EXPLORING THE HISTORY OF BROADCAST AND RECORDED SOUND
Examining the techniques from the ’50s to the ’90s in sound broadcasting and recording.
The aim of this blog is to hopefully show some of the changes in professional sound that took place during the years that I worked in the industry. I joined the Anglia Television Sound Department in the summer of 1966 and I closed my ‘Postfade Sound’ television post-production suite in 2012.
In 1966 my colleagues were still mixing on valve mixing desks, with the first germanium transistor consoles having just appeared. There was no sound dubbing of videotaped programmes in television and all TV sound was mono, mixed live or ‘as live’ and radio mics were not yet in use.
As I said, I began at Anglia TV and then moved to Thames for a very short spell before London Weekend Television, first at Wembley Studios, diverting via a period at LWT’s ‘spin off’ Intersound Recording Studio and then joining Capital Radio before hopping back to LWT; but now at the new South Bank studios.
The LWT times were wonderful years in which ‘sound’ developed in leaps and bounds, and in which also I got to be a TV Sound Supervisor.
The demands of my private life made me leave London for a quick stint at a Welsh facility Barcud, before joining another ITV company, TVS at Maidstone and then on to the beautiful newly converted Limehouse TV Studios at Canary Wharf, making shows for the new Channel 4. The TV facilities business was an unreliable employer and the first time Limehouse ‘crashed’, I had an ‘enforced’ spell freelancing and then a return to Limehouse; this time it was my job to help with the move into the same Wembley Studios I had left 15 years earlier.
Despite the enormous payout to the new Limehouse owners from ‘Canary Wharf’, the money-men eat it up and Limehouse ‘crashed’ again so finally, I had an even longer return back into the freelance world … just as many of the staff at the BBC and ITV also ‘went freelance’… and then I needed another change, so started my own sound post-production suite within a video editing facility; firstly in North London at Ace Editing and finally at Pinewood at OutPost Facilities. I enjoyed post-production mixing enormously but I was no businessman and Pinewood was an expensive place to be, so wrapped it up in 2012.
Wow…didn’t I move around! Some of it ‘itchy feet’ I guess, but also because TV did become such an ‘unstable’ business through the years, with certainly no jobs ‘for life’ anymore.
Coming from a TV background, with some recording studio and even radio time as well, and ending up in sound post-production has helped inform and broaden my interests, so I think I can write about a very wide range of professional sound areas with a good level of understanding.
I will be going back through my years in sound and point out those changes and the transformations in technology that have occurred so that new practitioners can understand more easily ‘where we’ve come from’, and even help those who had lived through it, remember what it actually was like!
I believe that using examples from actual programmes and recordings is the best way to illustrate these changes, so there will be lots of video and sound clips ’embedded’ in the posts.
I’m really also hoping I can get contributions from other ‘sound people’ to help me, as there were some really great mixers I met, and so many others that I wish I’d met, on the way.
So please if you have something to recall about any aspect of broadcast or recording studio sound … perhaps from your own past or experiences …. do send them to me to include, as it would make this a much better ‘document’ of the changes in sound through the years to hear from others in these pages.
(And photographs are so important too…they really do help bring back the memories.)
I love undertaking the amount of research that the Pye and Neve articles have required but I’d love you to get in touch when you think you can help me, via the comments or an email. The ‘comments’ form at the bottom is harmless, I think it just asks for your email address, so that I can start a ‘direct conversation’ that way.
TO E-MAIL ME: david@postfade co.uk.
Dave Taylor
Dorset UK 2020
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6 Comments
What a great resource David
Thank you so much , I have had a lot of neve consoles in my time making records from 1985 to today from the “first ” ( or 2nd or 3rd ) live tube recording neve tube console that you go through in great detail here ( it came to australia with its original owner in the 70s)to Rupert Murdoch’s ( festival records 8038 ) that I have now and use daily and a whole lot of other consoles and modules in between.
I learnt so much this afternoon from your site I simply must tell you that situation just NEVER occurs .. it’s a total credit to you.
Thank you so much .-Rick O’Neil Turtlerock sydney australia
Rick,
Thankyou for your encouraging words, and fantastic to hear from someone still using the Festival Records 8038, and who knows of a tube Rupert Neve desk going to Oz! I’ll reply directly to you right away.
David
Steve Jones says:
Great site.
I have vague memories of working on CMCR13 in the early 80s as an Audio Assistant based Cardiff doing rugby at the old Arms Park/National Stadium, multi-camera location drama, ‘Dechrau Canu, Decrai Canmol’ and Songs of Praise in various churches. The best remembered stint was a two week park-up at St Cadoc’s in Llancarfan. The Fox and Hounds pub next door supplied the catering at a discount – but even so, some members of the crew still brought their own sandwiches as it was cheaper! At the time decent beer was quite rare in South Wales and they stocked Theakston’s Old Perculier on hand pull… how times have changed.I’m reasonably sure that when the Pye desk reached EOL the Pye limiters were retained in a rack, but I could be wrong there, I was only on CMCR13 for about 6 months and jumping between the radio and tv OB trucks at the time rather than dedicated to one vehicle. I do know that some racked Pye stuff liberated from TV scanners finished up as demo equipment at BBC Wood Norton though.
As you had a stint at Barcud you probably know of Geoff Atkins who could have more memories of CMCR13. Incidentally, I also shared a house with John/Steve Markham of Barcud for a while (we had a common interest in kit cars).
Thanks and best wishes
Steve,
Good to hear from you and of the memories of working with CMCR13 in Cardiff. Doesn’t it all seem a long time ago now and many OB’s were probably best remembered by the pubs frequented! I guess that swopping between radio and TV could have got a bit confusing sometimes and I suppose all the ‘regions’ did that, except London.
Barcud is bit of a blurred memory, but I have some photos and will write about it in the future.
Thanks again,
David
John Brady says:
Stumbled across David’s website by chance and used to love working with him on “The Word” at Limehouse in 1992-3. His music mix was always superb. Oasis, L7, EMF, Nirvana, Sugarcubes, Belly, Supergrass and Oliver Reed were just some of the iconic moments on that show and David’s ability to make the live sound closely resemble the recorded single, that would invariably be in the top 10 the following week, was unsurpassed. David , I salute you!
John,
How really great to hear from you.
Thanks for the kind words…but I always suffered from ‘imposter syndrome’, as I never understood why I got to mix so many of those ‘TV Entertainment shows with Rock Bands’ shows through those years!
You were one of the group of fantastic sound freelance sound guys who made a complicated and under rehearsed show like ‘The Word’ really come together week after week….so I ‘salute you’ in return for your TV sound skills.
The difficulty with ‘The Word’ was it was necessary to reflect the loud ‘audience excitement’ throughout, whilst still making sure the presenters could be heard, even though they were spread around the studio, and intermingling often with the ‘roaming’ audience.
The sound of the Bands was very important but as they were ‘very live’, you couldn’t ever really imitate the studio sound of their records and just tried to make them ‘exciting’ also. Those Bands PA levels obviously were high….and the sound equipment for the ‘speech PA’ was just not capable for competing with the Bands levels, like it can nowadays. Great fun though to do a show like that weekly and know it was appreciated by the specific audience that C4 produced it for.
After Limehouse’s days at Wembley were curtailed, we moved with the show to Teddington, and I do remember those years in the ’90’s with great affection.
Best wishes David
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