.