HPUMC Installs Yamaha NUAGE DAW, CL Digital Console

Highland Park (Texas) United Methodist Church (HPUMC) recently installed a Yamaha NUAGE Digital Audio Workstation for recording and post work along with a Yamaha CL5 Digital Audio Console for front of house mixing in the sanctuary. Audio DAWg of Irving, Texas installed the NUAGE system, while Mike Mason of Clair Systems-Dallas, installed the CL5. The 900-seat contemporary worship space where the NUAGE and CL5 systems are housed has three services on the weekend with an average of 2,200 attending. The congregation consists of 5,000 who regularly attend five different contemporary and traditional service locations.

AUDIO DAWg began offering DAW systems solutions about seven years ago focusing on turn-key audio recording packages for studios, post, broadcast, houses-of-worship, and educational facilities. "The NUAGE installation began as a request from Bruce O'Leary, director of production at HPUMC," says owner, Spunky Brunone. "The church installed Dante networking throughout the sanctuary and recording studio, so NUAGE was a perfect solution for them."

O'Leary first heard about NUAGE via social media and contacted Audio DAWg for a demo at the company's office. "I wanted a solution that allowed me to mix live and track at the same time while writing automation, and would have enough 'virtual horsepower' for generous use of third party plug-ins," says O'Leary.

"I was super impressed with the workflow, the console portion of NUAGE facilitates, and the integration of Nuendo's channel strip. No other manufacturer has an option that fit our needs more perfectly!" O'Leary made the jump to the Yamaha NUAGE from ProTools having heard its praises sung by people in Nashville.

The church NUAGE system is a 16-channel unit (8a/8d), with a Yamaha Dante soundcard. "I'm loving what I'm seeing so far," says O'Leary. "The edit functions are all within easy reach in the center of the workspace; very well thought out for real-world work. The surface just feels killer too...again...no one else has anything close to this!"

HPUMC is planning on using NUAGE for their audio for video mix as well as for post-production projects. They have four channels of Rascall Audio V2 mic pre-amps and two channels of Classic API 312DI in a Radial Workhorse rack, with an additional eight channels of Audient that will come into the DAW via the eight channels of AES on the Nio8a8d. "In addition to the great plug-ins Nuendo has out of the box," says O'Leary, "We'll be using plug-ins from Waves and Universal Audio via an UAD2 Octo PCIe card installed by Audio DAWg."

As for the Yamaha CL5 digital audio console, it is located at the FOH location in the sanctuary. HPUMC converted the entire room to Dante networking (also running 16 channels of Shure ULXd wireless mics also on Dante) and will soon integrate a LiveMix personal monitoring system using the Dante network for both live and studio use. The church uses four Yamaha Rio1608-D input/output racks along with two Ri8-Ds and one Ro8-D.

"The CL console has more inputs than our previous console with great onboard effects," says O'Leary. "The Premium Rack is a really great feature. I have so many options right inside the console I do not have to purchase third party products. The integration with CL Editor and the CL StageMix make it the complete package. Again, I looked at a lot of manufacturers, but kept coming back to the Yamaha CL5 because of its flexibility, feature set, proven durability, and value."

Church amplifiers are fed from BSS London Blue with Dante cards, for a L/R hang of Clair Brothers I8 line array boxes and five of their dual 18 boxes (two on the floor and three hung center in cardiod pattern), as well as front fills/under balcony areas.