Burgess Macneal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Burgess Macneal | |
|---|---|
| Born | Baltimore, MD |
| Known for | Invention of Parametric EQ |
Burgess Macneal is an American electrical engineer, recording engineer and inventor. He is most widely known for his role in the invention of parametric equalization and operation/ownership of the Sontec and ITI brands.
Burgess Macneal attended an engineering-focused high school in Baltimore, MD. Prior to graduation, he began working for the Baltimore Symphony as a recording engineer and later took on additional duties as a broadcast engineer.[1]
After importing of the first Neumann microphone into the United States of America, Macneal and other business partners founded a recording studio named Recordings Incorporated.[1][2] In addition to recording services, the studio offered mono fusion vinyl record pressing. Later, the studio relocated its record pressing operations to Baltimore's "District Steam" which supplied industrial-pressure steam, allowing for an upgrade to steam vinyl pressing machines.[1] The studio also offered vinyl cutting on one of Neumann's earliest manual lathes.
Invention of Parametric EQ
Dean Jensen and George Massenburg came to Macneal's studio to help with the building of a console. George Massenburg was around 15 years of age at the time. Soon after beginning on the console, Macneal and his business partner decided to part ways and Recordings Incorporated was absorbed by a company named ITI (International Telecomm Incorporated).[1][2] Burgess Macneal was named Vice President.[3]
Burgess Macneal continued working with ITI and hired George Massenburg. Together they began creating a new prototype recording console for ITI.[1][4] During the building of the console, around 1966, Macneal and Massenburg conceptualized an idea for a sweep-tunable EQ that would avoid inductors and switches.[2] In approximately 1967, an engineer attending Princeton University named Bob Meushaw, a friend of Massenburg, built a three-band, frequency adjustable, fixed-Q, IC op-amp-based EQ based on passive 2 resistor/2 capacitor or 3 resistor/3 capacitor “T” filters (a design that was primarily from a 1940s Bell Labs filter handbook). Meushaw’s design provided further inspiration for the EQ concept that Macneal and Massenburg were designing. While working on the design of the circuit, Massenburg had a marked breakthrough and together with an input amplifier built by ITI’s chief engineer, the concept was functional around 1969.[1][2]
Macneal and Massenberg attended the 1971 AES convention in New York and debuted the new equalizer, generating industry-wide interest and demand. The ITI engineering manager and shareholders decided to manufacture only 10 a month to keep the units scarce. The original unit was sold as the ITI MEP-130 (Mastering Equalizer Potentiometer 130) and was a console module.[4] The original stand-alone unit was called the ITI ME-230 (Mastering Equalizer 230) and was the first commercially available parametric EQ.[1][4] Massenburg and Macneal type-set and printed a paper entitled “Parametric Equalization” in 1972 and Massenburg submitted it to the Audio Engineering Society in Los Angeles.[2][5] The design was never patented.[4]
