Troy, NY (February 4, 2015)—The nation’s oldest technological research university, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), founded in 1824, recently installed two Yamaha Nuage DAW systems provided by Parsons Audio of Wellesley, MA.
The Nuage systems are used primarily by RPI staff and students, and are also available to external clients. The first Nuage system is 32-faders plus a master section with a JL Cooper panner. The second Nuage has a 16-fader unit and a master section, also with a JL Cooper panner. Both systems are connected to a large Lawo Nova 73 MADI network via PC-based DAWS running either 96- or 192-channel RME MADI cards with two UAD quad accelerators, SSD record drives and a Blackmagic Design SDI link to the facility’s Harris router for post work.
Todd Vos, audio systems lead for The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at RPI, and fellow engineers Jeff Svatek and Steve Mclaughlin, determined Nuage had the tightest DAW to control surface integration. “We were attracted to the programming flexibility of VST architecture, and were basically sick of the DigiDesign workflow, exclusionary software/hardware model, master section functionality—or lack thereof—and sonic shortcomings,” Vos says.
“Nuage presents Nuendo to the operating engineer in a manner reminiscent of a traditional audio console; no small feat,” Vos continued. “But the biggest upside of our decision to move recording and mixing operations onto the Nuage/Nuendo platform was the bump in fidelity. The edge of our Lawo network has these fabulous Lawo mic pres; sadly the sonic bottleneck of the system was Pro Tools. Now that we are running Nuendo with Nuage, I am hard pressed to identify where things are being mutilated, negatively speaking. It was immediately apparent to us, Nuendo is just a significantly better sounding DAW.”
Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems
www.yamahacommercialaudiosystems.com
