George Massenburg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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[edit] Background
At 15, Massenburg worked part-time both in the recording studio and in an electronics laboratory. He attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Johns Hopkins University, majoring in electrical engineering. As a sophomore, he left the University and never returned.
He authored a preprint entitled "parametric equalization" which was presented at the 42nd convention of the Audio Engineering Society in 1972 (this preprint is not available from the AES and may only be found at Massenburg's website). He is regularly published in professional journals and trade magazines worldwide. In 1973 and 1974, he was chief engineer of Europasonor 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, Linda Ronstadt, Earth, Wind & Fire 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 architectural 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 also an Adjunct Professor of Sound Recording at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, and the Berklee College Of Music in Boston.
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.
Massenburg is currently living in Nashville, TN and has designed and built a room at Blackbird Studio.
[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.
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] Personal
He is married to Cookie Rankin, one of the founding members of the Rankin Family, a Celtic folk/country band from Cape Breton who were very popular in Canada during the 1990s.
