Michael Costa’s Fantasy Christmas present is as much about context of the time the product was released as it is about the product. When they are launched a few products make things which were perviously difficult, easy. This is one such product.
I'm flying back to 1990. A simpler time when I was much younger and better looking. The innovation of DAT (digital audio tape) and the decks to record and play them on just a few years earlier, gave semi pros as well as 'real' pros a mastering format to lay down their mixes in perfect quality.
Yes, I said 'perfect quality'. It was at a bit depth of 16 bit and at a sample rate of either 44.1k or 48k. That's perfect! 48k was even better than CD and THAT was already perfect! No, I'm not being facetious - it's 1990, remember, and I've got no ubiquitous internet to disprove anything, but I do have mainstream audio magazines and product manuals as my main source of information. The concept of 24 bit audio or greater processing bit depths was still a few years away. Higher sample rates, even further away. So like I said, perfect!
As great as DATs were, the problem was once the audio was on them, that was pretty much that. There was no 'affordable' way to edit or alter that audio. Enter Digidesign (which was later acquired by Avid) and their 'Sound Tools' system. This would very soon evolve to become the Pro Tools that we're all familiar with to this day. (Pro Tools version 1 is a much more scary story for another day, with a trauma support dog on stand by!)
But I'm reminiscing about my time with the wonderful Sound Tools system and all the professional work I was able do with it. This was largely due to me being an early adopter of the system and one of the only freelancers in town with it. As such, the lovely Digidesign importer/retailer of the time would recommend me to my first few prospective customers, and as word of mouth spread, the laws of supply and demand took over. It was classic first-mover advantage, and I doubt today's over-saturated audio market could ever produce something like this again. This is borne out every time I witness the virtual feeding frenzy when anyone mentions a potential audio job on social media, and the inevitable race to the bottom to do the work for little to no money.
But not in 1990! Just for giggles, here is a few of the professional level jobs I got employed to perform because I had this system - along with a good set of musical ears and a real youthful hunger to learn everything that this system could do. Bear in mind, this work is almost laughably simplistic by today's standards. I can virtually do all this on my phone now! But you still need good ears and that same hunger!
A well known jazz band, the leader of which was the MD on a national tonight show, was recording an album at a major studio. They had recorded two long separate sections to a complicated piece. From memory, they were to become the two sides of the vinyl release. But for the CD release, they wanted them to run into each other, with a very audible cross fade. Today, it's 5 minute's work, maybe.
Back then - I remember this coming live off the 2 inch multitrack, so we had to play the whole album in real-time onto the DAT. Then all in real-time again, transfer the DAT digitally onto the hard disk of my Sound Tools system. You might ask why we didn't just transfer the analog multitrack straight to the hard drive? I don't know - possibly I didn't have the A/D box yet and could only do digital transfers.
Anyway, then came the actual job, which wasn't as simple as just picking up the waveforms as we do today. I had to define the entire first section as a 'region', then define section two as a 'region' and then create a playlist where section one plays, followed by section two. And the magic was to shorten the end of section one and possibly the start of section two and cross fade them to the appropriate time to create the overlapping effect.
I can't remember the absolute specifics, but I do remember the, "Wow" when the band heard it play back and the relieving thought that this was money well spent. I was very conscious of this because I was sitting around this studio for hours and wanted to feel like my small contribution was valuable. That validation made it worth the real-time transfer to then put this tiny edit back onto another DAT for their CD master. The days of everything getting a proper mastering pass as we know it today, were not ubiquitous yet. So this DAT would become the actual master that the CD was struck from.
Here's a more simple example. A well known Australian singer was putting out a duet with a well known international singer, but they had never sung together. The Australian singer came to my studio with a DAT of himself singing the song and second DAT of the international singer singing the same song with the exact same backing track. Remember - there's no mixing here. I'm just editing stereo audio.
My job was to cut in the female vocalist for some sections, so they could trade lines in certain parts. Again, it sounds simple today. Back then it was a big deal and not the easiest workflow.
One final example is a major Australian soundtrack album that spent many weeks on the top of the charts after this process. A cast of top performers and an album's worth of complex arrangements were being impeccably mixed in a major SSL based studio. And I'm in the adjoining room with my little Sound Tools system receiving the mixes as they arrived every 3 or 4 hours on DAT. My job was to sequence the CD to the producer's specification. This included several tracks which segued into one another with very audible crossfades. Again, laughably trivial today, but in 1992 producing satisfied gasps from all involved. I still remember fondly the exaggerated 10 second etherial reverb of one track fading into the distance as the incoming solo vocal and piano of the next track begins.
I still smile at the irony of this wonderful studio with swathes of high quality vintage and modern gear, and then there's me and my little 16 bit editing system being the last thing this wonderful audio sees before it goes off to the CD transfer. At the time I felt like I was the hi-tech guy forging new audio ground. Maybe I was. But at this point I knew nothing of audio degradation than can happen through processing. Waves L1 was still a few months away from being released, and giving me my first look at this thing called 'dither'. I was living in this bubble believing that I was wrangling perfect audio.
Of course today I'm not really hoping Santa delivers me this technology throwback, but I wouldn't complain if he brought back some of the notoriety and gigs that came with it!