END OF THE ROAD?
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In 1960 I had just got married and lived in a small semi-detached house in Camberley (Surrey, UK). I was working as a very junior civil engineer designing the least exciting parts of drainage systems for housing developments in the Camberley area. But my burning hobbies were playing music and learning how to record music.
There was little available in the way of equipment so I had to start from scratch with parts rescued from old radios and from government surplus stores.
A few years later I had left civil engineering; it was not exciting enough for me! I was in the music business and running a small demo studio in London’s Tin Pan Alley (Denmark Street). Again, there was not a lot of equipment around so I built the mixer and achieved a wonderful collection of microphones by repairing ‘irreparable’ Neumanns and AKGs thrown out from other studios.
My association with Joe Meek in 1963 to 1965 gave me a lifelong interest in what makes a recording ‘sound’ good…. Combinations of compression and EQ.
I founded Alice mixers in 1969 and the company that specialised in compressors in 1993, so I have been designing and building electronic equipment since the early 1960s…. that’s 50 years!!
Ten years ago I stumbled onto the idea of producing spatial sound from a single loudspeaker enclosure. That idea took root and blossomed into a company that is now international, selling tens of thousands of loudspeaker systems to households who are re-discovering decent quality sound.
At 74 years old I don’t have quite the stamina to run several businesses at once; the professional equipment business is reduced to just a few die-hards who still value the special qualities of good analogue gear.
Orbitsound is dynamic, growing fast and occupies all my time in my basement laboratory, developing, measuring, improving and dreaming spatial sounding loudspeakers.
So that’s it, there will be no more new TFPRO equipment from me.
I shall continue to honour and service guarantees of course…. As I have done for so many years, but unless there is an enthusiastic manufacturer wanting to carry on building P38 series compressors, then there are just a few left.
Analogue gear will still be used for many years to come….. but the digits will get it right in the end.
And now, at 77,I’m spending lots of time on Skype with Daniel (my son who runs Orbitsound) talking about what comes next….. and I’m wondering if it’s not a variation on the soundbar; probably a way of hearing decent sound in small houses and flats; good low frequency performance but without annoying the neighbours! And there’s always the new mic amp…….
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