John LaGrou: Behind the Gear with Millennia Media

Most Tape Op articles feature the people behind the making of a record. But what about the people who make the gear that we make records on? "Behind the Gear" is a new column featuring interviews with engineers, businesspeople and innovators who are the faces "behind" the recording products that we know and love. This issue Ian Mills Swanke interviews John LaGrou of Millennia Media, a company famous for their pristine mic pres and "twin-topology" equipment. Next issue: Walt Szalva interviews Dave Derr [ Tape Op #33 ] of Empirical Labs who makes the Distressor. -LC

John LaGrou's company, Millennia Media, manufactures some of the most highly-praised outboard gear in use today. His pres are used by NASA, the White House, and an enormous amount of classical engineers and film scoring studios. Millennia's compressors and equalizers are in constant use in mastering houses across the globe. I visited John recently at Millennia's headquarters in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California, where his was kind enough to share his knowledge, gregarious enthusiasm and insight.

So what first fostered your love of electronics and music?

My dad introduced me to electronics when I was four — that's when we built a crystal radio together — we hand wound the coils on an empty toilet paper tube. My dad bought one of the first stereo home tape recorders in the 1950s — a 1/4" half-track "Voice of Music" machine. That amazing piece of technology became my introduction to audio recording. When my parents bought my first electric guitar for me at age seven, the VM's stereo satellite speaker became a guitar amp. It was all vacuum tube and dialed up a really nasty distortion. My poor parents! Anyway, around 6th grade my dad and I built a real guitar amplifier, but it was pretty thin sounding, and I still wanted more gain, more tone. I had read about preamplifiers, so I experimented with different ways to boost signals. Sometime after, I discovered an amazing new device called the 741 IC op-amp. I hooked up a pair of batteries and configured it with a pot for around 30 dB of adjustable gain and fed that into the guitar amp's front end. It immediately gave me more presence and grunge. I was hooked! Not long after, I built a steel stomp box for the 741-based preamp.

How did you get interested in professional recording?

In my high school years, I started reading as much as I could about pro audio recording. The literature was pretty scant back then. I had been playing in rock bands since junior high and it seemed like a natural evolution to get into recording. I think it was my senior year in high school when my mentor John Wallace [today the Director of Ford Motor's Electric Vehicle Program] suggested I visit an AES Convention in Los Angeles. In those days, AES was held at the Hilton Hotel and very intimate, a very different feel compared with today's AES Conventions. It was my first AES show and it completely blew my mind. I remember Yamaha had a 2" tape machine running America's "Ventura Highway," and they were letting people mix it on their new PM-1000 board. It was my first hands-on experience mixing a two inch analog master. It sounded so awesome! That AES show really influenced the direction of a young kid's life.

So, recording and electronics were a natural fit for you?

Yeah. Later in the '70s, I worked for John Wallace at his company called PMD. While there, we developed two smaller audio mixing consoles. PMD later became Intel's Santa Cruz design center. I went on to work in R&D with a transducer company called Endevco, attended various colleges, played progressive rock, and worked as a freelance electro- mechanical and PCB designer for quite a few electronics companies around L.A. During that time, I acquired a one-inch tape machine. It was an Ampex FR-1100 data logger that a Bay Area company had modified with an 8-track audio head stack, but it didn't have audio electronics. My task was clear — I needed to develop some tape record- reproduce electronics for the old Ampex machine. I actually spent a couple years part-time on the tape electronics, and finally completed a very good performing rig that I could use in my studio, but it never made it to market as a commercial product. It was a rag tag assemblage of self-made mixers and tape electronics and it formed the heart of a modest home studio that made some really good recordings. Around that time, I developed an add-on percussion trigger for my big old Hammond C-2 organ. It mixed an adjustable envelope of selectable harmonics with the sustained tones, giving a percussive effect on the note attack. I tried briefly to market the product, but that's when I met Cynthia — a remarkably talented and insightful woman who's become my life's compass. I knew then that my poverty-level freelancing-musician-student lifestyle had to change. I took a full time job with a Silicon Valley electronics company, which evolved into a management position with a fledgling computer company. We named the company Acer. I managed a division of Acer's OEM group — which means that other companies would put their labels on our computers, like NEC, Texas Instruments, IBM, and Unisys. But, you know, you can never really leave your first love. In our house in Silicon Valley, we had this dryer-sized 3M M-56 half-inch four track machine, a little mixer, drum machine, some nice outboard gear, and a few mics including an amazing Klaus'ed 87 [Klaus Heyne, Neumann expert], which still gets used all the time. Cynthia and I were always working on some recording project.

