Our friends at UK based console, interface and mic pre manufacturers Audient are very pleased to announce their new product, Nero. Nero is a fully featured desktop stereo monitor controller with a comprehensive set of I/O. Think of Nero as the centre section of your console, just without the console.

Get Connected

Nero offers four stereo analogue inputs, including two line level inputs, a dedicated cue mix input, one aux input (RCA or Mini Jack) and both optical and coaxial SPDIF inputs giving you a variety of connectivity options. These can be routed to three stereo speaker outputs with the ability to set and match volumes. There is also an assignable sub output, for bass management. Nero has four headphone outputs, one monitoring grade headphone output for the engineer and three foldback headphone outs for the artists, designed to provide plenty of volume and crystal clear headphone mixes when recording or mixing

Audient Marketing Director Andy Allen told us…

“Nero builds on our 20 years of expertise in analogue design heritage, courtesy of David Dearden designed circuitry. As a studio grows, it can be difficult to keep a handle on monitoring but Nero will provide centralised, customisable control for all your monitoring needs - right from your desktop.”

At the core of Nero is Audient’s new Precision Matched Attenuation Technology, which perfectly matches the volume of the left and right channels of your stereo signal. Some monitor controllers use standard volume controls which don’t always track perfectly allowing variation between your left and right monitors, Precision Matched Attenuation prevents this, enabling you to monitor accurately and create a stereo picture with confidence.

Building on the functionality of Audient’s original monitor controller, Centro, Nero is inspired by Audient’s heritage in analogue console design and features a range of flexible monitor controls founding in their ASP8024 and ASP4816 recording consoles including dedicated talkback, cut & dim along with polarity, mono, speaker select and cue mix monitoring and the concept of Smart Touchpoints.

Routing

Smart Touchpoints are configurable buttons that allow you to customise your workflow on the fly. Simply hold a touchpoint down to enter setup mode, then simply route and configure Nero’s relevant monitor controls to create and save monitoring combinations that work for you. For example route your sub permanently to any or all sets of speakers without losing the ability to switch it on and off. Or permanently sum an output to Mono for your Mono reference speaker.

Nero features an internal mic for Talkback or you can use the dedicated mic input with phantom power, enabling you to use a dynamic or condenser mic for talkback duties. You can then route any input source as well as talkback to any headphone output, which helps you to keep in control of your session.

Price And Availability

Audient Nero should be shipping in the second quarter of 2019 and will retail at £375 inc VAT. We are looking forward to getting our hands on a Nero and putting it through its audio paces very soon.