http://chambinator.free.fr/pics/opus.jpg
Lexicon Opus

So I recently attempted to boot up this fine vintage G4 legacy system to no avail.

I think after 16 years the power supply has gone kaput!

But rather than trash it, I'll be taking it to my local vintage Mac repairman.

We've 2 other G3 vintage Macs to restore legacy projects (it does happen) but they're also getting a bit old in the Tooth!

Best, JT

No pics, but ones I used:

Atari ST running Digidesign Sound Tools
Cool Edit Pro
Turtle Beach 56K digital audio system

But prior to that I was writing and running MIDI software on Commodore 64

Hi Jerry

Mine looks like that except maybe the plastic has a slightly bluer hue, or perhaps not. Need to go look at it.

Maybe mine won't boot anymore either. Ran fine last time it was booted, many moons ago.

I have one "almost finished" jazz funk song in digital performer format on the thang I ought to finish if it can be revived long enough to dub off the data. Also a small number of songs I recorded and "mastered" using DP and homemade plugins, that I could probably "master" a little better if I can make un-compressed mixes from the source tracks. So far as I recall, at that time I was doing the mixing in DP and then doing the "mastering" with master bus plugins, so it is possible I don't have any "un-mastered" copies of the mixes.

That data is probably somewhere on backup cd's, if the cd's can be read. But the raw tracks might be hard to deal with without having a running copy of that era of DP. Can't recall. I think back then DP would still save its tracks in sound designer SD2 format, but maybe remembering wrong. SD2 format isn't too hard to import to modern formats. The biggest issue is that it saved the uncompressed audio into the mac file data fork, and the samplerate and bit depth and other formatting info was on the mac file resource fork. Nowadays even apple has deprecated those old two-fork files, so importing into a PC might require importing as "raw data" and typing in the proper samplerate and such.

That last non-intel mac, its hard to recall. It may have had a third-party CPU upgrade or maybe not. I added third-party CPU upgrades to speed up elderly Macs more than once, but can't recall if it was done to that last one.

I bought a lot of stuff like that from macsales.com, OWC. Looks like they don't currently sell any CPU upgrades. Well actually I was buying RAM and such from OWC up til I gave up on Macs a couple years ago. It was lots cheaper to buy a Mac Pro or Powerbook with the smallest possible hard drive and RAM, then max it out with memory and storage with drives and chips that didn't have Apple's 1000 percent over-pricing. :)

Believe it or not, I have a few clients that still use DP on ancient G4s and bring me SD2 files to work with!

Actually the last non-Intel Mac was the G5 iiirc. I've still got a couple of those around too!

Much love for the OWC folks, a great resource for all things vintage Mac.

Best JT

As requested by the threadmeister:

The first upload is a young Ted Jensen standing in front of Sterling Sound's newly purchased Gotham CDR-90 burning system. Note the Weiss DSP rack down in the bottom of one of the racks to the left. Somebody obviously had a bw102 system at play.

Second upload is Ted's Neve analog mastering console. He still has the 32078 EQs that were in that board. In the background are his KEF 105 monitor speakers. They were powered by a couple of big Krell Class-A power amplifiers that you can't see (they were about the size of a couple of small arc welders). Notice the tube trap underneath the board. I think the spiders were complaining about lower-mid buildup, so he threw that down there to keep them happy :-)

Both pics are from the old Broadway facility. Pretty sure Lee Hulko was head honcho back in those days. Hope everyone enjoys looking at yet another another blast-from-the-past!

Here are some pics of Rocket Lab (San Francisco) that came onto the mastering scene back around 1990. Mastering engineers were Paul Stubblebine and Fred Baysinger. Fred is at the console in the third pic.

The console is one of eight custom designed and built for JVC back in the CD-4 days. I was always intrigued with it, but could never find any good detail pics or design info on it, so if anyone has anything, by all means upload it.

Notice the Meyer HD-1 monitor speakers with the green silk-dome tweeters. I remember listening to them quite a few times (almost bought a pair), and they really did have a nice silky sounding top-end to them.

ps - forgot the most important thing. The workstation is Studer Dyaxis. Think that is showing in the monitor in front of Fred. Bernie G. used them for the longest time too, until he discovered a better mousetrap and switched to CubeTec.

Here's a picture of Steve Hall's old FutureDisc setup in Hollywood. Another Sonic user as well. Nice hardware there too: Weiss bw102, Pacific Microsonic converters, etc.

Madonna was probably his most noteworthy client. As I recall, she didn't like the sound she was getting on her disco/dance 12-inch singles, so she moved her business over to FutureDisc. Steve cut quite a few of those dance singles back in the day. Pretty sure that I've still got a few of them in my collection of 12-inchers.

His facility was located next to the 101 in a building that he owned. Some developer type was eyeballing the property, and when Steve discovered what it was worth, sold out for some pretty big bucks. Moved up to Oregon, bought a 40 acre farm, and setup shop there. Still has those Pacific Microsonic converters.

I had a real nice (big) picture of the facility that showed the big RCA theater speakers that he was using, but can't locate the pic. Will upload it if I ever find it.

That's where the digital loudness war began, as the BW-102 allowed you to pull the output fader down -0.1dB and get rid of the "over" light. It's all we had back in the 1880's.

DC

I saw one at JVC in Hollywood in the old RCA building. The only thing I remember is it ran at -10 or some unusually low operating level. Lots of good records cut there by Joe Gastwirt and Larry Boden.

Thanks Dave. I'm sure that someone out there (somewhere over the rainbow) has a good photo of it.

The beginning of the loudness craze from my perspective was when Sterling got a hold of one of those Sony Digital Limiters (DAL1000 ?). I always though it was nothing more than a glorified clipper. I used to know a guy that was a member of the Boston Record Pool, so we were able to compare promo releases (known to use the Sony limiter) with the regular commercial releases that didn't, and the limited versions were dreadful sounding.

