Nuage And Nuendo Are The Clearcut Choice For Leading London Studio

Currently celebrating its 25th anniversary, Clearcut Sound Studios is one of London’s premier post-production facilities. Its clients include leading advertising agencies and broadcasters, the company working with television, radio, cinema and online media. A fast, dependable workflow is essential, which is why the business relies on Yamaha Nuage and Steinberg Nuendo.

With a staff of eight, Clearcut Sound Studios is owned by its employees, headed by managing director Chris Wrigglesworth and senior sound designer James Clark. “We have built a team of creative and driven individuals that share the responsibility of running the business. We believe this makes us a different breed of facility, where there is a universal passion and care for the people we work with and the work that we do,” says Chris.

Chris joined the company in 2006 and was involved in the switch to Steinberg Nuendo three years later. “We were impressed with how easy to use and quick Nuendo was, especially when using it for creative tasks,” he says. “It offered a complete solution that didn’t rely on expensive outboard kit, software add-ons and plugins.

“Since 2009 the updates and software improvements have been impressive and really geared towards changing audio post requirements. The recent changes, which have brought Cubase features to Nuendo 8.2, have been very significant.”

For a long time the company has used Yamaha DM2000 digital mixers for I/O, with expansion cards for Dante connectivity. While the reliability of the DM2000s was unquestioned, as Nuendo has developed, the control side became dated. With Clearcut Sound Studios recently developing its music composition service - meaning it can offer a complete package of audio post-production - it became a necessity to have a fast and intuitive hardware solution to seamlessly harness Nuendo’s advanced features.

Enter Yamaha Nuage, the company investing in a system comprising an Ncs-500CT Nuage Master unit, two Ncs-500FD Nuage Fader units and five I/O units.

“As technology has improved and engineers have got quicker and more efficient at doing certain tasks, the expectation is often that sound sessions can be completed incredibly quickly,” says Chris. “We looked at various control options and decided on Nuage, because it is built for Nuendo and every button, knob, fader and of course the jog wheel has a clear and simple purpose.

“For us as creative engineers, it is important to consider audio as an equal part of the whole production process, to strive for quality and give the sound mix the effort that it deserves and make sure that we all create an outstanding piece of work. Nuage has provided exactly what we needed to achieve that, making it fast and straightforward to harness all aspects of Nuendo. The feedback from both engineers and clients has been universally positive.”

London, UK