George Massenburg

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George Y. Massenburg (b. Baltimore, Maryland, United States) is an award-winning recording engineer and inventor. Working principally in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Macon, Georgia, Massenburg is widely known for his 1972 paper on the parametric equalizer.

[edit] Background

At 15, Massenburg worked part-time both in the recording studio and in an electronics laboratory. He attended John Hopkins University, majoring in electrical engineering. As a sophomore, he left the University and never returned.

He designed and authored the 1972 Audio Engineering Society paper on the parametric equalizer. He is regularly published in professional journals and trade magazines worldwide. In 1973 and 1974, he was chief engineer of Europa Sonar Studios in Paris, France. During those years, Massenburg also did freelance engineering and equipment design in Europe.

Massenburg participated (individually and collaboratively) in over two hundred record albums over the past thirty years. His work includes recordings of James Taylor, Billy Joel, Dixie Chicks, Journey, Madeleine Peyroux, Little Feat, Randy Newman, Lyle Lovett, Aaron Neville, Kenny Loggins, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Linda Ronstadt, and many more. He has designed, built and managed several recording studios, notably ITI Studios in Hunt Valley, Maryland and The Complex in Los Angeles. In addition, he has contributed to the acoustical and architechtural design of many other studios, including Skywalker Sound and The Site in Marin County, California.

Massenburg aims to make extended resolution and bandwidth an achievable goal of professional digital recordings, and has worked to improve analog-digital-analog analysis and conversion methods. Along with GML, Inc., Massenburg is currently researching extended automated work-surfaces, high resolution graphical interfaces, automation data interchange standards and extensible network automation for audio production environments.

Massenburg is currently an Adjunct Professor of Recording Arts and Sciences at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, the Berklee College Of Music in Boston, and MTSU in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

He won the Academy of Country Music award for record of the year in 1988, the Mix Magazine TEC Award for Producer and Engineer of the year in 1989, and the Engineer of the year award in '91 and '92. He won a Grammy in 1996, and one for Technical Achievement in 1998.

[edit] GML

In 1982, Massenburg founded GML, Inc., which produces equipment for specific recording applications. They have recently introduced the GML 2032 Mic Pre and Parametric EQ, which have been in development for twenty years, along with the GML Automation System, the High Resolution Topology Line-Level Mixing Console and the GML Microphone Pre-Amplifier. GML also consults and does independent design for several major audio electronics manufacturers.