Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and SuperMansion film and TV composer, Kurt Oldman put Audient’s brand new desktop monitor controller, Nero through its paces before its release, this month. “When Audient offered to let me try out their new monitor controller, I was delighted and very excited,” he said.
“Nero is everything a professional monitor controller should be”
Starting with a listening test, Kurt was not disappointed. “The sound of the Nero struck me immediately as being uncoloured, super quiet and completely transparent, like everything from Audient. The Nero is everything a professional monitor controller should be. It’s paramount to me that the controller does not add noise or harmonic distortion to the signal path.”
He decided to evaluate the unit in various situations around his studio. “I first tested the Nero at my piano writing station. It’s just a MIDI enabled piano connected to a MacBook Pro running Cubase with two small powered speakers. I used an optical cable from the laptop into the monitor controller and the Nero’s digital converters sounded pristine. I love that you can connect coaxial and optical at the same time as well.
“the DAW analogue path sounded crystal clear and super detailed”
“It was such a great experience that I moved the controller to my main workstation with larger format speakers. The DAW analogue path sounded crystal clear and super detailed,” he explained.
Scoring all sorts of genres in film and television, Kurt’s resume comprises a huge back catalogue of compositions from Marvel blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, to the recent Hacker and Flight 192. He is also responsible for the music on Bryan Cranston’s fast-paced, stop motion show, SuperMansion, so it’s not unreasonable for him to expect a lot from his gear.
“being able to set every headphone pair individually is an amazing feature”
Audient was keen to know how the performance of the monitor controller held up, in his opinion. “The Nero is a routing monster! I have never experienced a controller with such flexibility and user functionality before. Being able to set every headphone pair individually is an amazing feature,” he said.
“I have tried quite a few monitor controllers over the last couple years in many different situations. They all had their shortcomings. The Nero does not.”
“I have tried quite a few monitor controllers over the last couple years […] They all had their shortcomings. The Nero does not.”
High praise indeed. Audient is indebted to Kurt for giving his time and expertise to help bring Nero to market.
