-=SHOW OFF YOUR VINTAGE STUDIO!!!!=-
Printed From: Speakerplans.com
Category: General
Forum Name: Show Off Your Sound System
Forum Description: Show of your gear. Post pictures of your Sound System here...
URL: https://forum.speakerplans.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=29781
Printed Date: 26 March 2026 at 7:09pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: -=SHOW OFF YOUR VINTAGE STUDIO!!!!=-
Posted By: Rog
Subject: -=SHOW OFF YOUR VINTAGE STUDIO!!!!=-
Date Posted: 17 August 2009 at 3:36pm
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Just found some old negs and scanned them in of studios I’ve had in the past. This first pic was taken in 1989 and the desk was a Soundtrcacs 24:8:16.
I really miss that old Soundtracs desk, it had a lovely sound which I don’t think can be bettered by even the best SSL or Neve consoles. Before the desk in the pic Soundtracs made the CM4400, which was marginally better sounding that the one in the pic. The CM440 is quite sought after these days as people are finding out just how go it was. The studio was based around an Atari ST1040 computer and the first program I used was called Super Conductor. It was the forerunner of cubase, but you could not drag and drop blocks, you had to tell it the number of copies of a block you wanted and where you wanted them to be copied. I also used the first Notator as well. The sampler was an Akai S950 and the monitors were Kef 104’s I think and Mission 770’s. I recorded and produced loads of dance tracks in that studio. A lot of the first moving shadow was done there (Rob loved that Soundtracs desk) and stuff like shades of rhythm, a home boy a hippy and a funky dread, sub division, K class and loads more stuff. In around 1992 I needed a bigger desk so had heard about the good reviews the Studio Master series 2 was getting. A panel of judges compared playing a CD though 2 channels against top SSL’s and Neve consoles. Most agreed that the series 2 sounded better so I heard or one for sale and bough OMD’s 40 input series 2. What the reviewers did not try was doing a mix. Yep it could make individual channels and instruments sound great, but couldn’t mix to save its life. Its what you find with many large budget consoles. They either make individual channels sound amazing but then can’t put many channels together to form a good mix, or them can make a good mix but sound bad. Enter the likes of top end SSL and Neve and you can get great individual channel sounds and a board that can mix great as well. I can't find the pics of the series 2 in my studio, but do have them somewhere. So after about 1 year I sole the Studio Master and got my first Neve. It was a 40 input frame but only had 32 channel strips. It was an inline console, not split and had a route and patch computer with recall. This means it could save routings and channel patching but didn’t have flying faders or any automation. Here’s a pic of my studio in about 1993. I also got a Studer 2” 24 track tape machine around that time.
This last pic is from a bit later when I got the Spendor monitors in.
The computers were two Atari ST4 Mega’s and I ran sound designer on it. Sound designer was an early form of pro tools. Even had a 20 gb HD wow. In 1995 I moved on to a Mac 7200 series. Some of the synths in that room were, Emulator 11, Sequential Prophet 5 and VS (the most amazing synth ever made), Roland Jupiter 6 and 8, Korg wave station, Oberhiem OBXa and OB8 and many more. At one time I had two Prophet VS’s as I loved them that much.
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Replies:
Posted By: Wrighty
Date Posted: 17 August 2009 at 3:57pm
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Totally unrelated to audio, but I've got one of those old Chloride UPSs (bottom of the stack of gear in the corner, last pic) sat on my desk here! It was still working up until a few weeks ago, when it started randomly switching the output off - not terribly helpful! It's now resigned to the task of being a monitor stand, alongside the Apple Mac LC which is under my second display...
------------- ALL YOUR BASS ARE BELONG TO US. |
Posted By: adambomb
Date Posted: 17 August 2009 at 4:21pm
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I never had you down as a Thomas the Tank kinda guy! ------------- http://www.freespeakerplans.com" rel="nofollow - www.freespeakerplans.com |
Posted By: Wrighty
Date Posted: 17 August 2009 at 4:25pm
 - just noticed that!------------- ALL YOUR BASS ARE BELONG TO US. |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 17 August 2009 at 6:46pm
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Along the same sort of lines of home-studio equipment,i dug this out of the garage at the weekend,just to test it,its an old Panasonic DAT recorder,i would think around the early 90's?..sounds really nice though,played some old DAT tapes Simon Harris gave me of some mixes he did with Pete Tong,and the quality is excellent,its as good as any CD i have heard.really nice peice of old kit.
Cant find much info on this online....maybe Panasonic didnt make many? dont know.
 ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: TRE4U2NV
Date Posted: 18 August 2009 at 1:11am
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still got my atari 1040s and 520 my first sampler was eidersoft mm1000 digital sampler used notation and cubase also ran amiga 1200 running bars and pipes smpte,d up to me tascam 8 track triggered by me yamaha dx7 stlll got lots of the old gear to much of a horder to sell it lol see if i can dig up some pics when i was skinny too lol ------------- IM SO SECRETIVE BUT I CANT TELL YOU WHY |
Posted By: Sheggy
Date Posted: 18 August 2009 at 1:15pm
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That's the first DAT I had, there were millions of them around in the early 90s. I love 'em. Don't have one anymore but still have my Tascam DA20 II which doesn't have balanced outs. S |
Posted By: DC
Date Posted: 21 August 2009 at 9:48am
 Here's my humble little studio... also a Sountracs desk but a Mega's Studio 36:16 and i absolutely love this console for it's sound. Also the summing is good. Before that i owned a Mackie 40:8 but the soundtracs blows the mackie away.
When i started i used a Yamaha CX5M, that was an MSX based computer on wich you only could edit in the scores. After that an Atari 1040st, running Pro24.. fore runner of Logic. Then switched to an Atari MegaST as well with a Megafile 20... wow... that was nice not booting from dodgy floppy's anymore but a large and noisy 20Mb harddrive and also running Cubase. Then switched to a PC Pentium 166Mhz with 128Mb memory when they became affordable plus an Emagic audiowerk 8 card wich featured 8 individual outputs to the desk. I still use that audiocard these days and got myself 2 extra ones for 24 outputs.
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Posted By: Saul
Date Posted: 25 March 2010 at 8:38pm
| where is the show off your current studio thread? |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 27 March 2010 at 11:11am
Simon Harris's home studio circa 1981.
 ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: Danny A
Date Posted: 27 March 2010 at 6:56pm
| @dc, how can you program your kit when its next to your shoes? |
Posted By: Sibulus
Date Posted: 28 March 2010 at 6:00pm
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well my ''vintage'' studio, circa about 2002 (haha!) was Roland TR909 Akai s3000xl behringer Eurodesk mx2004 2 x alesis 3630 a dbx compressor, i forget what yamaha rm1x novation a station novation b station Virus lexicon mpx500 and pair of NS10s not quite in the same legaue but I had fun with it ------------- http://soundcloud.com/judas-beast |
Posted By: Saul
Date Posted: 28 March 2010 at 11:11pm
| i will post a pic of my current studio soon... |
Posted By: simonharris
Date Posted: 20 June 2010 at 3:06am
| Soundtracs CM4400 Desk, very nice, a serious desk, I had one - it was huge! Easy to use and sounded fabulous, very nice EQ. My VU meter bulbs blew non stop but I had a great engineer Tim Jones who used to come out and replace them, then he would drive up the road and they would start blowing again. the patch bay was temperamental, lovely desk, I got mine from Don larking. I see you have an Emulator II as well - nice. |