NRG Recording Studios Uses EVO to Offer a Seamless, World-Class Recording Experience for Top Recording Artists
NRG Recording Studios is a world class recording and production facility that has served as an industry leader for over 30 years. By staying on top of the latest technological trends and innovations, they are able to offer their artists the security, equipment and service they need to focus on what they do best: bring their sound, music, and vision to life.
NRG Recording Studios continues to take on more projects and bring in their own bands, giving unknown artists a shot, while still being able to accommodate Grammy award winning acts such as: Beck, Jay-Z, Celine Dion, Kanye West, and Justin Bieber, to name a few. However, with the ever-changing technological landscape, there are challenges that arise which need to be addressed, especially when dealing with some of the top recording artists in the world.
The Tech Challenges of 21st Century Recording Studios
In today’s modern world, concerns over security of created works are high and the need to manage multiple recording sessions simultaneously is a necessity.
“It all started with one session in particular,” recounts Wade Norton, NRG’s Chief Engineer. “We had Beck working on Midnite Vultures — he was recording in multiple rooms, plus he had musicians working from home studios. A few weeks into his session, he had several copies of each session and didn’t know which tracks needed to be used to mix the songs.” Norton and his team would spend hours trying to figure out which version of what session had the bass track they needed.
This story is all too familiar to recording and video studios alike — multiple versions of files coming from several locations and housed on multiple drives, all for the same project. This not only poses a greater security risk to artists’ created works, but more time ends up being spent on file management than anyone would like to admit, wasting time and money.
Their solution: Studio Network Solutions’ (SNS) EVO.
Streamlining the Recording Process
NRG’s extensive and diverse group of clientele requires a high degree of technological organization, stability, security, and efficiency. Bringing EVO on board allowed NRG to re-imagine their entire workflow from tracking to backup, all tied together seamlessly under one system.
“The SNS EVO is a necessary extension of something that we have been doing for 15 years. It’s simple, user friendly, stable, and bug-free,” says Norton, “It does everything we want it to do, and more.”
With the introduction of the EVO Shared Storage Server, managing large sessions across multiple rooms has become a breeze. The time that used to be spent troubleshooting and fixing bugs can now be spent on recording and archiving. With ShareBrowser (EVO’s unified asset management system) the NRG team no longer has to spend hours reconciling which drives contain needed tracks. The workflow that EVO enables at NRG has completely cut through the chaos that comes with file and session management, providing them with a smarter, more efficient, and productive way to work.
A Complete Studio Network Solution
NRG uses an 8 bay EVO connected via 10Gb Ethernet, giving them the bandwidth and the storage capacity to handle all of the material coming from their three Pro Tools rooms. The EVO is configured with ten shares, two shares allocated to each engineer. NRG has a total of four workstations accessing the EVO at any given time among the three Pro Tools control rooms, and a fourth workstation running Retrospect for archive and recovery.
For NRG, the capability to use ShareBrowser to search their entire storage infrastructure and work on files from any computer has completely changed the way they look at the production lifecycle. They can record a band in Studio A, move them to Studio B in the afternoon, and instantly pick up a session exactly where it was left off, on any computer. Once projects are complete they are easily uploaded to a cloud service and removed from local storage, allowing NRG to free up space for their next major project, and increasing their productivity dramatically.
“It just makes sense for recording studios to use EVO,” says Norton. “It has been instrumental in the growth of our business and kept us on the forefront of modern technology so that we can continue to offer a seamless, world-class experience for all of our recording artists.”
Studio Network Solutions is always on the cutting edge of technological innovation and advancement, providing easy solutions to difficult problems that work for you, your business and ultimately your clients.
About Studio Network Solutions (SNS)
SNS shared storage solutions are at the core of optimized video workflow for professional content creation workgroups worldwide. The SNS EVO shared media storage server combines high-performance with extensive connectivity, including 10Gb/s Ethernet and Fibre Channel. With EVO’s included ShareBrowser asset management software, you can search, index, preview, tag, and verify video and project assets with no additional software required. NAS, SAN, or both at the same time, EVO is designed for online real-time video editing with leading video/audio applications including Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro/CC, Final Cut Pro (FCP), Final Cut Pro X (FCPX), DaVinci Resolve, Pro Tools, and others.
Read more user stories or contact SNS now to see how the EVO shared media storage server can help your company.