History of CBS Records 30th Street Studio NYC (many pictures)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by DMortensen, Oct 21, 2014.

  1. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Hmm. Couldn’t have been August-September, as the Mitchell session was July 25th.

    The plot remains thick.
     
  2. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    If we remove all the mystery, it will lose the mystique.
     
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  3. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    :laugh:
     
  4. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Here's another Record World article from Al Q

    [​IMG]

    including one very short but significant line about 30th St.

    I figured I'd give the lathe and automated console enthusiasts an opportunity to talk in this otherwise analog and manual gear thread. Feel free to talk about what those were, because I know nothing about either.

    Edited to make the picture a little less out of scale.
     
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  5. Dan C

    Dan C Forum Fotographer

    Location:
    The West
    The "Discomputer" was CBS' proprietary digital delay unit for cutting groove spacing, IIRC. Instead of using a preview head, it converted the analog signal to digital and used that to space the grooves more efficiently than the older analog system. The drawback of course was it went through analog-to-digital-to-analog conversions. Still, there were a lot of good sounding LPs cut on the system so it was pretty well engineered, IMHO.

    dan c
     
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  6. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I don't believe that's the case. Based on a quick search, it appears that the computer utilized both the preview and playback heads to analyze the signal, which was still fully analog to the cutter head. If memory serves, the fact that it analyzed both the preview *and* playback heads meant that it could actually move the cutting position *backwards* to make most efficient use of the grooves, enabling longer playing time at higher levels.
     
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  7. Dan C

    Dan C Forum Fotographer

    Location:
    The West
    Oh cool. Interesting.

    dan c
     
  8. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    That was a short but interesting discussion....

    Here's a heartbreaker:

    [​IMG]

    This is from Al Q, but he obviously got it from the July 1979 issue of Studio Sound.

    http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Studio-Sound/70s/Studio-Sound-1979-07.pdf

    American Radio History obviously got it from someone who had torn a page from their magazine because the ad was too cool or something. Regardless, the beginning and credit for the lengthy and wonderful article about CBS NY Studios of the time are completely missing, as noted at the bottom of the pic.

    I don't doubt that someone on the Hoffman forums has that issue somewhere, and that we can find it and make complete this wonderful description of studios and people.

    Can we guess the author? From the article, he had been a recording engineer for 21 years in 1979, which meant he started in 1958, and for 10 of those years was at Abbey Road working for EMI.

    I'm not aware of a lot of EMI engineers:
    Geoff Emerick started with them in 1961 at 15, so he's too young;
    that's the only one I can name off the top of my head.

    Looking quickly through "Recording the Beatles", they don't get too much into people's service records, although they do say that Norman Smith started with EMI in 1959, so maybe that's him? Although some of his other bio info doesn't seem to quite fit.

    Any ideas who wrote it and what the rest of the article said?
     
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  9. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    My guess is the engineer was Malcolm Addey. He was at EMI from 1958 to 1968. And no need to guess, confirmed here in the year-end index:

    http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Studio-Sound/70s/Studio-Sound-1979-12.pdf

    Addey also did a piece about A&R in the 12/78 issue. A&R's 799 Seventh Ave location was of course previously owned by Columbia:

    http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Studio-Sound/70s/Studio-Sound-1978-12.pdf

    Also, note: "There are five live chambers and one EMT at this location, but just as important as the echo chambers is that famous tape delay introduced into the send circuit. Although no single person claims responsibility for this innovation of some 20-odd years ago (it having evolved through day-to-day experimentation) the system has become universally copied since."
     
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  10. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Wonderful, thanks! Now you just need to find the missing page(s) :)

    For the record, according to Frank Laico, Les Paul showed them the positive effect of the tape delay. FWIW.
     
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  11. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    He may (or...may not) have given the idea to Columbia, but I believe Addey was saying EMI came up with the idea independently.
     
  12. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Boy, I don't see that in there at all! Where? He does say that "EMI found it so hard to come close" to the natural reverb/sound of 30th St., and I think you could accurately add the words "from Columbia" to the end of that long paragraph talking about the natural and artificial reverbs and ending with praise for the tape delay technique.

    Frank talked about EMI engineers coming to 30th St to study the reverb chamber (assuming there was only one at the time) before building their second one. That statement, minus Frank, is also in the marvelous RTB book, as well as a picture of the inside of that EMI live chamber (Chamber 2, p.270-271) which is the only one of their three still in use. A quick skim of the relevant part of the book doesn't yield a discussion of the tape delay, but one would have to think it's mentioned somewhere in there.

    And certainly the EMI engineer(s) who made the trip to NY for that purpose would have studied the entire signal path while in the studio.
     
  13. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    Way before there was tape delay used, the engineers, probably Fred Plaut, even in 1949 clearly knew how to use 30th Street and its natural echo as its own instrument.
     
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  14. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    This is what I was referring to:

    "Although no single person claims responsibility for this innovation of some 20-odd years ago (it having evolved through day-to-day experimentation) the system has become universally copied since."

    That seems to imply one of two things, if not both:

    1) No single engineer at Columbia (seemingly including Les Paul) came up with the idea for pre-echo delay.

    2) Other studios came up with the idea for pre-echo delay independently, and didn't simply copy Columbia.

    Admittedly, it's hard to decipher exactly what he was referring to. And these don't help much either. First, a (supposed) quote from Addey:

    "It took EMI engineers years of studious nipping-and-tucking to finally arrive at the desired echo balance and tonality that you hear on those Beatles records. To tell you the truth, we were really after Columbia's sound - at one point we event went over to the 30th Street Studio to find out what they did to make those records sound so special. And actually, we got pretty close to it."

