With the industry shift towards digital ways of working really taking off in the 1990’s, pro studios and smaller project setups alike shared a number of familiar devices that have today all but disappeared. Here we take a look into the long lost world of beige boxes, obsolete media, cables, CRT displays and all the rest of it that were the missing link to the analogue era that more people prefer to remember…

1 - Digital Tape Multitrack Recorders

The 1980s had seen the development of very high-end open reel digital multitrack machines from the likes of Sony and Mitsubishi, but by the 1990’s, cassette-shaped solutions started to appear that were within reach of smaller facilities and even some home studios. These took advantage of consumer video transports’ rotating head technology that allowed the necessary bandwidth to bottle 44.1kHz audio and beyond.

No late-twentieth century innovation would be complete without two competing formats vying for studios’ attention, and this time we got VHS and Hi8 slugging it out in ADAT and DTRS guises respectively. Although analogue tape noise was gone, tape junkies could still bask in the inconvenience of having to rewind to overdub or go again…

Honourable mention goes to Alesis’ HD24 that used hot-swappable IDE drives for the ultimate obtainable 24 track solution.

2 - MIDI Interfaces

MIDI was already well-established in the final years of last century, however its primary way of getting around the studio was using the five pin DIN connections of dedicated MIDI interfaces. These were built into many instruments such as synths and drum machines, but as the computer slowly made its way into the control room, there needed to be a way into the virtual domain and back.

This landed in the form of rack mount or ‘floating’ MIDI interface boxes that shifted the shape from DIN to USB-type B. These often featured multiple throughputs over a single USB connection; before too long many hardware instruments were beginning to sprout USB MIDI sockets of their own to keep things neat, with these little boxes demoted to mere drawer clutter.

3 - CRT Displays

It’s easy to forget that once upon a time, the computer display used to take up a whole lot more room in the studio than it does now. Much like modern flat panels are essentially the same thing as a TV without the aerial input, studio displays from the 1990’s were often as deep as they were wide thanks to the CRT tech of the time seen in studios and living rooms alike.

These were small to look at, heavy to lift, and could easily zap any disc or tape that ventured too near. The final sting in the tail was resolution that topped out at 600 lines, in the days where Minecraft graphics were not some kind of modern meta statement but simply something we all just had to put up with…

4 - MiniDisc Machines

In the strange twilight post analogue cassette and pre MP3 appeared were a couple of consumer formats that kept the portable plastic form factor to deliver consumer-grade recordable digital formats. Philips’ long forgotten DCC format was eventually beaten by the floppy-like MiniDisc format whose lack of wind-time had consumers vote with their wallets.

The MiniDisc (MD), along with other disc-shaped contenders such as Jazz and Zip also formed the basis of a number of mixer-recorders that had taken over from cassette-based Portastudios from the previous decade. No sooner had MD gained a foothold, did the all-conquering MP3 and others take over to channel crunchy delights for The Masses.

5 - DAT Machines

The one cassette-shaped format that enjoyed both consumer and professional use was the none-too-cryptically named Digital Audio Tape (DAT). As well as arriving in a number of portable machines for consumers and journalists, audio pros could also get their hands on the dinky DAT tape’s uncompressed CD-quality renderings. With a number of rack mount machines on the market for pros, DAT became the go-to format for hardware mixdowns regardless of the multitrack format.

It’s easy to forget how revolutionary it was to finally be able to print mixes with no generational loss whatsoever, and for quite a long period in-between stereo reel-to-reel and the DAW, DAT tape was a true gift from Digital Heaven.

6 - AKG C1000s

For a long time, the dynamic/condenser mic equation was a simple one for artists and project studios. Affordable condenser mics were simply out of reach for many until some including AKG attempted to bridge the gap with their revolutionary C1000 condenser stick mic. I say stick because this thing was less pencil and more baseball bat in the size department, but it came with a number of innovations that helped studios get slightly more refined sounds than those possible with the usual dynamic suspects.

