. Late last fall I was down for two and a half bytes, going on three, with a
most unpleasant disease called digitalis. Really stopped me cold. It is an
infection of the bronchi, formerly known as bronchitis, but that was long ago.
I knew I had it because it came over me within minutes of the close of Session
E of the New York AES Convention, the one entitled Microprocessor Applications
in Audio. My head at that point was al ready swimming and my tubes a'grumble,
but I stopped out side to talk to Edgar Villchur (he de signed the original
line of AR speakers), who was comfortably ensconced on a couch. He opined that
computers didn't much like him. And I could definitely sympathize.
Does anybody under 25 realize what it is like to be an important, even a distinguished senior audio engineer, trained in the old or pre-computer age and faced with this incredible new world--not merely the new physical technology of audio but, far more important, the new ways of thinking? Here is one of the biggest, fastest, most total revolutions in science since the beginning, as startling as the electrical revolution itself in its early phases-a "fluid" that defied all known physical laws--or even the flat earth grown round as a ball, an in conceivable idea, an unbelievable thought a few centuries further back.
It's not "space age technology" that matters now. It is space age thinking, a wholly new language and never newer than in audio. If you are not easily fluent in these modes, your space age equipment might as well not exist, chips, bytes and all.
Compared to it, the changeover a generation back from vacuum tubes to transistors was a mere nothing, though plenty of enthusiasts for build-it-your self tube equipment gave up on the spot, as I well know. My neighbor can make any old tube radio or amp work in minutes, but he will not even look at a transistor. Nevertheless, the important engineers of the vacuum tube era, though they may have had to do a bit of heavy homework, mostly found the basic thinking of the transistor circuit and the circuit board not enormously different from the old. The transistor was a sensation but it still did more or less the same things, including its basic role as a controllable electrical valve, as per the standard British term. The technology was radically new but not really the basic thinking. The engineer could pick up a lot of new terms, PNP, NPN and the like (and recognize relationships to the old), then relatively soon acquire the practical know-how to design and build important audio equipment, in spite of the startling disappearance of the entire body of vacuum tube technology that had been exclusive in all forms of audio for some half century.
Now, one must learn to think anew, and to speak and to write. There is a new logic. AND/OR. NAND/NOR.
There are dozens of new terms which represent new concepts, totally new to audio. Especially, there are the new miracles of "feedback" control (quotes are mine--the term is old-fashioned) and the incredibly ingenious redundancies of that increasingly major procedure, digital error correcting. It seems to be basic to practically every thing in audio that records (stores), plays back (reads) or transmits, whether by electrons--and holes--laser pits, magnetic domains or maybe plain old fashioned incoherent light.
It is characteristic of such revolutions in thinking that youth instantly springs up and is fluent, whereas middle age struggles manfully and the elderly flounder. Or simply ignore. This last is a well-earned privilege for those who have spent life times of work in our field.
But what of those who are in the midst, who have reached high places and were never more active? A brand new language of engineering at age 40 or 50? One in a hundred takes to it like the proverbial fish--it can happen.
The oldest full-time computer man I know, in charge of all operations for a major soap company, is, I figure, 54.
He used to formulate soap. A chemist.
The rest of us must struggle. It's like the immigrant older generation, which always speaks a new language with an accent.
There is one way to cope, of course, and that is to surround oneself with young assistants who are naturally fluent in the new language, complementing virtues of long-time practical ity found in the senior engineer. The older man himself is unlikely to think as fast and as easily as his juniors, but if he is good, he can kibitz with them and get from them what is needed:
Splendid things are coming out of this kind of teamwork right now, from those older engineers who are able to take advantage of opportunity in corporate and in human terms. A very workable "field" in the middle of the generation gap.
Anyhow ... I was drawn to AES Session E by the very first item on the agenda, which struck me as astonishing. It was an account of a "recorder" or, rather, a simulation of a recorder, which was no recorder at all but simply a computer. "A microprocessor-based formatter and controller has been used to make this computer peripheral look like an audio tape recorder." Now we all remember the Link Trainer for aircraft, around WW II, one of the first complete simulations of a plane in actual flight, and we have perhaps had painful experiences, as kids, with driver education simulators, a later refinement. There are now vast quantities of "models" set up for products that do not yet exist. In our own field, simulation is one of the more prominent techniques taken over by the computer and its methodology. It has enormous importance in loudspeaker design, again before the fact, before there is a speaker in hand, mainly because loudspeaker motion is so incredibly complex as to be unpredictable except by the hunch of genius. Elsewhere the same--everything gets simulated before it is built. That's what we mean now by engineering design.
But here we had something more.
First, just a matter of detail. This simulating computer didn't actually look like any tape recorder. But it did what tape recorders do these days. Digital ones, of course. "The microprocessor effectively serves as a special-purpose [computer] operating system to inter face user functions." Does it! The thing will go fast forward and rewind, it has play and record, just like the real recorders, though nothing of the sort actually occurs. Just a "model" simulation. Moreover, it accomplishes one of the toughest things in digital recording-- it has built-in error correction. But the most unexpected feature, for me, was that this exalted simulation also has built-in digital editing.
Well, natch, if it's that kind of a computer it can insert and retrieve and open up spaces between, and so on.
