Mention the name Solid State Logic and images of huge, high-end, high-ticket mixers immediately come to mind. Yet in 2004, this supplier of world-class consoles unveiled a product that broke new ground in terms of performance and price. The AWS 900 takes the high-performance, 200k Hz analog electronics of SSL's XL 9000 console.

The board, which can operate as a straightforward 24×8 analog desk, features switchable SSL E or G Series EQ, assignable SSL dynamics, G Series stereo main bus compressor and 100mm moving fader automation.

Throughout his career, Line 6 founder Marcus Ryle has rocked the industry, although he’s not exactly a household name. Prior to founding Line 6, Ryle ran Fast Forward Designs, a company whose name stayed in the background while it consulted on and designed some of the most influential products in the business, such as the Alesis ADAT (as well as accessories for the line including the BRC and numerous interfaces), various Alesis drum machines and more.

It wasn’t until 1992 when French company L-Acoustics introduced the V-DOSC, the first line array sound reinforcement loudspeakers, and changed the industry forever. Designed by company founder Dr. Christian Heil and his team, the system was based on the company’s Wavefront Sculpture Technology (WST) theory, which offered the first high-frequency device capable of creating a constant-phase planar output.

Known since the 1940’s in vacuum tube form (based on two 12AX7 dual triode tubes), op-amps are differential amplifiers with a wide range of applications in analog circuit design. By packaging the op-amp in a socketed design with discrete components, op-amps provided a convenient means of accomplishing amplification tasks from a single component package.  In 1968, the (now-almost universal) 741 op-amp came out, which put the equivalent of a 20-transistor circuit into a tiny 8-pin monolithic integrated circuit chip.

Founded in 1970 by inventor Richard Factor, studio owner Steve Katz and businessman/patent attorney Orville Greene, Eventide has since become a world leader in audio processing gear as well as its top-flight NexLog communications recorders for public safety, utilities, P25 and air traffic control operations. On the music/broadcast production side, the company is probably best known for its enormously successful Harmonizer® effects processor, with its first H910 model inducted into the TECnology Hall of Fame and the H3000 UltraHarmonizer getting the honor in 2016.

Once upon a time, the idea of a simple to use/hook up, fairly loud and relatively compact sound system was just a dream of many musicians and touring ensembles. Not that one could not be assembled — for example, a rig with an Altec 1567A tube mixer separate power amp and a couple speakers could be created, but it would be heavy and relatively expensive.  

These days, creating new sounds in the studio often comes from simply grabbing the latest DSP plug-in or synth patch. But it wasn’t always so easy, and in the early days of studio production, producers and engineers were left to their own resources to make original sounds. One of the best examples of this came from the legendary Sam Phillips, one of the most influential producers in rock history. As owner of Memphis-based Sun Records, Phillips helped launch the careers of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and B.B. King, among others.

Imagine that some two decades before Thomas Edison (widely regarded as the “inventor of recorded sound”) you had created a system for recording sounds, music and the human voice. Well, this is exactly what happened to Parisian printer and experimenter Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, who devised such a system in 1857.