HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 2010: Veteran smooth jazz and new age music keyboardist, producer and arranger Philippe Saisse earned a Grammy nomination this year in the field of Best Contemporary Jazz Album for his At World’s Edge (Koch Records). Over his thirty-year career, Saisse has alternated roles, sometimes standing in the spotlight, sometimes standing at a keyboard just outside the spotlight, and sometimes helping to operate the gears and pulleys behind the scenes. With one foot always firmly rooted in contemporary jazz, Saisse has spread his talents across genres, working with David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, and legendary producer Phil Ramone, among many, many others. Like everything he has worked on in the last six years, Saisse relied on his Metric Halo 2882 Mobile I/O for all of the pre-production on At World’s Edge.
Saisse uses Logic to compose his
songs, trusting the Metric Halo 2882 to provide a pristine input and output. The 2882 delivers eight input and eight output channels with a simple FireWire connection and, although it has sophisticated DSP capabilities, Saisse opts to use the unit for straight I/O. The MIDI instruments that he relies on are a Roland A-70 keyboard, a Nord Rack 3, a Nord Modular, an Emu 4XT Ultra Sampler, and a Roland A700 Sampler.
Saisse “happened upon” the Metric Halo 2882 while working as a composer and arranger with Phil Ramone in New York City. “Phil was frustrated because we would do a lot of great sequencing – we’d have a great deal of inspiration – and then we had to wait a few hours for everything to dump, two channels at a time,” said Saisse. “It was ridiculous. Our friend at Yamaha clued us in to the Metric Halo piece, which simplified our lives and kept that fire of inspiration from smothering in the bounce down process.”
All these years later, Saisse still relies on the unit because it has performed so well and sounds so good. “All my friends use the bigger-name converter,” he said, “but honestly, it just doesn’t sound as good. I feel like I can trust the Metric Halo, whether in my studio or in the field. It gives me reliable performance and pristine sound every time.”
ABOUT METRIC HALO Based New York’s Hudson Valley, Metric Halo provides the world with high-resolution metering, analysis, recording and processing solutions with award-winning software and hardware. www.mhlabs.com
PHOTO CAPTION Philippe Saisse relied on his Metric Halo 2882 Mobile I/O for all of the pre-production on the Grammy-nominated At World’s Edge (Koch Records).