Routine. But if you have been following the progress of "real" digital editing on actual digital audio tapes, to the tune of many thousands of extra-bucks (some small record companies just don't edit their digital), then you might have been unprepared, as I was, for this casual parameter. Built-in editing! Amazing, really.
But there was another shock and a titillation in store for me that really did it. Suddenly, halfway through the presentation, it dawned on me that this "simulation" was no mere model--it was an actual RECORDER. It flies, just like the real ones.
I got so involved at that point, I now can't read my own notes, but as I re member, the thing is a disc-type machine--NOT our audio discs but those utterly different ones with con centric circles of information and no spirals at all, magnetic heads to match, and "cylinders"--another new use of an old word--which, I gather, are the vertically stacked arrays of these circles, one above the other and coordinated. Beyond this, I dare not go but anyone can see that this is no audio disc recording system, digital or other.
Not only does the machine simulate all the required functions of a tape recorder but it can "store" two LP sides' worth and more of super-high quality audio signal, correctible, editable, at any time, and playbackable--retrievable or readable, as you wish. So the thing IS a recorder. Ampex, are you listening? Then there was another one, E-7 (after which I left), a recording system called Alpha Syntauri: Keyboard-based digital Playing and Recording with a Microcomputer Interface. It works with Apple II (but, alas, not with the new Apple Ill). This was not exactly a recorder in the normal audio sense; it was much nearer to what we used to call a synthesizer. It produced a lot of computer-like noises as the operator played on the little keyboard, and when she stopped, which was often--did IT stop? Not a bit. It just went right on producing its little music.
This really had me confused; this wasn't record and playback, it was both at once and sort of indistinguishable. Definitely a new experience, though I did not think that Beethoven would roll over in his grave very soon.
Tinkle, tinkle. But the extremely youthful audience was fascinated, even so.
I would guess that the average age of that audience was around 24, and that includes my own age, which tipped the scales noticeably upward, but let that pass. The lecturers were, by and large, maybe five years older, if that. I did detect a few senior and middle aged citizens, two of whom were sound asleep, also exactly two important audio faces of the older generation whose names I knew. I do not really believe that the rest of the hundreds of AES engineers from age 40 up know all this stuff by heart. I was surprised that more weren't on hand.
As they say, this is where the action is.
I skipped some of the other lectures--absolutely beyond my capabilities.
But it was all of a sort. Microcomputer control of a wide array of audio functions, in the same style of approach.
A Microcomputer Program for Transfer-Function Analysis: Magnitude, Phase, Angle and Group Delay. Simple: this BASIC program models audio filters or system functions--designs them, as I would put it. It also uses Apple II.
Then there was Computer Remote Control of Audio-Processing Equipment. This uses the IEEE-488 Standard Interface, so we can make any old thing run remotely. Really basic, all right. There was another computer interface, EUBUS, for a cassette system--will they leave nothing alone? I have to conclude with a side excursion on a favorite topic, showmanship.
As an old-time show person myself, thousands of broadcasts, edited tapes, hundreds of live choral concerts (with spoken comment by ETC) and a few multimedia orgies, I always note the presentation technique--for every lecture is a show, if you mean maxi mum communication at the moment.
Richard Factor, the young fellow who chaired Session E, was excellent, easygoing, informal and informative, and his mike technique was impeccable--how I wish all audio people knew that little skill! They walk away and they mumble. Or they drop their lavaliers on the table, as one did this time. WHAM! Ouch! That remarkable Alpha-S mock-recorder that really re cords was presented by a very serious German (a substitute?) who proceeded to block his projected data for the entire time, so we had a splendid view of the left half of dozens of graphs and pictures. (When he turned to the screen, the shadow went away.) Silly mistake. There was a ten-minute break before the Alpha-Syntauri team went into action (see above) and emcee Factor explained that there was a li'l trouble with the machinery. After that, we reassembled to find the jolliest total chaos you've ever seen and heard.
TV monitors all over the room, showing fancy colored bars--but no sound. Then a variety of squawks and grunts and blasts, and the TV suddenly went dead as the sound came on. TV back again but instead of bars it began to grow monstrous mushrooms, bushels of them. More mushrooms--then suddenly, bars again but with ghosts to the right. Much banter back and forth among the operators, front and rear--the action seemed to be at both ends of the room. TV off, sound on. TV on, sound out. Suddenly, CLEAR TV and the audience almost shouted. It was fun! After 25 minutes we got underway, and nobody minded a bit.
You lecturers, (a) get things RIGHT beforehand and (b) when the gremlins strike, don't panic! Just be affable. It's not easy, but it helps. I tip my ancient hat to Richard Factor and his team.
Main lecturer for this Alpha Syntauri was Ellen V.B. Lapham, age not stated.
Ellen was excellent. She got over a maximum of info in spite of all the electronic casualties en route and I felt rewarded. But when she brought on her friend Laurie Spiegel to help with some of the musico-computer aspects, I groaned. Laurie is a respected figure in this new music and she was to be the final lecturer. She was nice, friendly, but all buts, ifs, ers, and no mike technique. I couldn't get a word she said or make any sense, as I had with Ellen. So, regretfully, I skipped Laurie's lecture on Macro Music from Micros, which looked to be quite important, and went home to nurse my blossoming digitalis.
by Edward Tatnall Canby (adapted from Audio magazine, Feb. 1981)
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