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BUENA PARK, Calif. — Founded in 1979, Nutmeg Audio Post is one of New York City's most successful studios specializing in audio post production and sound design for film, television, radio and video. The facility recently upgraded its nine post suites with nine Yamaha DM1000 digital audio consoles. Technical Director Jonathan Abrams said that Nutmeg's prime motivation for choosing the DM1000 is its surround sound capabilities.

L to R: Frank Verderosa and Jonathan Abrams in Verderosa's audio room

"I wanted to equip the studios with a device that had a calibrated monitoring level control so that at a glance, the engineer could see what the control room monitoring level was," says Abrams. "It was also desirable to have bass management and down mixing accessible with as few operations as possible. These are all functions that could not be achieved with the consoles we had prior to the DM1000s." Abrams says that with the addition of Yamaha MY16AE cards in each console, Nutmeg engineers are able to use a set of Dorrough 280-D meters in parallel with either the output of their DAW, or send to their VTR without looping through devices.

Another factor that motivated the choice of the DM1000 is its HUI emulation. Years ago some of the Nutmeg studios were equipped with HUIs, but between then and now, Nutmeg removed the HUIs and had a mix of Mackie Control Universals and Digidesign's Command 8s installed. "Even though both products are suitable control surfaces," Abrams notes, "they are only control surfaces. This type of set up created an environment where the console and the control surface must coexist. While we had worked this way in the past, it was no longer desirable. With the HUI emulation in the DM1000, there is no longer a need to have a control surface and a console in the studio – a key point that has a positive impact upon our studio designs."

Verderosa sits at his Yamaha DM1000 digital audio console

The engineers on staff at Nutmeg regularly audition audio played from the computer that is hosting the DAW. This could be either SFX or music from their mSoft Server (the largest server used by an independent post house in New York City), or it could be audio from a streaming Internet source. Synchronizing the computer's digital audio output with the rest of the studio can be done, notes Abrams, but it involves more steps than they necessarily care to go through. "With the SRC on the 2TR digital inputs of the DM1000, we no longer have to concern ourselves with the computer's finicky digital audio sync requirements. It's one less thing to be concerned about in a session, which is always a plus."

Nutmeg Audio Engineer Frank Verderosa recently completed a series of spots for MSNBC News using a Yamaha DM1000. "These spots were a different sort of sound design than a typical 'cartoon' animation," states Verderosa. "In a very short amount of time, I had to create many layers of depth out of a variety of sound bytes from MSNBC News." The goal, Verderosa says, was to show 'a fuller spectrum of news' so a variety of audio key words were needed to leap out at the viewer. "And while this happens, there are an increasing number of other news stories that the listener may not pick out individually, but need to swell, pan and thicken as time goes by." Simply piling the news clips together wasn't cutting it, so Verderosa needed to build layers with different filtering, amounts of reverb for distance as well as volume and panning tricks to draw the viewer in. "Although the 30-second version entitled 'Tornado' adds an additional layer of sound effects," Verderosa continued, "the rest of the campaign steered away from that approach. For the spots 'Rain' and 'Wall', the dense layers of news clips became the sound effects. Thankfully, the Yamaha DM1000 gave me extra tactile control, since the MSNBC spots went upward of 32 tracks each."

"I'm glad to have the function of a control surface while having the reliability of a console," adds Verderosa. "I also do a lot of recording for cartoons that requires ISDN connections with studios in Los Angeles, so it's comforting to know that even though I am monitoring through a DAW, in a pinch, I can hit a button and send the talent directly to the ISDN and avoid the DAW. The Yamaha allows me to take my mind off the 'what if.'"

Abrams says that to position them for the move to high-definition video, Nutmeg acquired an Avenue signal integration system from Ensemble Designs. "The Avenue serves as our master sync generator, and can generate video references for NTSC and PAL, as well as high-definition tri-level sync references." Nutmeg also equipped their machine room with a Tektronix WFM7000 for standard and high-definition video measurements. Beyond the test and measurement category, they also purchased a Sony HDCAM SR (SRW-5500) equipped with a down-conversion card and the Digital Betacam playback option, which was recently used to complete projects for MHD and the Discovery Channel. Future projects like those for the Discovery Channel may well be finished in HD, and Nutmeg is poised to provide the expectant client with high-definition plasma displays to review in HD while in the audio suite. The studios are all equipped with Panasonic TH-50PH9UK or Pioneer PDP-6070HD displays.

For more information on Nutmeg Audio Post, email j.adelman@nutmegaudiopost.com.

For more information on the Yamaha DM1000 digital audio console, visit www.yamahaca.com; write Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Inc., 6600 Orangethorpe Avenue, Buena Park, CA 90620, or telephone 714-522-9011.