The Buzz: 20 Years Ago in
Sound & Video Contractor
Jun 1, 2006 12:00 PM
Images of fives, tens, and twenties adorned the cover of the June ’86 issue, commemorating the second edition of the annual Buyers’ Guide. Now a separately published piece, back then the guide was incorporated into the issue.
Tape duplication took pole position as the cover feature. An article by the Sound & Video Contractor staff about the trend toward affordable duplication systems, “Tape duplication in action,” offered a look at a cassette duplication system installed at Capital Christian Center in Sacramento, Calif. Back then the medium of choice was the audiocassette. Since then it has progressed through compact discs to DVDs; today, affordable DVD replication systems are available.
In “Low-frequency driver performance,” Cliff Henricksen explained that the importance of voice coil size in determining speaker performance varied depending on who made the speaker. Henricksen was engineering group leader, loudspeaker components, for Electro-Voice. Henricksen, currently senior engineer and staff keyboardist for Bose’s Live Music Technology Group, was most recently responsible for the development of the Bose Personalized Amplification System.
“New trends in theater sound,” contributed by Dennis Ciapura, discussed recent advances in motion picture audio. Ciapura was president at Teknimax Telecommunications, a design and consulting firm. John F. Allen followed up with an installation profile on the sound system at the Century Plaza Theater in Century City, Calif. Allen provided system design and installation services using the HPS-4000 sound system he developed.
“Digital signal processing for sound reinforcement,” by Gary Hardesty, provided a basic review of digital delay capabilities and applications of the ADX 2000 digital signal processor. Hardesty was president and director of engineering for Audio Digital, one of the pioneers of DSP at the time. Presently Hardesty is director of Sound Media Fusion, specialists in technology implementation for large-scale events. Hardesty has been involved in key areas in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, as well as previous Games.
Picking up on page 52 of the June issue was our 1986 Buyers’ Guide, which was compiled by the Sound & Video Contractor staff. The guide occupied 87 of the issue’s 154 pages.
Getting back to the issue topic, Tom Rosenberry’s “A new approach to distributed sound” provided a technology profile on the Smart electronic system, which simplified system configuration changes.
And bringing it all home, Linda Zolet, a personnel administration professional, addressed the business aspect of “Handling customer/employee relations” and suggested that it was wise for companies to establish policies and training programs to guide employees’ interactions with customers. That’s still a very good idea.
A sampling of business news items includes information on the relocation of Klark-Teknik offices in Farmingdale, N.Y. Additionally, Sound & Video Contractor magazine and other Intertec publications, including Broadcast Engineering, Recording Engineer/Producer, and Video Systems, became available in electronic form via the CompuServe information service.
David Scheirman’s monthly contribution, “Reinforced audio,” discussed processor-driven speaker systems and highlighted systems from ART, EAW, Electro-Voice, Meyer Sound, PAS, and Renkus-Heinz.
The June ’86 issue featured amplifiers, EQs, crossovers, and compressor/gates from Biamp, as well as West Penn Wire’s Rainbow of Cables — the company offered its 22 AWG twisted-pair cable with 10 different-colored jackets. Renkus-Heinz advertised its Smart Systems for When Their “Best” Isn’t Good Enough. Valcom “broke the sound barrier” with its ad featuring Chuck Yeager. And Danish Interpretation Systems had an ad on the inside back cover featuring its Summit multi-mic system, which boasted “99 Mics. No Feedback!”
In Associations news, it was reported that NSCA Expo drew a record crowd, with 3,398 badges issued.
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