Yellow Cab Studio Fares Well with Euphonix

French studio is Europe's first Euphonix System 5 Fusion Installation

Palo Alto, Nov 5th 2007

Euphonix, a world leader in large-format mixing consoles and control surfaces, announced today that Yellow Cab Studios in Paris is the first facility in Europe to install the new S5 Fusion for TV post production and feature film mixing. The S5 Fusion is located in their premiere Studio A dubbing theatre which features a 2k Sanyo PLV-HD2000 projection system fed from a VCube.

What they initially opened as a television post house in 1998, Yellow Cab co-owners Steven Ghouti and Eric Lesachet now enjoy a growing list of feature film clients. “We started as a one room facility and over the years have expanded to two studios and three sound editing rooms. Our projects vary widely, we often go from feature films to corporate films, to documentaries and back,” described Ghouti. “Nowadays we describe ourselves as being a one-stop facility for all audio post.”

“We’ve had two major film releases this year; one was Pur Week-end by Olivier Doran, and the other was La Vérité Ou Presque by Sam Karmann,” explained Ghouti. “For the Karmann movie I worked on a Euphonix MC controller for over a month, premixing tracks in the box, which gave me a taste for the EuCon protocol and how it can speed up work with any DAW. This helped us decide to buy the S5 Fusion.”

“My first reaction concerning the EuCon protocol was ‘finally something better than the ubiquitous HUI command!’ I was immediately impressed that because EuCon is Ethernet driven, it can talk to Nuendo at a much deeper level than any MIDI controller out there,” he continued.

“There are two things that I need in a controller - mix control and editing control. The former can be found in many products, the latter I have only found in the Euphonix. Tailoring the MC’s controls and SmartSwitches to that particular movie was a mind blowing experience – it really speeds up the workflow. Having used Fairlight editors for many years, I was really looking for a new hands-on-the-controls experience and there it was,” said Ghouti.

The Euphonix S5 Fusion is an all-in-one packaged audio mixing system designed to meet the needs and budgets of modern mixing facilities that require a professional mixing console that can handle a large number of tracks with the quality and reliability of DSP channels, professional monitoring, plus the ability to control DAW tracks directly from the console surface. Unique to the S5 Fusion is EuCon, a control protocol developed by Euphonix which allows high-speed Ethernet control of any application. The S5 Fusion also features a new expandable DSP SuperCore which provides DSP channels, each with EQ and dynamics processing, delay, and surround panning to multi-format mix, group and aux buses.

“Of course the S5 Fusion is more about mixing, and the MC with its faders and functionalities shined with Nuendo during editing. Because I'm so used to mixing consoles I have never really liked mouse-mixing. When I am using a mouse, I feel like I have one hand tied behind my back and then there’s that unspoken rule about only using one command at a time. EuCon allowed me to seriously use Nuendo's automation for the first time - and that was Nuendo 3 automation. Now with Nuendo 4 and the S5 Fusion it's just amazing. It's practically like having two System 5s in one. The responsiveness is excellent, and finding knob layouts for Nuendo functions just where I would expect to find Euphonix DSP knobs makes moving from a DSP channel to a DAW channel very easy,” continued Ghouti. “

“One of the most interesting projects we’ve produced on S5 Fusion is a 24-minute 5-screen film for the new Invalides Army Museum, the new Charles De Gaulle museum in Paris. The entire project was mixed in the box with Nuendo to be as portable as possible so that we can finish the mix in the room it is to be played in. For that, the S5 Fusion proved itself invaluable in helping me mix more than 100 DAW tracks as if they were Euphonix DSP. I plan on renting a System 5-MC DAW controller to finish the show on-site by the end of the year,” concluded Ghouti.

The next project slated for Yellow Cab is a feature film starring French comedians Eric and Ramzy entitled Seuls 2 by Les Productions du Tresor, who also produced the award-winning film Ne le dis à personne which was mixed by Gerard Lamps at Dovidis studio on the Euphonix System 5. Seuls 2 will be mixed by veteran engineer Jean Paul Hurier and will be edited by Ghouti.