George Massenburg

From the time he invented the parametric EQ in the 1960s, to the founding and operation of his company, GML (George Massenburg Labs), and his current projects in electronic design, George Massenburg has had a long and distinguished relationship with the development of professional audio equipment. He's also widely known for his outstanding work as a recording engineer, mix engineer, producer and most recently as a champion of surround sound mixing (see issue #54). He's recorded over eight hundred albums, created the highly respected GML computer- assisted moving fader automation system that helped to revolutionize mixing as well as coveted compressors, limiters and equalizers. He edited and co- authored the "Delivery Recommendations for Master Recordings" for the AES, is a consultant to The Grand Ole Opry, a member of the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library Of Congress and an Adjunct Professor at McGill University and The Berklee School of Music.

One of the things that sets you apart from most successful engineer/ producers is that you're well known for groundbreaking accomplishments in audio design. What is it that motivates you to work in audio technology?

When I feel I lack a piece of gear, or if some box or process or technology is blocking me from doing something that I really want to do, then nothing stops me from designing, building, or re-engineering it. When you look deeply into something you notice a range of things about it, from, "Wow. The designer must not have been feeling too good on the day when he put this knob there, because it doesn't make any sense," or, "This guy is clearly incompetent." Starting there, it goes all the way to, "Wow this is brilliant. I wish I had thought of that." Bill Putnam Sr.'s designs are in this second category. When stuff doesn't work right I go crazy if I can't fix it. If I can't fix it, I have to redesign it. If I can't redesign it, then I'm going to look around for somebody who can. Nothing stops me!

What are the influential changes happening on the technological side of the industry at this time?

Well that's tough. Several groups of us at the AES have organized technical committees and we investigate and report regularly on the state of various technologies in different areas like automotive sound, coating technologies or digital libraries and archives. I find that a lot of those technologies have something to report. I don't feel like professional audio exists anymore, so there's nothing to report there. I think that what's left of the professional community is either designing things themselves, hybridizing new pieces with old pieces or borrowing from the pro-sumer — the vast midrange whose pipeline has been so overloaded with new products that it's really hard to tell what's good or bad, because it takes so long to get through them all. I don't think there's anything much new. I think what is new is people making stuff cheaper, manufacturing in China, trying to make a lot of money, marketing with the usual lies or misrepresentations — whatever you want to call them — people not building products to a need so much as to a market, or more often towards making marketing easy. You know the single bit recorder [DSD] fits very nicely into a marketing channel. It has some claims, and I think that Ayataka Nishio's work on single bit extended to the Korg products. . . that's pretty cool, but man, that's one little whimper in a hurricane of mediocre technology. I think what you meant to say is, "Is there anything really advanced?" And I don't think we've advanced anything. What we've advanced is productization.

I know that you're working on a new compressor now. Can you talk about it?

We've been looking to update our 8900 Dynamic Range Controller [compressor/limiter]. It's very expensive to build and it's very hard to build and, not incidentally, hard to learn. It's not consumer demand that raises the price on it, it's the incredible intricacy of these little analog computer boards that date back to designs in the early '70s. On one hand it's amazing that it has lasted this long, on the other hand, it's time for us to get off our asses and do it better and make the way it does it better.

Would you describe what you mean by an "analog computer"? That's probably unfamiliar terminology to a lot of people.

When you hear the word "computer" you probably think of anything from the TRS-80 to the latest Dell, Gateway or Mac. But when I hear the word "computer" it dates back to the '50s and to a lot of different technologies. The computer I started out with was analog. It was a Heathkit box that had a whole lot of operational amplifiers [op amps] in it, and you could characterize signal processing using operational amplifiers. We simulated these blocks and put analog components around them and they would be an analog (in the small "a" sense of the word) to a real physical process. We made a block that was a very accurate log converter, we made a block that was a very accurate RMS converter and detector, a block that was a peak detector and a couple blocks for processing the curves — these were mathematically well-defined blocks. They weren't accidental in any way. They were accurate analogs to real world components. That's what I mean by "analog computers."

I know that you've got some ideas for the new compressor that you think are going to work very musically. Can you talk about that?

We've come up with a compressor that hits all of the marks. I'm not going to say it "sounds the same," because that's up to the users to decide, but it hits all of my marks for providing the processing blocks that we need — blocks that we used to do with analog componentry that now we're now doing with DSP, and we're making a big effort to run this digitally controlled analog compressor — that is, analog in the sense that it's an analog signal path — the balanced, low-noise, low-distortion VCA, with a DSP side chain. We're running the side chain at 192 ksps in order to more quickly and accurately characterize the loudness profile of the incoming signal. More importantly, this gives us greater accuracy on highly chaotic transients.

So, is you new compressor likely to go beyond what you currently have available?