    On the other hand, there's this:

    "Malcolm Addey is adamant that EMI staff did NOT visit 30th Street, saying that the Interviewer garbled his story, and that they wouldn't have been let in. EMI analyzed 30th Street recordings closely, and put their own echo chambers on delay as a result. Addey says that EMI's Peter Bown was dispatched to L.A. to examine Capital Records' studios, and came back with a host of recommendations for Abbey Road."
     
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  15. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    On the jazz stuff....probably my favorite "drum set sound" ever. "Dear Old Stockholm" from Milestones, for instance.
     
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  16. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    1) I thought you said Addey wrote that article, not that there was someone interviewing him. It seemed to be written in the first person.

    2) Frank was very clear about showing someone(s) from EMI around. I don't think he would have a false memory about that, or be influenced by articles somewhere. IIRC Columbia and EMI were periodic partners on some things. Certainly 30th St had people coming through all the time.

    3) Not sure that post on Gearslutz is an authoritative source.
     
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  17. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Addey did write the article. The (supposed) quote from him I posted isn't from the article.

    As far as #2 goes, regarding Frank's memory, well, I respectfully disagree. That's not to say an EMI visit to 30th Street necessarily didn't happen, but if it didn't, it wouldn't be the first time Frank's memory was less than perfect.
     
  18. Phil Brown

    Phil Brown Forum Resident

    Interesting thread. I haven't read it all but I was a Columbia engineer in San Francisco from 1971 and I can say that we always had a 4 track running for chamber delay. and when I say always I mean always.
     
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  19. Phil Brown

    Phil Brown Forum Resident

    It was just a better variable pitch. It was really meant to eliminate the preview head because what was becoming the standard 2 track, the Ampex ATR, couldn't be fitted with a preview head and Ampex's solution, a delay line for the program, met resistance. I used one and it worked but I didn't like AtoD/DtoA conversions. The Discomputer operated on the theory that the groove you needed to worry about was the next one and if you could get a VP to respond fast enough you could do without a preview head. We never quite got rid of it, however.
     
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  20. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Yes, which is why it's questionable at best and unreliable as evidence of anything. The factual error of Interviewer vs. Addey's first-person authorship of the article throws everything else in that post into question.

    Frank's memory was definitely less than perfect, but there was always a basis for his memories IMHO. Him "remembering" a visit from EMI engineers which didn't actually happen would be inventing something out of nothing, as if he remembered the times when the building used to be across the street.

    The impression I have from him is it was frequent if not common for other engineers to visit the studio. There were tours all the time for various groups, including the school group that the PA engineer at my talk at the Convention was part of when he was a kid, and Frank talked about a time when he turned around mid session and saw Rudy Van Gelder sitting there observing and stopped working to insist he leave now. (Not the best example, but RVG got in at least that one time and maybe more.) People from all walks of life came into 30th St at one time or another, including many, many film and TV crews, writers, celebrities, and other notable people.

    EMI admired the sound of the studio and its reverb chamber(s), had one already and wanted to build one specifically to replicate the sound of the one(s) at 30th St that they thought was wonderful, and decided to come for a visit to see that one thing. Not hard for me to believe that Columbia engineering would be willing to show its chamber to someone if not multiple someones.

    My argument is undermined a little by looking up the history of EMI Records and finding that EMI's Columbia label was not related to Columbia Records USA but was in fact a competitor. (Man, the discussion of EMI's history on Wikipedia is really like trying to fix the shape of smoke. That company changed shape and components lots of times.) Still, I believe in professional courtesy and believe that CRI was loaded with it.

    Frank's simple statement that these guys came here and looked at this to help them build theirs is believable to me and I choose to believe it, especially when backed by the guys who did the exhaustive research for the Recording the Beatles book. I have no evidence that they talked with Frank.
     
  21. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    OK, we're nearing the end of the relevant clippings from Al Q.

    [​IMG]

    This one is interesting because I had thought that the earliest public notice was a New York Times article on January 15, 1981 announcing that the building was for sale, but this is from September and says it had been "for sale for some time". Huh.
     
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  22. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I'm still confused. We're talking about 3 different things:

    1) An article Addey wrote about Columbia, where he indicates tape delay into an echo chamber was not invented by any one person. Whether he meant at Columbia or around the world is unclear.

    2) A (supposed) quote from Addey in a book indicating that he visited 30th Street and got ideas from there.

    3) A post online indicating the quote from #2 was not correct.

    Who's to say the engineers who visited weren't from another company? Or that EMI engineers did visit, but not when we're assuming they did?
     
  23. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    Capitol opened their NYC studio in '53, I think. EMI entered the picture there in 1955 or so. I wonder if there is some conflation going on, i.e, local Capitol ("EMI") staff vis-a-vis EMI "proper."
    :shrug:
     
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  24. Dan C

    Dan C Forum Fotographer

    Location:
    The West
    So did the audio signal that got used to cut the record actually get a digital conversion, or was there an all-analog path? I'm still a little confused on the Discomputer process.

    (this is the last time I'll bring this up, btw. Don't want to totally derail this amazing thread...)

    dan c
     
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  25. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    March 1, 2018 will forever be known as the date of the Great Schism among believers in the 30th Street Church. Henceforth the previously unified congregation will be forever divided into those who believe in the EMI visitors and those who don't believe that visit ever occurred.

    Church officials declined to be interviewed, but were observed to be stocking up on pitchforks and torches to assist with the discussions.
     
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