As CEO of Universal Audio, Bill Putnam Jr has pioneered some of the most important innovations of the last 35 years. In conversation with Sound On Sound's Sam Inglis, he traces the Universal Audio story back to its founding by his father Bill Putnam Sr in 1958. We hear how and why Bill Jr decided to relaunch the Universal Audio brand, and how they moved from meticulously recreating Bill Sr's analogue designs to cutting-edge digital modelling, culminating in the launch of the latest generation of Apollo recording interfaces.
Show Notes
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:25 - Bill Putnam Sr.
04:24 - A Natural Entrepreneur
05:49 - From Physics To Electrical Engineering
10:44 - Early Technological Hurdles
12:46 - Digitally Emulating Analogue Equipment
14:39 - The Challenges Of Emulating Tape And Speakers
17:35 - The SHARC Processing Chip
18:18 - The Endurance Of DSP Platforms
20:44 - Developing The Apollo Audio Interface
21:47 - The Advantages Of Thunderbolt
23:16 - Adding DANTE To The x16D
25:02 - The New Generation Of Apollo Interfaces
26:09 - Multichannel Speaker Calibration With Sonarworks
28:21 - Getting Digital Corrective EQ Accepted
29:43 - Townsend Labs And Mic Modelling
30:40 - The Bock Microphone Range
32:26 - The Motivation For Creating LUNA
36:55 - Developing Products For Guitarists
38:46 - The Next Steps For Universal Audio
Universal Audio - Biog
Universal Audio was founded in 1958 by Bill Putnam Sr., a passionate innovator and favourite recording engineer of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles and more. Putnam was the inventor of the modern recording console, the multi-band audio equaliser and the vocal booth, and he was the first engineer to use artificial reverberation in commercial recording. Alongside his friend Les Paul, he was also involved in the early development of stereophonic recording. Many of his legendary studio and equipment designs are still in use today.
Universal Audio was re-founded in 1999 by Bill's sons, James Putnam, a skilled audio engineer, and Bill Putnam Jr, who earned a degree in Electrical Engineering. Their two main goals were to faithfully reproduce classic analogue recording equipment in the tradition of their father and to design new digital recording tools with the sound and spirit of vintage analogue technology. Their award-winning products include the UAD Powered Plug-Ins platform and the Apollo audio interface, first introduced in 2012. Universal Audio is headquartered near Silicon Valley in Scotts Valley, California. A few miles away in Santa Cruz is the Universal Audio Custom Shop, where their classic analogue gear is still hand-built, one unit at a time.
Interviewer: Sam Inglis - Biog
Editor In Chief Sam Inglis has been with Sound On Sound for more than 20 years. He is a recording engineer, producer, songwriter and folk musician who studies the traditional songs of England and Scotland, and is the author of two books: Neil Young's Harvest (Bloomsbury, 2003) and Teach Yourself Songwriting (Hodder, 2006).
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