Decided to stick with the ‘recording mag circa 81’ theme for a little while longer. For the rest of the week we will be taking a look at “Recording Engineer/Producer” magazine in the early 1980s.
“Recording Engineer/Producer” (hf. RE/P) was published between 1971 and 1992. Read a quick and educational ‘love-letter’ to RE/P here. We can roughly pin this as the time-span between the first affordable multi-track tape tape machines and the dawn of the ADAT, which was the first home-recording digital multitrack machine. I am not suggesting that these particular pieces of technology were uniquely responsible for the fate of this publication but it interesting to note none-the-less.
If we can safely assume that “Modern Recording And Music” (see previous posts here and here) was aimed at home-recordists, RE/P is very clear that it is aimed at professional users working in commercial fields. And this is indeed a more technical, more advanced publication.
Here’s a look at some of the content and products on display in October of 1982 from within the pages of RE/P.
The unstoppable Q makes another appearance. This is a great article, with detailed notes on microphone and outboard gear techniques that Jones and Bruce Swedien were getting into at the time. Oh and what were they working on in late 82? A little record called THRILLER.
Man the Effectron is great. There are like a million of these things out there; i see them for as little as $50. Alright I am gonna put it on the line here; here is one of my very earliest studio productions featuring the device above. Circa 1996. I am not even going to try to explain this other than: if you can’t really sing… you can use an Effectron (or any other LFO time- modulated delay) to turn your vocal performance into something else entirely. Especially if the song/lyric is appropriate.
02 My Way
Our survey of this issue will go on for a while… so follow the link below to READ ON….
‘ I dunno man; that Piano/Drum kit sounds too much like an actual instrument in an room. Can you do anything to really kill the ambience and make it sound like a goddamn casiotone?’ Good riddance.
1982, 2010…. still pretty freakin genius. timeless. HEY! LIKE PEARLS!
CT again! Now I am building up some real steam on this CT-Audio-History thing. That piece will happen. Shoot, you know, I had a chance to buy AudioArts rack-para-EQ for a few bucks last year and i skipped it. I will find some of this stuff, hook it up to my hypothetical LOFT gear, and record a theme to our beloved state.
Jensen Transformers does not really need any more promotion from me, or anyone… if you have been reading this site you know that i really dig their products. A great American manufacturer.
Orban gear is still a pretty good value. I’ve been using their 111B stereo-spring-reverb for years and it is a great product that can be had for very little money. Many reverb plug-ins are excellent, but you just can’t program the randomness and detail that an actual mechanical reverberation will give you. Some tips for better use: Always apply a pre-delay to the device. It makes a huge difference in the mix-quality and it will eliminate the possibility of the weird phase-issues that these boxes can have. Also: (credit to Joel Hamilton for turning me on to this) – if you are not digging the sound of your spring reverb box on a particular track, set up a short digital verb, feed that signal into the spring unit, and then return. It will put some randomness and ‘hair’ on your reverb without strictly sounding like the spring unit.
This is pretty wild. I have never come across one of these. Feel like this product may have been a ‘day late and a dollar short’ (re: coming-soon digital multi effect units from Japan).
These ‘Wright Microphones’ also caught me by surprise. I have never heard of these guys, and Google is drawing a blank, other than that they appear to have been (made? or just marketed?) by a dude famous for knocking off hit songs factory-style. “3500 in 5 years,” his bio is quick to boast. Alright then. Wonder if these are unique pieces, or simply a re-branding of some other period junk.
Tomorrow: October of 1983.
View Comments
Hi,
I knew Gary Snow of Audioarts .... He came into Ludwig Sound & Stage (Washington Ave No. Haven) one day with a parametric EQ under his arm and said "I build audio gear in Bethany, CT" .... it was the start of a long relationship of loving & selling his gear from the store. He actually started building them out of his house ... I remember him proudly displaying his PC brd. artwork as "artwork" on the walls of this tiny place. I still have a crossover of his in a rack somewhere ....