News

Silver Anniversaries Mark Visionary Status

New York City (October 14, 2003)--As several of the industry's household names ring in their 25th anniversaries this year, they undoubtedly aim to keep, as always, ahead of the game. Genelec, EAW, SPARS and Pro Sound News all celebrate their silver anniversaries in 2003, having successfully read an ever-changing marketplace, and continually adapted to various market trends. These companies got their start at a time of much change, as the digital transition was already underway in 1978, and quickly grew accustomed to thinking ahead.

"There was certainly a murmuring of digital in the late 1970s, Tom Stockham had developed the SoundStream in '75 and had done the first digital recording (of the Santa Fe Opera) in 1976," recalls Daniel Gaydos, principal of the Richmond Hill, NY-based Museum of Sound Recording (MOSR), which in addition to preserving and exhibiting historial audio equipment, will be sound and recording educators through the public school system and cultural organizations. "Sony created its PCM-1600 digital mastering recorder, which used U-MADIC cassettes, in 1978, which was the predecessor of the main digital mastering recorder all studios would get to be in the digital game."

By the year Genelec, EAW, PSN and SPARS were founded, the industry was certainly in transition, adds MOSR co-principal Bernard Fox. "People had moved away from tube recording and from discrete electronics, into chip electronics. And, then the chips improved really quickly, and the business was there to support it. Companies like Genelec and EAW and PSN were making really great products from the beginning--these people are visionaries. Anyone who does audio is a visionary, and especially people who are able to stick around, because in our business, by the time you've heard it, it's over."

In 1978, Fox was a leading audio engineer in the salsa market, which was exploding at the time, as were many "ethnic" forms of music, due to the proliferation of recording equipment throughout the world. Gaydos adds of the "typical" recording session, "We were cutting mostly on 2-inch by 1978, either 16- or 24-track for large-format recording, and mixing down still largely to 1/4-inch reel-to-reel. This was the mainstay, though others would have 1/2-inch reel-to-reel on hand."

--Janice Brown