In 1997, I sat in the Effanel remote truck outside New York’s Madison Square Garden and watched Randy Ezratty and his team handle the audio for the live broadcast of that year’s Grammy Awards. It was a big deal — the organisers had taken a gamble on moving the event from LA and it had cost New York a not-so-small fortune, with no guarantee of success. ‘It’s either the smartest or the dumbest thing I've done in my life,’ said recording academy president Michael Greene at the time.If the same thought was passing through Randy’s head, it didn’t show. But he was about to mix the whole show live-to-air on an early digital console that was intended for recording, not broadcast, use. It was a massively unknown quantity but he was confident that, between his expertise and experience, and the advantages of a digital platform, he could pull it off.
It was an AMS Neve Capricorn console, one of the first production desks, and comfortably pre-dated the slew of low-budget digital desks that were later ushered in by Yamaha’s 01R Promix. It was certain to crash — and it did, but it continued to carry audio until it could be reset in the brief changeovers between the live acts. That the broadcast went without a hitch was a consummate demonstration of live audio engineers’ calm professionalism and technical agility. I sweated more than they did…
Digital consoles have taken a while to find their feet, but they’ve come a very long way since 1997 and are gaining wider acceptance at an advancing pace. There are still purists and dissenters that prefer analogue, but it is clear that digital consoles are gaining converts every day. The recent launch of the Cadac S-Digital and Lawo mc2 56 also underline something that could not have been properly appreciated in 1997 — that digital desks were going to evolve in very different ways to suit differing needs. Even more than with analogue consoles, there’s a world of diversity and opportunity out there. The stories in this magazine are my proof.
