Genius!Brought to you by the makers of 2

Another celebration of the innovators and inventions that fashioned the pro-audio world

01 PSNE genius2 front cover_FIN2.indd 1 15/09/2016 23:17 Genius!2 David Gunness and Gunness Focusing Lightbulb moments aren’t always immediate. Sometimes the lightbulb goes of and it takes years for the idea to be realised. That’s the way it was with Gunness Focusing and Temporal Equalization, which are suites of tools and techniques for using FIR filters to improve the performance of loudspeakers.

Dave, though it took a while, what circuits (plus delay). The ability to led up to your ‘breakthrough’? create specialised non-minimum DG: In 1985, I was working on the HP phase filters allowed us to eliminate family of horns at Electro-Voice, and the effect of non-minimum phase I started to notice a pattern among physical artifacts. As it turns out, the various HP prototypes and the those artifacts are quite audible. HR family they were replacing. Some horns sounded more musical than What was the consequence? others, and I was able to isolate It radically changed the art of the particular details that made loudspeaker design for me, because the difference. Once I understood it increased the range of designs the causes of these “non-musical” that could be made to sound good. artifacts, I hypothesised that those I’ve been experimenting ever since, Dave Gunness artifacts might be mitigated by using designing using approaches that have practical signal processing to cancel the advantages but would once have associated reflections and resonances. DSP platform available to me to “Eureka!” moment. been classified as “bad ideas”. So, I suppose that was the “A-ha!” implement them. Of course, I also gained some moment. Unfortunately, the tools to Even then, while I knew I could What was so ‘disruptive’ about this? notoriety as a result of the “Gunness test my theory didn’t exist at the time, improve the impulse response in Prior to that, DSP for loudspeakers Focusing” branding EAW chose to and it would take nearly 20 years and technical terms, I really didn’t know had primarily been a convenient use. That came in very handy when a move to EAW before I had both how audible the effect would be. That and precise way to implement we launched Fulcrum Acoustic! developed the software to create the first time we listened to a “focused” minimum-phase filters that could settings, and had a powerful enough prototype was definitely the have been created with analogue www.fulcrum-acoustic.com

HISTORICAL Bill Putnam Sr. and the studio GENIUS he achievements of audio emerging from his busy lab was the The classic photo: engineer, studio designer, first US multi-band audio equaliser Putnam recording Tproducer and Universal and iconic recording equipment Sinatra Audio founder Bill Putnam Sr such as the UREI 1176LN Classic would be difficult to summarise in Limiting Amplifier and UREI Time 3,000 words, let alone a mere 300. Align Monitor. His credentials as a studio pioneer He was the first engineer to began to be cemented as early as use artificial reverberation in the late 1940s when he founded commercial recording and, one of the first independent along with his friend , studios in the US, ’s played an important role in Universal Recording, and United the early development of Recording and Western Recorders stereophonic recording. in Hollywood. United Recording Equally at home in the studio in was sold to business partner Allen artistic ‘mode’, Putnam was involved Sides in 1983 and was renamed with landmark sessions by Duke Ocean Way. Ellington, , , On the R&D side, the initial tube Little Walter and , console that Putnam designed for among other pivotal artists. Jr. They had two main goals: vintage analogue technology. The Western Recorders is often cited as Putnam passed away in to faithfully reproduce classic company remains a vital force the first modern recording console. California in 1989, at the age of analogue recording equipment in in the development of studio In 1958 he founded , 69, but 10 years later Universal the tradition of their father; and equipment. later renaming it United Recording Audio was refounded by his sons, to design new digital recording Electronics Industries, or UREI. Also James Putnam and Bill Putnam tools with the sound and spirit of www.uaudio.com

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