In the late eighties I was fortunate to witness a digital revolution in the making. As a kid I'd been dabbling with recording technology since middle school and I was always attracted to the idea of being able to create a professional recording at home. By the early eighties the standard in pro studios was the 24 track DASH digital recorder. It was capable of 20 bit resolution and automated editing but the cost of such a machine was about $500,000 or more. At this time a 3 bedroom home cost around $60,000, obviously access to this type of equipment was only available to a few. By the late eighties we did have access to some semi-pro analog gear that was good but not up to pro audio standards. The piece of gear we most needed at the time was a good reverb unit. Professional digital models cost several thousand dollars and analog units really hadn't changed much since the sixties. The cost of digital reverb had to do the complexity of converting analog sound to digital data and applying the sophisticated algorythms required to simulate a convincing reverb pattern. With processor power low a reverb unit was a collection of multiple computers, one to convert analog to digital, one to process the algorythm, and one to convert digital back to analog. Each computer stage had a seperate processor, ram memory, rom memory, and other associated components. In a stereo unit this entire architecture was duplicated. This made these devices very expensive to build. What changed in the late eighties was the invention of two new electronic components. The first was analog to digital converters that were completely contained on a single chip. But the really important device was the DSP(digital signal processor) which performed the complicated task of simulating a complex reverb pattern on a single chip. The result of all of this was the Alesis Microverb. It was a good quality digital reverb and at $100 it cost only 5% of the price of previous units of its quality. It was quickly followed by many other effects units of various types and other manufacturers quickly joined in. Within a few years a musician could have a reasonable facsimile of a $500,000 effects rack for about $3000. The major sea change was the result of another Alesis product, the black face ADAT. ADATs used digital VHS technology to record 8 tracks of 16bit audio on an inexpensive cassette. These units could be linked together to record as many tracks as needed. The resolution was not as good as DASH machines but since CD's are made at 16bit resolution, the end consumer really couldn't tell the difference. For $3000 you could have 24 tracks of digital recording capacity. Compare that to the $500,000 price tag of a DASH machine and you get the idea. When Eddie Brickel and the new Bohemians recorded there first album on ADATs the cat was out of the bag. What followed was an explosion of home studios. For the first time in the record business the means of production was no longer the exclusive domain of the folks with deep pockets.
