GEne Lennon Productions

Digital audio barely existed in 1978. The CD was not introduced in the U.S. until 1983. Even the 44.1 and 48 KHz sampling rate standards were not yet officially established, and no commercial tape recorders were available.* Digital was being worked on and talked about, however. Sony, Philips, Soundstream and a handful of other companies were experimenting with early digital, and many people in the industry were buzzing about its potential.

In 1978, I was working as head engineer at a studio in New Jersey a few miles west of Manhattan. The term head engineer seems funny to me now, since most months the staff was comprised of the owner, Frank Dickenson, myself and sometimes a freelance engineer or two. Not that it was a bad studio, far from it. 9-West had a souped-up MM1000/24/16 two-inch, a very nice Quad-8 console and a large selection of classic and unique microphones. Frank didn’t believe in advertising, however, so when I came on-board, the studio was still taking its first baby steps.

The New York pro-audio community always had its share of eccentric characters, and Frank Dickenson was no exception. I first met Frank while I was installing a new studio for Warner Brothers. WB had just purchased 75 Rockefeller Plaza, and was refitting the grand old building to become its new world headquarters...Warner Communications. I designed the 14 floor studios and was overseeing the installation. Frank was the only N.Y. area service tech specializing in Ampex servo motors, and I was looking into having one of Warner Brothers 440Bs upgraded to servo driven.

When I hooked up with Frank a few years later, he had acquired sufficient gear to put a small commercial room together. I was just returning from the West Coast, and thought I had a sweetheart deal in the works to be a partner in a soon-to-be-built, world-class, residential studio in the mountains outside Salt Lake City. I was always a little leery of Frank, but when he offered me the head engineer job, I took it thinking it would just be temporary. The multi-million dollar Utah studio was never built.

One day during one of our many un-booked afternoons, we were sitting around talking. The subject…digital audio. In reality, we were both trying to convince the other that we knew something about it. Typical of Frank, he was going on about some revolutionary new kind of converter he had dreamed up, but had not yet put together. Conversations with Frank sometimes went to strange places that ended with someone rolling their eyes. Just the same, I always thought he was quite likable. As a mater of fact, he knew just about everyone in the N.Y. audio business, and most people seemed genuinely fond of him. That day, we knew that we should be trying to brainstorm ideas to bring in more business, and we went on for hours.

One of my passing comments was that we should get our hands on one of the experimental digital recorders we were reading about, and do some A/B comparisons between the digital machine and our brand new Ampex ATR-102. I knew Frank was friends with Bert White, who was senior editor for Audio Magazine, so I suggested that Bert might get involved and cover the results for an article in Audio. This idea struck a bell with Frank, who immediately saw it on a much grander scale than I had ever imagined. Within a few days, the wheels were in motion.

In 1978, Audio Magazine was one of the major trade magazines catering to the worldwide audiophile community. In his role as editor, Bert had regular contacts with all the gear manufactures and he was one of the earliest journalists to write about the potential of digital audio. Even so, I was surprised by how enthusiastic he was about the idea. Bert quickly found that Technics was experimenting with a prototype recorder, which they claimed would make the best sounding digital recordings done to date. He convinced them to help sponsor the sessions, and send a couple of technicians from Japan to N.Y. with the digital boxes to do the sessions. **

We settled on a pair of Schoeps figure-8’s for the recording, so the only issue left was the choice of mic preamps. In those days, the idea of “boutique outboard preamps” was not yet in fashion. If you had a decent console, that’s what you used. The Quad-8 was not just an OK board. The pres were great and we didn’t have any good options that were portable, so Frank decided that I should build a couple of preamps for the session. The final choice was to put together a pair of Valley People Trans Amps. I went with Valley’s recommended design, although I added a few additional 5532s so each recorder would have its own line driver. The final arrangements were all very last minute, so I wound up finishing the preamps and burning them in, the night before the session.

Earlier digital recordings did receive some press, particularly those of Dr. Thomas Stockham of Soundstream who was one of the true pioneers and whose recordings were generally very well received. But, as far as I know, the Audio Magazine sessions were the first ones covered by any Mainstream Media that did any direct comparisons, let alone double-blind listening tests. Bert’s articles gave the digital recordings very high marks and basically proclaimed digital to be the future. We all know now that he was right.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the CD, and it’s getting close to 30 years since the sessions I wrote about here. Still, the discussions and arguments about analog vs. digital go on today in countless magazine articles and endless forum discussions. Sitting in our listening sessions in 1978, we would have never imagined that this would still be such a contentious issue. I think we assumed that digital was so good by 1978 that it would vastly surpass analog within 10 years. In my view this has not happened. Converters have improved, and higher sample rates offer more detail, but analog has yet to be eclipsed.

The sessions described here were my first experiences with digital audio, but certainly not my last. In 1980, 9-West became the first studio in the N.Y. area with a digital multitrack (3M), I also worked with early Sony DASH and Mitsubishi recorders. I did beta testing for Digidesign prior to SDII and Pro Tools, and I hand-carried a Sony DAT machine on a flight from Tokyo when they were not yet available (or legal) in the U.S. I also purchased one of the worlds first AKAI DR-1200 systems for my own studio, which was configured for digital mixing through an experimental Yamaha setup, and I jumped into early DAWs, so I feel qualified to talk about digital audio.

I think digital recordings and mixes sound great and have for years, I use DAWs every day in my work, but that is not the same as saying digital recordings sound as good as the best analog recordings. Commercial music producers and engineers (myself included) have embraced digital for its low cost of ownership, its power to manipulate sound and its speed of production. But we should try to keep in mind that many recordings don’t require that level of manipulation, and that most recording decisions should not be based strictly on efficiency and cost. So, it is my hope that the analog experience continues to exist side-by-side with digital. I also hope that 1-bit and other technologies that promise to improve the sound of digital are supported by record labels along, with the professional recording community. There is virtually no outcry for this from the record buying public, so any pressure to improve the current standards will need to come from us.