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1977 UREI 813 Studio Monitors
In the mid-’70s, UREI founder Bill Putnam—unhappy with the sound of the Altec 604 monitors in his United Western Studios—worked with UREI’s Dean Austin...
Technology
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1971 Thiele-Small Vented Enclosure Parameters
Speaker design has long been considered some kind of black magic. Yet a major step forward came when two researchers
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1967 Time Delay Spectrometry
In 1967, Richard C. Heyser, a research engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology published a paper in the...
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1967 Neumann U87
When a microphone remains in production for nearly 40 years, words like “classic” certainly apply, but the roots of the U87 go back much...
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1959 Telefunken (AKG) ELA M 251
There are many fans of Telefunken mics, with its U47 and ELA M Series leading the pack.
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1955 Ampex Sel-Sync
The development of Sel-Sync (Selective Synchronous) recording by Ampex a half-century ago eventually turned the recording world upside down
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1954 Hammond B-3
When clock manufacturer Laurens Hammond introduced his first tone wheel organ in 1935, he had no idea that he’d launched a groundbreaking instrument
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1935 Shearer Horn
n the late 1920s, cinema audio playback was dismal. Western Electric had a single driver on a large re-entrant
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1933 Fletcher-Munson Loudness Curves
Nearly 75 years ago, Harvey C. Fletcher and Wilden A. Munson—two Bell Labs engineers studying subjective
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1916 The Condenser Microphone
Edward Christopher “EC” Wente had a fruitful career during his tenure at Western Electric/Bell Labs from 1914 to 1954.
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1995 Yamaha 02R Digital Console
At the APRS (UK studio) show in 1995, Yamaha unveiled its less-than-$10,000 02R 20-bit 8-bus console, offering 24 analog inputs and 16 digital tape...
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1985 Audio Precision System One
In 1984, four former Tektronix engineers formed Audio Precision with the intent of becoming “the quality leader in the audio test equipment market.”
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1983 Dave Smith, Sequential Circuits MIDI Specification
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) had its origins when Sequential Circuits' founder (and designer of the Prophet-5, the first fully programmable polyphonic synth)
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1979 Roger Linn, Linn Electronics LM-1 Drum Computer
It isn't often that an inventor creates a musical instrument that almost overnight changes the course of popular music, but Roger Linn is one...
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1979 Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument)
Fairlight was founded in 1975 by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel, who were interested in using the newly available microprocessors to create digitally controlled...
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1976 Ampex ATR-102 Mastering Recorder
Unveiled nearly 30 years ago at AES in 1976, the Ampex ATR-102 (the 2-channel version of the company's ATR-100 Series recorders) is still considered...
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1976 Dolby Laboratories Dolby Stereo Theater Sound
The roots of multichannel theater sound hail back to Disney's Fantasia, which, in 1940, appeared in certain theaters with a “steered” 3-channel optical track...
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1970 Robert Moog Moog Music Minimoog Synthesizer
Even though his name is nearly synonymous with synthesizers, Bob Moog didn't invent the instrument. In fact, his Minimoog wasn't even his first creation...
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1969 George Massenburg ITI ME-230 Parametric Equalizer
With so many tools available at our fingertips, it's hard to imagine a time before parametric equalizers existed
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1966 Georg Neumann Company 48-Volt Phantom Power
Phantom power is nothing new; in fact, the concept hails back to the early days of telegraph and telephone technology
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1951 Pulse Techniques Pultec EQP-1 Program Equalizer
Pultec founders Gene Shenk and Ollie Summerland unveiled the first passive program EQ in 1951.
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1944 Altec Lansing 604 Duplex Speaker
Altec Lansing's famed 604 was not the first Duplex® coaxial speaker; that honor goes to the company's 1941 model 601
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1931 Harry F. Olson and Les Anderson, RCA Model 44 Ribbon Microphone
When engineers Les Anderson and Harry F. Olson joined RCA in 1928, talking motion pictures were the rage, radio was king and sound reinforcement...
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1925 Western Electric/Bell Labs Electrical Recording
No technology breakthrough in audio recording created such a stir as the development of the electrical recording process.
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1991 Digidesign Pro Tools
On January 20, 1989, Digidesign founders Evan Brooks and Peter Gotcher unveiled Sound Tools, a Mac-based (SE or Mac II) 2-track digital recording/editing system.
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1991 Alesis ADAT Modular Digltal Multitrack
The Alesis ADAT changed the entire recording industry, beginning a revolution of affordable recording tools. Overnight, the cost of digital studio recording plummeted from...
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1990 Mackie CR-1604 Mixer
Go back to 1989, and you’ll enter an audio world that was pre-ADAT and pre-Pro Tools—even the first digital audio sequencer
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1980 Meyer Sound Labs UPA-1 Arrayable Trapezoidal Speaker
ince its earliest days, sound reinforcement has traditionally been a very conservative market that was slow to acccept change. However, everything changed in 1980,...
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1978 New England Digital Synclavier
From a technology standpoint, the 1978 launch of New England Digital’s Synclavier—the first commercially available, real-time digital synthesis instrument—was a monumental achievement.
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1977 Thomas Stockham Soundstream Digital Recording System
For those who believe “digital” began with digital audio workstations in the late 1980s, it’s important to remember that the first commercial digital recordings
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1977 Solid State Logic SL 4000 Series Studio Console
There are many terms used to describe innovators in technology, but “visionary” certainly applies to Colin Sanders. More than 25 years ago, his design...
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1974 JBL 4311 Studio Monitors
Once upon a time—meaning about 30 years ago—monitors in U.S. studios were either custom designs (typically developed from JBL or Altec components), Altec 604E...
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1971 Lexicon/Gotham Delta T-101 Digital Delay
Pro audio was forever changed when Lexicon introduced the world’s first commercial digital audio processor in 1971.
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1969 TEAC 1/4-Inch Simul-Sync 4-Tracks
Go back 35 years and there was no home recording market. In 1969, the first 24-tracks were becoming available
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1966 Ray Dolby Dolby A-Type Noise Reduction
Ray Dolby has lived and breathed audio since his earliest years. While still in high school, he worked at Ampex
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1965 Shure SM57 Dynamic Microphone
How exactly does a $99 microphone become a Hall of Fame inductee? Well, if that mic is the Shure SM57, the answer comes easy....
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1965 Teletronix LA-2A Leveling Amplifier
Some 40 years after its invention, the story of the Teletronix LA-2A continues to be written, but one thing that remains constant is the...
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1957 EMT Model 140 Plate Reverb
Today, with the proliferation of low- and high-end digital reverberation, room simulators and the like
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1953 AKG C12 Multipattern Tube Microphone
Besides making history as the first true multipattern microphone with remote polar control, AKG’s C12
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1949 Neumann U47 Microphone
The U47 was not Neumann’s first microphone or even its first mass-produced condenser mic
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1948 Ampex Model 200A Tape Recorder
The story of the 200A—the first tape recorder from Ampex—is inextricably linked to the history of the German Magnetophon. After World War II
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1947 Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre Speakers
From the big cities to the farms and small towns, American life in the post-WWII era was good.