That's a complicated question. Current customers who understand the analog box use all of its features, and that's great. With our new product we wouldn't want to abandon any of the controls that have been so broadly criticized by a group of people who don't understand what they do. But key people know what they do, they listen to compressors when they turn the knobs and they are able to get the most out of them. Most people don't listen critically or otherwise, and they certainly don't know how to listen to compressors.

As an equipment manufacturer do you learn from the industry? That is, does the industry guide you, or do you lead the industry?

In the past I built things for myself. I don't know whether I lead the industry or not. There are certainly products that we built that weren't successful, and there are products that we built that were successful. I can say that where we lead the industry and build a super-reliable product, it looks good for a long time. Its resale value is high. The ones that were built 24 years ago are pretty much either the same as the ones we build today or they're updatable. As far as following the industry, I'll follow what the industry is doing and use it and work with it, but as far as a product, I'm not going to copy somebody else. I'm not a Behringer — I'm the opposite of a Behringer. I will always do something original, and up to now they seem to prefer to copy designs. That's tough, but I think that it's fair to say. I like coming up with new stuff that's inspired by what other people do. I love other designers. I talk to other designers. I'll use little pieces of what they do, but as far as a building block like a compressor or a dynamic range controller, that's going to be our concept. We're not into following what other people say: "You know, what you ought to do is build a something-something." We're going to come up with that on our own.

What's your vision of audio hardware ten years in the future and beyond? Is "hardware" still the right word to use, even at this point?

We now see that software is being accepted. They said that people would always want to hold a CD in their hands and read a hard copy of the liner notes. We still held to the fantasy that it was important, even as we shrunk it to the point of unreadability, and it's not! People are buying downloads and they're downloading artwork where and when they want to see it. I think there's a good possibility that more music creation tools will come in software. Music performance tools will be physical. I think that there will always be a physical interface and companies will be better at it or worse at it, as they adapt to feedback from musicians, players and performers. The best interpretive instruments will be simple and elegant, like guitars. The 1000-year future, when we no longer have our legs because we drive everywhere and we don't run anymore, and our arms shrivel up and all we have is fingers, maybe we'll evolve another finger for an input device, or in 10,000 years when we'll wrap our physical self around a commonly understood physical input device — that's a little harder to see. I think that as far as enjoyment, we're getting close to direct excitation of the brain and somewhere in the next 100 years we'll be able to play music right into the brain and play movies right into the brain, and then sometime after that we'll be able to create scenes or trigger the brain to recall scenes, or to have scenes play out of the brain directly into a shareable context. There's your 10,000- year future. One technology that's been living in my hip pocket is the idea of synthesizing highly detailed early reflections to create ambience for a dry source. Given a room that one can "design" using CAD — design its footprint, walls, textures, filter factors, angles, etc. — the system would enable a user to establish a source position and a listener position and maybe even designate an instrument and the spherical, timbral variation of a sound emanating from that instrument. Then, it would "put" the source material in this theoretical room and characterize it to feed five or seven speakers with the kind of localization that we experience in real life. Is that confusing enough? I've been trying to interest one of my advanced-degree candidates in this project for years. None have taken the bait yet, but I'll be patient. Meanwhile, don't tell me you've got a new reverberator until you have something really new.

What's been the most rewarding aspect of being involved with equipment design?

People thinking I'm good when I'm not! It gives me something to live up to, and I have to live up to it. That's been rewarding because it's a big lesson. Also, other good people in the industry — there are tremendous people that I get to collaborate with at shows. I'm thinking of people like Dave Hill, [ Tape Op #39 ], EveAnna Manley [ #101 ] or Rupert [Neve] [ #26 ]. I got to do a panel with Saul Walker, who's been around since the earliest days that I've been in the business — some forty-odd years. And, being able to share stories and have a great club and camaraderie — that's been pretty cool.

If I were to ask you what kind of technological "magic bullet" you'd want, would it be preservation technology?

Not really a "magic bullet." It would more likely be something like asking Digidesign to do more to identify tracks and pack BWAV headers [Broadcast Wave format/.BWF] with metadata or information about file content, and to implement methods which we have already established to help organize data better — once it gets out of the DAW and has to move into the realm of posterity.

Once data does get out of the DAW what's the best way to keep it intact and to preserve it?

In a word, "redundancy" — have it in as many different formats and in as many different places as possible. Pretty simple.

Do you have any final comments for the readers?

Several. First, I want to rage just a little bit about the guys foisting off convolution processors as emulators of every known technology since the beginning of time. They simply don't sound the same. Also, those plug-ins with graphics that resemble vintage recording gear — it seems too good to be true, right? That's because it's not true. Now that having been said, I think that we've got lots of really good technology and it's time to couple it to something useful, something that applies to the human condition, something that serves to improve the human condition. Technology in and of itself doesn't do that. Technology should be used with great care because all too often it only makes things worse.