I think a lot of Tape Op readers can appreciate that sort of dual existence.

Yeah, Acer was certainly a departure from pro audio, but I have no regrets there. I'm really proud to have played a role in the company's success, and I developed serious product quality and management skills that I probably couldn't have found in a entrepreneurial audio firm. I think Acer today has grown into a $5 billion company, and is something like the fifth largest PC company in the world. Anyway, in the late '80s, Cynthia and I decided to leave Silicon Valley and return to our roots in the arts. We bought some land in the Sierra foothill wine country and began building a dedicated studio in a large room of our home. I also started working in Northern California as an acoustic music recording engineer. It was a good move. Over the last ten-plus years, I've had the privilege of working with many of the world's greatest classical and jazz musicians. Today, Millennia's recording division produces around sixty remote sessions each year, mostly for public radio. We also do a number of acoustic CD projects each year. Barry Dixon, a fine engineer in Sacramento, now does quite a few of our remote sessions. This allows me to personally focus more time on the product side of Millennia.

Let's talk about the mic preamps — I was completely floored when I started using the HV-3 and Origin pres — they're truly amazing!

Thanks! You know, it's funny how Millennia got started in audio manufacturing. When we left Silicon Valley, I was really focused on getting back into recording my own tunes, and doing audio engineering for others. But after my first year producing Sacramento Symphony recordings, it became apparent that my off-the-shelf recording equipment wasn't capturing the essence of acoustic music. The tonality wasn't right. The dynamic performance wasn't right. Drawing from my background in preamps and mixers, I started experimenting with different mic preamp topologies. The whole history is detailed on the Millennia web site, so I won't elaborate here. Suffice it to say that I originally developed the HV-3 mic preamp for my personal use with symphony orchestra recording. After a long period of experimentation, I finally arrived at an optimal topology and built the first preamplifiers. My friend Jack Vad at the San Francisco Symphony borrowed a pair of the prototypes. He liked them and asked me to build some for him personally. Just on word of mouth, I started getting more phone calls from other engineers asking to try it, and then quite a few more orders began coming in. They had to wait months! Around that time, a pro-audio magazine got wind of my new mic amp. They asked if it could be included in a comparison test they were doing on ten different professional microphone preamplifiers. They said, "Don't worry, if it doesn't sound good, we just won't mention it." But the review panel voted my unknown HV-3 as their number one choice for acoustic music recording! After that review was printed, I was getting orders from people I didn't know, and from dealers all around the world. Sam Ash Professional in New York City became our first dealer to stock the preamp. Since then, Millennia has shipped over 10,000 channels of HV-3 microphone preamps! And HV-3s are now more popular than at any time in the company's history. I'm still blown away with the growth. And the new Origin Twin Topology recording channel is breaking all our sales records. It's been quite a ride.

I've always been a big fan of transformer balanced gear — especially after hearing from you that transformer coloration is an essential part of the Neve sound. My experience has always been increased "beef" when using transformers, until I started using your pres — I was astounded to hear deeper lows when A/B'ing with my other pres, even when using mics I normally considered a bit brittle.

Audio transformers don't do well with high levels and low frequencies. They can distort horribly. But sometimes these characteristics can be handy for adding interesting color to audio signals. TheHV-3 mic preamp avoids transformers, remains nearly flat to around two hertz, and couples microphones beautifully. After phantom power is capacitively blocked at the input, the entire circuit remains DC- coupled without servo amplifiers. That's probably why you're hearing more realistic low-end with an HV-3 compared with transformer-coupled preamps. The new Origin Recording System is a different story, and somewhat of a departure from Millennia's core philosophy. Origin employs the HV-3 preamp, but with a twist. To add color without resorting to equalization, I designed a really thick sounding mic input transformer. The MIT-01 transformer can be switched in or out of the circuit. When you want deep euphonic enhancement, switch in the MIT-01. When you want the musical purity of an HV-3, switch the transformer out of circuit. I especially like how this transformer enhances basses, kicks, toms, and male vocalists.