Not only did it have the faster, extended condenser sound, but it also shipped with a number of cryptic pieces of plastic that users could snap over the capsule to change its response acoustically. In there was a clip-on hypercardioid adaptor that worked by increasing the front-to-back difference, as well as the ingenious Presence Boost Adapter that bolstered the C1000’s sensitivity between 5 kHz and 9 kHz to improve speech intelligibility. It may not have been the best sounding, but AKG were understandably applauded for making smaller scale recordings just that little bit better.

7 - Hardware Samplers

The DAW revolution may have given us endless hours of pristine digital audio perfection, but its progenitor was arguably the hardware sampler. OK, so recording and playback times were limited to a few seconds, and even that was only 2 tracks for stereo, but if you’re looking for a device that spearheaded digital audio for music production, this has to be one of those at the forefront. Hooked up to a hardware sequencer or embryonic soft sequencer, hardware samplers powered the dance music revolution that really got into full swing in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990’s. Some artists stretched this tech to its absolute limit, with racks bulging with multiple units firing off any number of found sounds for the next shot of dancefloor utopia…

8 - Patchbays

With digital interfacing between devices often restricted to SPDIF or pure data formats such as SCSI, much of the business of moving audio around the studio was still done over analogue at the end of last century. Anyone wanting to patch in that gate, compressor, or reverb needed to be prepared to enter the world of patchbays in all but the simplest of point-to-point setups.

Although the patchbay delivered a convenient way to connect by duplicating every connection from ‘round the back, it also increased the opportunity for signals to somehow go amiss in some way. Whether it was intermittent scratchiness, full-on signals-gone-AWOL, or that “Oops did I just put phantom across those outputs?” moment, the patchbay offered something for anyone who didn’t mind risking the odd tangle.

9 - CD Recorders

Although cassette tapes reigned supreme as the format of choice for reference mixes, its upmarket rival was the CD. In an age where the computer was often still reserved for word processing or gaming duties, making CDs meant having a dedicated CD recorder in the rack. Along with DAT this also offered uncompressed digital precision, but the big difference was that CD was a true consumer format that artists and industry also had good access to. For semi-pro bands funding their own studio time, the only drawback with audio’s shiniest object was deciding who got to take the hallowed master disc home and who had to make do with a lowly cassette copy…

10 - Sound Cards

When is a standalone audio interface not a sound card? The answer of course is when it’s a sound card. One of the devices that helped to kickstart the DAW revolution also gave what most would call an “audio interface” its other “sound card” label. These gizmos were basically the same thing, just served naked. Once its modesty had been restored after being slotted into a computer tower, the earliest of these, such as Creative Labs’ infamous Soundblaster turned any computer into a recording and mixing powerhouse.

The early devices may have only been 2 channels of “CD quality” both ways, and they may have used everyone’s favourite worst connectors such as minijack and phono sockets, but the impact that the soundcard had on the industry is hard to overstate. Coinciding with the early years of the DAW, for many slotting one of these little cards into the tower was a true Big Bang moment.

The Good Old Days?

OK, so talking about all of recording history’s extinct gear would take quite a while. From the days of mechanical straight-to-disc contraptions, via tape, consoles, DSP, and all the rest, the annals of recording history are well-stocked. It’s true to say that many of those working now lived through a major shift (not just in our industry) from analogue and electromechanical ways of doing things to the digital age we currently enjoy.

Throughout the 1990’s there was a curious in-between period straddling the analogue and digital eras. Digital had arrived, yes, but it was often still done inside dedicated hardware gear. In this way, some things were still done in the same way they had always been done, using real boxes with real buttons for example. Other new technology of the era completely changed not only the MO, but also the music itself. Using this trailblazing gear, few understood the extent to which things would eventually end up inside the box…

These are just some of the devices that changed the way we worked while everyone was waiting for the DAW to come into fruition... What are yours? Let us know in the comments.

DAT Image courtesy of DC AudioVisuel

MIDIsport and S950 images courtesy of Audiofanzine

Soundblaster Live image courtesy of Wikipedia (image in public domain)