Yamaha NUAGE Creates Less Of A 'Grind' For LA Audio Post Facility

Grind Music and Sound is a professional audio post-production facility located in Los Angeles, California. Their speciality is sound design & mixing for adventure sports and documentary films and television.

With two studios, one mix/sound design room and one composition/editorial room, the Company recently installed a Yamaha NUAGE Advanced Production DAW System purchased through Hollywood Sound Systems.

Co-owners Michelle Garuik, who works mainly in the mix room, sound designing and mixing, and Sangtar Heer who writes in the composition/editorial room, use the NUAGE Room for his albums' mix.

"We were researching DAW controllers and mixing consoles for the studio and first became aware of NUAGE through the Internet and magazine advertisements a year ago, which led us to the Yamaha Commercial Audio web site," states Garuik. "Our first physical contact and demo with NUAGE was at AES in LA. Besides watching the public demonstrations at the Yamaha booth, we were given a private demo by Yamaha's Marcel Mauceri."

"NUAGE's deep integration with Nuendo was an immediate draw for us," says Garuik. "It is much more than faders, pan-pots and the usual four to five things you find on most controllers. Anything you need to do in Nuendo, you can access on NUAGE. Also, the fact that it is a Yamaha Commercial Audio product was another plus for us. Having mixed on Yamaha consoles in the past, we were already familiar with the build quality and support."

The co-owners had been looking at consoles and DAW controllers for some time and nothing really fit all their needs until NUAGE. "After mixing in the box for years, it is great to have instant access to deep features in Nuendo with just a touch of a button. It's also nice to have different ways to perform tasks enabling us to work faster and more intuitively. The mixing integration with Nuendo is fantastic in speeding up our workflow. With project deadlines having faster and faster turnarounds, NUAGE lets us meet the demands of our partners and makes mixing even more fun."

Garuik said the ability to store different setups for their individual project needs is a huge plus. Mixing a 5.1 television documentary has a very different setup than mixing a music album, and the ability to switch quickly and seamlessly between those setups was paramount in their decision. The pair has been using Nuendo daily since its inception, first introduced to it at AES in 2000 where their journey began with version 1.0, and using Cubase since the early 90's.

With Garuik specializing in mixing action/adventure sports projects, some of Grind Music and Sound clients include: Red Bull, FOX Sports, CBS Sports, NBC Sports and Specialized Bicycles. "Our first television mix on NUAGE was for FOX Sports Training Day 'Team Alpha Male' episode, and it went amazingly well. Grind set up the system with assistance from Hollywood Sound's Grossman on a Friday, spent Saturday programming quick keys and setting up their system preferences, and on Monday, mixed the 22-minute episode.

"The mix went very smoothly, and having access to 16 faders at once, really sped up mixing for me. The master unit rocker wheel was a dream to edit with; cleaning up edits was faster with less clicking. I was also very impressed with the monitoring integration of NUAGE FADER / MASTER and the NUAGE I/O 16A unit. The sound was impressively clear."

In the first two weeks Grind has had their system, they have mixed two shows for FOX Sports, two National Parks educational videos, and a Specialized Bicycle promo. They are also mid-mix on an upcoming documentary for HBO. Heer is currently editing and mixing a live DVD concert video on NUAGE of his 2014 Punjabi Virsa North American tour.

Image: Yamaha NUAGE Advanced Production DAW System

The article is also available to read at BFV online.

(JP/MH)