What are your thoughts on digital word reduction. Many current systems record at 24 bit and use some type of dither or bit conversion to burn at 16 bits for CD. How does POW-r differ from the current conversion methods available?

Well, POW-r is a unique method for achieving digital word length reduction. To my knowledge, it differs from all others in that it is dynamically decorrelated from the source. It more faithfully preserves the music's apparent 24-bit timbral and dynamic characteristics after reduction to a 16-bit word length.

What was the impetus behind the POW-r Consortium?

That's a long story! POW-r is an acronym for "psychoacoustically optimized word length reduction." There are four members of the POW-r Consortium — myself, Doctor Glenn Zelniker of Z- Systems, Daniel Weiss of Weiss Engineering, and David McGrath of Lake Technologies. Daniel actually came up with the POW-r name. Leave it to the Swiss! In essence, POW-r was birthed out of our collective need for a better sounding word length reduction method. After a long period of trial and experimentation, we selected the final three algorithms — and those algorithms became POW-r. We're all using, or planning to use, POW-r in our companies' products, and we've recently licensed the algorithms to about 15 other key audio companies, including Digidesign, E-Magic and SADiE, and many more licensing negotiations are in the works. A great many top mastering engineers are now using POW-r almost exclusively for reducing 20 and 24 bit sources to 16 bits.

Your paper on mic preamp design was extremely educational for me, and I highly recommend readers to go to your website to read it [at www. mil- media. com] . Despite all the technical specs, you advise to ultimately use your ears when auditioning mic pres. Can you offer a few quick tips on what to listen for?

Right. A good example is video-grade IC parts for audio circuits. I don't think you can find better audio specifications — blazing fast slew rates, vanishingly low distortion. Yet, every video grade device I've tested in audio circuits sounds artificial. Why? I really don't know — many of the AP tests are at the limit of the test equipment residuals. I'm convinced that there are dynamic characteristics that we simply can't yet measure. We can hear the problems, but the problems don't always correlate with static test results. Over the years, I've refined a test methodology for new circuits. It's covered in detail on the Millennia website and I encourage recording engineers to read it. I think it's a good starting point on how to listen and what to listen for. Trial and error and listening tests are as essential to audio product development as they are to fine audio recording. It's all about listening critically, and one of the key elements to listen for in mic preamps is dynamic stability. Some mic amps sound fine at nominal dynamic levels, but as you hit them very hard, or perhaps very soft, they change character. This might be good for "coloration" preamps — like old Neves and Telefunkens — but for sonic neutrality, find a preamp that maintains musical realism under wide dynamic excursions and extreme frequency extensions. Also, look for mic amps that can handle huge dynamic input without the need for input padding. Beware of so-called "accurate" preamps with unbalancing and rebalancing circuit stages. Such preamps are probably injecting one or two additional layers of sonic muck into the audio path. Those are some good starting points.

What would you say is your "mission statement"?

Well my personal mission and that of the company are probably a little different. I spend way too much time running Millennia! My personal mission is to spend more time with the family, more time in the studio producing my own compositions, and more quiet time in the Sierras, my backyard. I would like to say I've focused my life on designing audio gear, but that's not the case. My life and work have, and will continue to be, a gratifying fusion of recording engineering, design engineering, product and corporate management, musical performance, and a lot more. Compared with some of the truly gifted analog circuit designers of our time, guys like Pete Goudreau, and Barry Thornton, well I'm not in that league. But what I lack in experience I try to achieve in sheer time and critical listening tests — through experimentation and trial and error. And if that still doesn't get it, I bring in outside designers who share my passion for uncompromised sonic realism. In that sense, Millennia is no different than most healthy companies. It's the collective effort of many dedicated and talented people who share a passion for great audio. Anyway, my highest ongoing mission for Millennia is to deliver the most musically accurate professional audio gear on the planet, to build products with military grade reliability and vintage longevity, and to treat every customer with the highest respect. With thousands of very fussy customers already using our gear — like Celine Dion, Streisand, and Pavarotti — I think we're off to a good start.