Music harmony and the early RADIO days of recording...
1970
Eventide had its start in a small New York studio where there was no room for a "tape op." Co-founder Steve Katz requested co-founder Richard Factor to build a gadget that Katz could use to return the tape to a specific location. Co-founder Orville Greene, owner of the studio, financed the initial unit. The unit was an immediate success, allowing Katz to engineer records solo. In a spasm of zeal he presented the unit to the Ampex representative, who notified the factory, which said "we need some of them!" Hence we survived for a while OEMing tape search units and a handful of other low (very low) volume products such as a two-second delay line for telephone research and an electrostatic deflector for dispensing nanoliter quantities of chemical reagents. In this first year we also presented at the Audio Engineering Society meeting in NYC a fanciful aggregation of "products" . From this show, and from a fortuitous order by Maryland Public Broadcasting, came our initial product line, the Instant Phaser® and, for Maryland, a digital delay line giving two channels of independent delay from a single input. The delay went from 0 to 200 milliseconds, which required a hundred shift registers and lots of patience to get them working. This became the classic model 1745 Digital Delay Line, which rapidly transmogrified to the 1745A and finally to the 1745M, in which appeared, for the first time (we believe) Random Access Memory in an audio product. This modular product also sported an optional pitch change module, another novelty in that it was the first such product available with a frequency response suitable for music.
RADIO
Many public and private radio stations "log" their broadcast day on tape, for archival, legal, and commercial reasons. Previously these tapes, recorded typically one per day, had abysmal quality, ameliorated only by the fact you rarely bothered to listen to them since material was so hard to find. (At least they took up lots of space, so you could always find them, although not necessarily the one you wanted.) Enter computer technology: capacious digital storage, and Eventide innovation allowing it to be used for radio station logging! In the early '90s, days of programming on a single DAT. Now? About a month! Not to mention instantly-searchable and inexpensive DVD-RAM storage media. While this product was conceived for use in broadcast, we quickly adopted it to use in public safety, brokerage, utility, and other applications requiring long or even indefinite storage of conversations and other audio material. Remember that idiotic customer service representative with whom you spoke last week? That conversation may well have been preserved on an Eventide logging recorder!
And the Present...
The above paragraphs summarize over thirty years of our history of innovation. Eventide equipment is pervasive in recording and broadcast facilities, police stations across the nation, and aircraft around the world. Our industry-leading special effects equipment is audible on almost all popular recordings. Our digital voice logging recorders capture the history of civilization, frequently in minute detail. Our goal is to continue making neat, innovative stuff, and perhaps a few of the bucks, too. Wish us luck! Maybe a more assiduous Webmaster will add annual entries henceforth.
