Multi-discipline composer and mix engineer Jacob Shea employs an RME Fireface UFX+ audio interface and M32 Pro A/D converter at the hub of his creative workflow, including collaboration with noted composer Hans Zimmer on numerous projects.
“I’ve got all this stuff I find creatively inspiring and rewarding in the physical world so I asked myself, why am I just sending this audio from one place to another? I started looking at how to make use of a MADI input and output and the M32 Pro fit the bill brilliantly,” Shea explains. “I have 32 discreet channels I can name as the thing they are in the room. I don’t have to think about anything ever again, it’s very simple.
“It’s almost like the underscore for a film, you don’t notice how effective it is. That’s kind of the best combination. RME’s equipment is so fluid and so beneficial, you don’t even realize it’s doing all the heavy lifting.”
Over the course of five years with Zimmer, he worked on The Simpsons, Inception, The Dark Knight, Transformers and many others before transitioning to Zimmer’s sister company, Bleeding Fingers. There, Shea collaborated with composer Steve Jablonsky on motion pictures such as Battleship, Lone Survivor, and Gangster Squad as well as TV shows like Planet Earth and Blue Planet Two.
“I feel like I’ve been able to record for the last 15 years, but it’s now a real joy to record. My musicality when playing has improved because of this equipment,” Shea concludes. “It’s zero latency, round trip coming from a mic being sent to a bunch of pedals, coming back from the pedals and going to my headphones. It’s not hitting my monitors, not hitting logic and that would be really cumbersome to do with anything else. The level of flexibility that RME equipment affords is just tremendous.”
