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AES stalwarts gathered at Ryerson in June to consider the technologiesthat were making the project studio a professional reality. The homestudio has evolved from the dark dank hole in the basement wheremusicians worked on the germ of their ideas, but still required a full24 track recording facility to see the project's completion. Recentadvancements in digital technology and equipment provide the opportunityfor finished audio and music production in the home project studio on arelatively low budget...which spells more opportunities for the buddingfilm composer or effect editor.
Jim Burgess, president and owner of Saved By Technology (SBT), provideda historical overview of the project studio. Early analogue synthesizerswith sequencers relieved the Keith Emersons of this world from excessivemusicianship in providing their own accompaniment...much to the chagrinof the musicians' union. Self-contained digital synths andsequencers further enhanced the opportunity for improvisation for morethan two hands. The development of MIDI, however, provided theunexpected impetus for a new industry. Originally developed simply tocoordinate synths, drum machines, and limited effects in performancetogether, MIDI provided external control of proprietary boxes throughthe computer. Starting in the 1980s with Steinberg and E-Magic, bothGerman companies, and Opcode and Mark of the Unicorn in the U.S., aburgeoning industry in sequencing software and MIDI interfacesdeveloped. While other companies had proprietary hard disc recording andediting, to Jim's mind it was Digidesign's fusion of thesetechnologies with the Mac in 1987 that spawned today's MIDI recordingenvironment (now known as a digital audio workstation or DAW). Morerecently he sees the development of software based digital signalprocessing as the most interesting feature of the technology, firstemulating traditional analogue devices, but now coming to exploitspecifically digital potentials. With the development of softwareplug-ins to digital audio workstations, we have now come full circle forthe MIDI musician.
Jim also looked at the parallel development of low cost digital mixers.The breakthrough product was the Yamaha DMP-7, providing digital mixingand effects at a shockingly low price--the same price you might expectto pay for a rack mount effects unit. Yamaha recently spun out a familyof mixers with this technology ranging from a low of $2300 to a high of$10,500. Other manufacturers are finally overcoming Yamaha's early lead,with new products shipping or announced for the near future. Thisgeneration of mixers boasts such powerful features as I/O cards,recorder specific remotes, compatibility with DAWs, scene basedautomation running to SMPTE time code, and several modes of surroundsound mixing.
Andy Fong, of Tascam, followed with an overview of their line of eighttrack digital multi-track recorders, the DA-88 which came on the marketseven years ago. Today the DA-88 has become an industry standard in mostproject and post-production studios throughout North America. Andy tookus through the range of Tascam=92s digital eight tracks from the DA-38(ABS lock only) for the project studio, the DA-98 (the DA-88 evolved for1998) with sync card for post-production, and Tascam=92s newest toy,the MMR-8 providing eight track hard disc recording. Andy also took theopportunity to update us on the continuing saga of digital consoles,more specifically, Tascam's TMD-8000 digital console.
To finish the presentation, Brian Bell, who heads SBT's Digital AudioSales department, demonstrated the latest version of Digidesign'sProTools digital audio workstation. A treasure chest of tools andtechniques for hard disc multi-track recording, editing, and digitalsignal processing, the ProTools demo so impressed the audience that therequest for more arose when Brian offered to reconvene for beer andpretzels. Brian then had the chance to give us a taste of some of themany plug-ins provided by third-party software producers ranging fromthe more recognisable name-brand hardware emulations to the exotic DSPand synth software, including even a product from the French researchgroup that invented musique concrete 50 years ago.
The evening ended with our traditional wine and cheese social, with theusual stimulating conversations and a pleasant early start to the summervacation period.
Thank you to Jim Burgess and Brian Bell of Saved By Technology and Andy Fong of Tascam for making this a wonderful ending to a very successfulyear. Thank you once again to our hosts, Ryerson, for the use of their beautiful facility for the last year.
For more information on these and other products, please check out Saved By Technology's website at http://www.savedbytech.com.
by Jim Cox, Committee Member