The Kitchen Sink recording studio’s co-owner, Tim Schmoyer recently invested in Nero, the new monitor controller from Audient for his home project studio. Already au fait with the Audient brand with a classic ASP8024 mixing console at the heart of the downtown Santa Fe commercial studio, it didn’t take him much persuading to give Nero a go. “Once I got it hooked up, I immediately knew this was going to be the one.” he says, citing “the super solid construction, the sound clarity and the flexibility in input and output functionality” to be what clinched it.
Tim Schmoyer on Nero: “Once I got it hooked up, I immediately knew this was going to be the one.”
A number of winners of the 2019 New Mexico Music Awards were recorded at The Kitchen Sink: co-owner Jono Manson helped Kito Peters produce his album Soapbox which won ‘Best Of The Year’ as well as recording, mixing and producing Rich Rajacich’s winner of Best Country CD, The Road Uncertain, and it’s records like these that Tim works on, too.
“I will bring projects home from the studio from time to time if I need to do editing or comping, or sometimes to just listen on different sets of speakers,” he says, explaining how Nero works for him in his home setup. Tim uses it to set the volume for each speaker set independently, matching volume for them as well as assigning a sub to any monitor path he chooses. “The ability to route different sources to different outputs is a great feature. It is super useful when I have a reference mix on my iPod, and want to quickly A/B my track with the reference. A few simple button clicks to set up the routing and I’m good to go.”
“The number of headphone outs is great.”
Nero has one dedicated monitor grade headphone amp and three foldback grade headphone amps – a definite bonus, as he explains: “The number of headphone outs is great. I have connected the equivalent of a Bose Wave radio to one of the headphone outs which lets me listen to that output instead of burning a CD. Same with a set of desktop computer speakers. If I could only hook that up to my car…”
Years ago, Tim had owned an interface that had an external controller similar to Nero, but it became obsolete as the interface and drivers were no longer supported. “I love that the Audient is not tied to any vendors’ software,” he confirms.
“…it is an Audient, which at this point, I expect to be nothing less than excellent.”
Overall, Tim is extremely pleased with Nero. “The construction is solid. It sits nicely on my desk and does not tip backwards when all my cables are connected. The angle is great, and the volume control knob is smooth to turn. And it is an Audient, which at this point, I expect to be nothing less than excellent.”
Now in its fourth year of operation, The Kitchen Sink studio’s schedule continues to be packed with local, national and international artists (including co-owner Jono’s own record) and owes its success to Tim and Jono’s hard work and dedication.
Audient wishes them both all the best!