I've got a pic of your old A&M setup with the Martin Logans in the background (on cinder blocks no less) but didn't upload it 'cause the image quality isn't so good.

Did JVC use the JVC/Ortofon cutting system for stereo records or just CD4?

Good question. Joe Gastwirt and Larry Boden are still around. I'm sure they would know. Larry I believe is cutting at Acoustic Sounds on the inherited Doug Sax system.

Speaking of Ortofon. I recently stumbled across the following, which shows "calibrated" frequency response of an Ortofon cutting head. Boy! Those suckers are really flat, aren't they. Just don't burn it out!

Salinas KS is on my long term travel plans.

I've never used one. Andrew Hamilton is the only one I know running an Ortofon system. On the Scully LS76. I'd like to check that out too.

one of my old bosses designed that enclosure.

I went to Lexicon one time to drop off a 480l for repair and I parked on the side of the building where the loading dock was. There were 2 crates on the dock that had "lexicon opus" stenciled. Me and one of my cronies were tempted... The thing is we knew it wouldn't fit in the car.

More like an upwards compressor (linear gain to -6 or -3dBFS depending on A or B type), certainly not brickwall, so yes they'd clip if you didn't reduce the output (while truncating back to 16 bit without dither of course). They might've even been 16bit DSP.

Interesting. They must have been driving them into clipping, because that's what I remember hearing. The guy in the record pool is the one who called my attention to the whole matter in the first place. They were sending promo CDs out (forget the artists) that had been processed with this equipment, and they were clipped in a not-so-nice way. The trade rags were describing it as "brighter" sounding, if I remember correctly. Heavily clipped would be more accurate. Of course that was 20+ years ago, and I don't remember every little detail.

Thanks tpad, certainly upgraded the thread a notch or two!
JT

Here's another one for the historical dept. Gabe Wiener of QSI (Quintessential Sound) down in NYC. Another big Sonic user as well, and frequent contributor to the various online Sonic discussions. I used to read everything that he published, because I thought I might learn something (did too!). I used to have a better pic of his console arrangement, but can't find that one either.

In addition to traditional mastering activities, he was big into archival-restoration (my area of interest) and forensic audio. The second pic shows some of his disc transfer equipment, including the Cedar noise reduction units that he was really big on.

And yet another one. This is Tape One over in England circa 1989. Notice how they got that Neve DTC built right into the console! I remember them doing lots of tape transfers to CD back in the day.

My submission is the 1987-era Boulder Colorado-based WaveFrame AudioFrame.

I received maintenance training on the AudioFrame 1000 sometime around 1990. I had several clients in Dallas using them including Charlie Pride's studio and Real to Reel which did a lot of radio production on them. Many of the Motel 6 "We'll leave the light on for you" spots with Tom Bodett were done on the WaveFrame.

http://www.proaudiodesignforum.com/i...AudioFrame.JPG

http://www.proaudiodesignforum.com/i...e_Brochure.pdf

The LAN adapter used a black box interface to an IBM Token Ring network. Drive interfaces were SCSI and the original ones if I remember correctly ran the user interface on Windows 2. The DSP was Motorola 56K.

I remember many of these pics, tpads as well from the trade magazines back in the day!

A real gear drool fest!

Now it's a bunch of silly (albeit powerful) plugins and DIY apps <roll>

Best, JT

JT

The costs would probably be formidable these days if you were to try and produce some of those golden oldies, like the Neve DTC. Something can be said for the hardware though. I still like using my Z-Sys hardware EQ, even though it can't do everything that the Sonic Mastering EQ can. Glenn Z got it right back when he designed those boxes.

I had more info stuffed into a big accordion folder, but chucked most of it out years ago. Probably should have scanned more of it -- you how they always say that we're all expert in hindsight! Remember names like Randy Kling and Denny Purcell? No one mentions them anymore. I remember having a very interesting (and amusing) conversation with Denny at one of the AES conventions regarding his Neumann cutting setup, but I can't repeat any of it here. I'm positive I would get knocked offline if I did!

Z-sys EQ (96k) is still in my arsenal, always like the "sound" of it better than any of the plug-ins, but the ergonomics are more difficult.

I do use the Sonic Mastering EQ often, especially for last minute touch ups as needed in soundBlade HD.

Yes Glenn, Denny (RIP), Randy, & Hank... all great Nashville MEs and nice guys.

I learned lots from those guys!

Best, JT

I do! At least Denny Purcell and in conversation rather than on forums. I am fond of repeating a quote attributed to him along the lines of "you only get to hear something for the first time once".

Love that quote as well!

I often use it with attending clients.

Remember hearing stories about Denny and the whole Bell ringing scenario, with attending clients.

I had an early Sontec EQ (230?) for a few years that reportedly came from his studio.

He was well loved, and greatly missed by many.

Ah, a different era, all about relationships, rather than quickie online cheap (quote) "mastering".

Best, JT

Don't forget his definition of "octanoid". He claimed that some of his clients were so completely obsessed about the most minute details that they were 8 times the intensity of what most people would refer to as being paranoid. Hence the term octanoid. I also remember him describing his ding bell as being a simple solution to a difficult problem. Must have been a lot bell dinging going on at GeorgeTown Masters. Denny was an amusing guy!

Oh yeah! I think my old pal Ron Franklin was working for Akai when that system was developed!

JT

Yes we acttract them as well, some of our best clients historically!

I generally just give my attending client my Grado headphones to listen thru once after I've landed on the EQ, then I'll walkabout for a few minutes so they can listen deeply without me in the room, and it gives me an ear break!

JT