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Author Topic: Historical audio engineers  (Read 64250 times)

Mike Butler (media)

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #50 on: June 11, 2008, 10:52:28 AM »

I see several mentions of Ampex in this thread, but none about Alexander Michael Poniatoff, who was literally the A.M.P. of Ampex, and a multi-talented engineer in his own right.
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Mike {AB} Butler

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #51 on: June 11, 2008, 11:53:59 AM »

Mike,
I worked at Ampex from 1980 to 1990. You are correct about Alexander Poniatoff being the founder, but his real expertise was in stepping back.. and letting the experts shine. The 401 Broadway works were the birthing grounds for so many technologies, ideas and companies it's really hard to pin down how huge his contributions were. Ampex, for all their expertise, though, had a hard time succeeding long term in pro audio. But prior to that, they impacted just about all early implementations of studios, Theatres, and even consumer products. The fact that I worked alongside the guy who reinvented the german Magnetophone into the father of all studio tape recorders, the guy who invented longitudinal scanning for the first viable Video recording system, and the guy who first conceptualized and proto'd the helical scan system (RCA beat them to that patent), as well as 2 of the guys who went on to do THX at Dolby labs (don't forget that Ray Dolby even started at Ampex).
Ampex started out as an electric motor manufacturer for all the radar systems, BTW.
Too many stories.. too little time.  Mad
Regards,
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Mike Butler,
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Dascott Technologies, LLC

Guy Nix

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #52 on: July 24, 2008, 12:13:05 PM »

Hey Bink, I may have missed it, but I didn't see Bob Heil mentioned here. I'm sure he has a lot more pictures than the ones he already posted here:http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/23816/0/

Sorry if I missed it, or it doesn't belong here.
Guy
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Guy Nix
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #53 on: July 28, 2008, 01:55:10 PM »

Guy Nix wrote on Thu, 24 July 2008 09:13

Hey Bink, I may have missed it, but I didn't see Bob Heil mentioned here. I'm sure he has a lot more pictures than the ones he already posted here:http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/23816/0/

Sorry if I missed it, or it doesn't belong here.
Guy


Heil most certainly deserves a page on Wikipedia.

-Bink
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
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Mike Butler (media)

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #54 on: July 28, 2008, 03:25:15 PM »

Michael 'Bink' Knowles wrote on Mon, 28 July 2008 13:55

Guy Nix wrote on Thu, 24 July 2008 09:13

Hey Bink, I may have missed it, but I didn't see Bob Heil mentioned here. I'm sure he has a lot more pictures than the ones he already posted here:http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/23816/0/

Sorry if I missed it, or it doesn't belong here.
Guy


Heil most certainly deserves a page on Wikipedia.

-Bink

Dang, yeah! You volunteerin'?
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Ed McFarland

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #55 on: August 25, 2008, 02:42:11 PM »

Article on Bill Hanley in Sept. 2006 FOH magazine.  He lives a coupla towns over from me.  Saw many a show with Hanley providing sound.

Ed
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Tom Young

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #56 on: August 25, 2008, 04:00:51 PM »

Thanks for the heads up. I will make sure to look this article over.

I just rented "Monterey Pop" on DVD and there is a brief scene where they pan across the "orchestra" seating section with the stage in the background, then they zoom in closer and go from the HR stack to the HL stack. Per side there is an Altec VOT with a multicell HF horn on top, an Altec 15" direct radiator cabinet with a 2-cell HF horn on top and (2) Altec 604 cabinets.

Shortly after that, they show John Philips listening and commenting while they test the FOH system and then they zoom in on David Crosby, who is on stage and has just spoken or hummed through the system and he turns to his muso buddies and says (soomething like): "Wow ! Incredible sound for a change !"

Unbelievable !

Now in this film (as well as in the Woodstock movie) you cannot really tell what the sound quality was like for the audience other than observing that everyone appears to be "grooving". You can certainly hear when there is feedback, which doesn't occur often at all. And the soundtrack audio was not that bad. But based on (again) crowd response, plus that of the bands, etc..... I suspect that the sound (from both the Monterey Pop and Woodstock systems) was not that bad at all and especially when you consider the low power, inefficient loudspeakers, complete lack of system alignment, lack of microphone processing, etc, etc, etc. And then also consider that there are no stage monitors.

sheesh.
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Tom Young
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Kevin Rusch

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #57 on: August 27, 2008, 02:05:46 PM »

I might have missed it but I have yet to find These names in the post on the topic.  But quite frankly the list should not even be started without the following names.

Richard H. Small
A. Neville Thiele
E. C. Wente
Harry Nyquist
Dr. Harry F. Olson
Benjamin B. Bauer
Don Keele

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Michael 'Bink' Knowles

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Re: Historical audio engineers
« Reply #58 on: August 27, 2008, 09:08:26 PM »

Kevin Rusch wrote on Wed, 27 August 2008 11:05

I might have missed it but I have yet to find These names in the post on the topic.  But quite frankly the list should not even be started without the following names.

Richard H. Small
A. Neville Thiele
E. C. Wente
Harry Nyquist
Dr. Harry F. Olson
Benjamin B. Bauer
Don Keele




Olson recently got an expanded treatment at Wikipedia. Did you know the guy worked on video recording gear, too? I think the most amazing thing he did was chart the dynamical analogies between electrical, acoustical and mechanical systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_F._Olson

A helluva dude.

Your other guys don't have a good showing: Thiele is only mentioned in relation to Thiele/Small, Small has his own mini page, Wente's got nothing, Bauer is MIA and Keele is AWOL.

Get in there and make an article. Or two or three or four.  Cool

-Bink
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
www.binkster.net

Michael 'Bink' Knowles

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More sound history at Wiki
« Reply #59 on: January 24, 2009, 11:15:56 AM »

Some new articles I placed on Wikipedia deserve further attention from LABsters who have knowledge about the companies and technologies:

Yorkville Sound - the article goes into the early founding and a few of the notable products but needs some more detail. Unfortunately, the article's saddled with a big, sloppy list of current Traynor products carried over from a poorly thought-out Traynor page written by somebody who thought there was a Traynor company as opposed to it being a Yorkville brand.

Renkus-Heinz - the article needs a whole lot more about their technologies, especially recent stuff. Also: when did Jonas A. Renkus die?

Crown International - the product timeline is incomplete--it doesn't cover their development of a digital audio network codec and doesn't have anything about their digital sound gear.

LARES - Steve Barbar actually jumped in to help with some corrections. This article totally lacks a section describing how the technology works and it stops short of full disclosure about the most recent changes related to the 2008 company reformation into E-coustic Systems.

Sweetwater Sound - Since writing this article, I've been happy to see other editors jump in to 'own' it. My personal knowledge of Sweetwater is nil.

Horn speaker - I added a history section to this article with a timeline of development encompassing cones, exponential horns, tractrix horns, CD horns including Mantaray and Bi-Radial, R-H and Danley horns that have multiple driver bandpasses entering the same horn and a paragraph about Quadratic-Throat Waveguides. Companies and inventors are listed. Any horn technologies that are under-represented should be added or expanded.

FYI -

-Bink
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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
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