The School of Audio Engineering (SAE) campus in Oxford, England, is the global headquarters for 54 locations worldwide, offering diplomas, undergraduate and postgraduate courses in a wide range of creative media industries. Training students on the latest systems is essential to students’ prospective careers, which is why a Yamaha Nuage and Steinberg Nuendo system is now a part of the Oxford studio complex.
‘I’ve always been a bit “take it or leave it” with control surfaces, because the level of integration has always felt somewhat lacking,’ says says audio production lecturer. ‘But I had a chance to use Nuage a few times and really coveted one. I pushed hard to have one here in the studio and was very pleased when we got it.’
SAE Oxford runs three main programmes – audio production, film production and game art/VFX. ‘Having them all in the one building means there is the opportunity for collaboration between students,’ Hollways observes. ‘For example, if game art students want audio, or film students want sound editing or cleaning up, the audio production course students have the latest equipment to help them. It’s a really creative and collaborative environment for them.’
The campus has five studios, providing students with hands-on experience. Steinberg Nuendo 11 is an integral part of Studio 5, which is used for recording, mixing, mastering and designing Ambisonics immersive audio environments, played back on a Dolby 7.1.2 system. It’s controlled with a recently-installed Yamaha Nuage system, allowing users to operate Nuendo seamlessly and intuitively. Virtual Reality headsets and DearVR Spatial Connect control also allow the students to experiment with full 3D sound for game design.
‘I really like features like the ADR panel, which lets you load in a spreadsheet with all your cues and literally just run the session. It’s a huge time-saver, a really efficient way to work and makes the whole process more pleasurable,’ Holloway says. ‘On top of that, you’ve got native multichannel output for a wide range of formats. Using the Control Room to effectively listen how you want to listen, at any given time, is hugely powerful. It’s a special feature of Nuendo that really works.
‘You can set up the outputs and let the software take care of the routing. The ability in Nuendo 11 to now render directly to Dolby Atmos feels like a great step forward and the students will get the full benefit of that with our speaker installation.
‘Nuage and Nuendo are so closely integrated that it feels seamless,’ he adds .’It has really changed things – you can effectively touch the software, have your hands on the workings of it, which is a huge difference to using a mouse and keyboard. With the Nuage surface, you can work so much more quickly in Nuendo than without it.’
More: www.yamaha.com
