Leading German Studio Invests In Yamaha Nuage
Founded in 1989 by recording engineer Hans-Joachim Kloock and sound engineer / Foley artist Arne Damman, Hamburg-based M&E Studios GmbH provides post-production services to all of the major German television production companies. Long-term users of Steinberg Nuendo DAW software, the studio has recently invested in a Yamaha Nuage system, which has made a very positive difference to its workflow.
Hans, Arne and scoring specialist Daniela Mükisch have used Nuendo since version 2 was released, back in 2003. The team prides itself on the studio’s excellent facilities, which have attracted a client base that includes virtually every high profile German actor and producer.
A total of six Nuendo workstations deliver a seamless workflow for transferring projects between the company’s dedicated mixing, Foley and dubbing studios.
M&E has been using hardware control since adopting Nuendo, but the team found that it missed a lot of features they wanted. This made projects run slower as inefficient workrounds were the order of the day.
However, after taking part in a Nuage Demo Day at the premises of Digital Audio Service (DAS) in Hamburg, a decision was made there and then that Nuage was the ideal solution.
“We immediately loved Nuage,” says Arne. “The haptics, the look and feel were just what we needed and it gave us instant access to all the facilities where we had to use workrounds with the previous controller.”
The most comprehensive Nuage system was chosen, comprising a Nuage Master unit, three Nuage Fader units, two Nuage I/O 8A8D units, a Nuage Workspace Small unit, an Dante Accelerator card and, of course, the latest version of Nuendo running on a custom-built DAS Audio computer.
Heiner Niemann, DAS's broadcast and post-production specialist, took care of a trouble-free installation in between two commercial television productions. Within four weeks of the installation, the studio had completed four movie projects on the Nuage system with no problems.
“Nuage and Nuendo is the most intuitive combination of post-production software and hardware controller on the market,” says Arne. “It only requires a short learning period to do professional productions, because it feels like a real mixing console combined with very ingenious handling of software and effects. In addition, the build quality is excellent and its extensive ADR features really do make it a first choice for all areas of dubbing and audio post-production.
“Another advantage for us in installing Nuage was that we could get rid of literally kilometres of cables. This drastically simplified our technical setup and improved audio quality.”
The system was installed in June and, such has been its success, M&E is already committed to installing a second Nuage system in its Dubbing Studio 1 this autumn.
