Virtually anyone working in pro audio will have heard of McDSP, the Silicon Valley-based audio software and hardware company founded in 1998 by Colin McDowell and Diana Lee. Some products familiar to those reading this will be the E606 FilterBank, the SA-2 Dialog Processor, and more recently their bright green DAW-controlled analogue processor: APB.
In The Video
Making The Leap
Having worked for IBM in the early 1990s, Colin McDowell made the jump to work with big industry names such as Digidesign and Dolby Laboratories before founding McDSP. As well as the widespread use of their products in both post production and music, the company has since been recognised with an Emmy award for its contributions to the industry.
Grilled Cheese
The video is based around a very entertaining interview with Colin, as well as some great insight into some of the products developed by him and the team.
Colin firstly talks about one of his earliest developments, E606 FilterBank. This is notable as being one of the first audio plugins to emulate the sound of existing gear which separated it from many other DSP creations of the time that did their own take on EQ. Here Colin describes in his own style how he wanted to cater for varying tastes, this time with the aid of a grilled cheese analogy…
Sonic Assault
Colin also talks about another challenge: recreating the favourite, one-off dialogue processor of legendary re-recording mixer Mike Minkler. Named Sonic Assault, Colin set about recreating this unique silver box in DSP to do what software does best: the good stuff with multiple instances with recall added on. As well as Mike Minkler’s thoughts on the resulting SA-2 Dialog Processor (and how Colin succeeded where others failed), we also see Emmy-winning re-recording mixer Onnalee Blank talk about how her mixes benefit from using SA-2.
Green Goes Analogue
In 2019, McDSP introduced the APB boxes, the world's first programmable analogue processors. Combining up to sixteen hardware analogue processors into a 1U box, Colin explains the thinking behind DAW-controlled analogue, some of the technical challenges such as achieving control sync with audio, and dealing with components’ heat. He also tells the story of how it wasn’t always green…
Watch It Here
Other highlights include seeing Colin’s synth of choice (spoiler alert: it came from Radio Shack), and if nothing else, his speech at the Cinema Audio Society’s 53rd Annual Awards is worth its weight in gold…
For more from McDSP check out our podcast with Colin from May 2022 below.