Burgess Macneal
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Burgess Macneal is an American
electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
,
recording engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproducti ...
and
inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...
. He is most widely known for his role in the invention of parametric equalization and operation/ownership of the Sontec and ITI brands.


Early years

Burgess Macneal attended an engineering-focused high school in
Baltimore, MD Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-larges ...
. Prior to graduation, he began working for the Baltimore Symphony as a recording engineer and later took on additional duties as a broadcast engineer. After importing of the first
Neumann Neumann () is a German language, German surname, with its origins in the pre-7th-century (Old English) word ''wikt:neowe, neowe'' meaning "new", with ''wikt:mann, mann'', meaning man. The English form of the name is Newman. Von Neumann is a varian ...
microphone into the
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, Macneal and other business partners founded a recording studio named Recordings Incorporated. 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. The studio also offered vinyl cutting on one of Neumann's earliest manual
lathes A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, threading and turning, with tools that are applied to the ...
.


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). Burgess Macneal was named Vice President. Burgess Macneal continued working with ITI and hired George Massenburg. Together they began creating a new prototype recording console for ITI. 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. In approximately 1967, an engineer attending
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
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. 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. The original stand-alone unit was called the ITI ME-230 (Mastering Equalizer 230) and was the first commercially available parametric EQ. Massenburg and Macneal type-set and printed a paper entitled “Parametric Equalization” in 1972 and Massenburg submitted it to the
Audio Engineering Society The Audio Engineering Society (AES) is a professional body for engineers, scientists, other individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. The membership largely comprises engineers developing devices or product ...
in Los Angeles. The design was never patented.


Purchase of ITI and Creation of Sontec

Partly due to a refusal of the ITI engineering department to manufacture the prototyped recording consoles, ITI slid into financial difficulties. George Massenburg and the company’s salesman left. In 1974 the bank working with ITI decided to shut it down and auctioned the company assets in January 1975. At the auction George Massenburg (with
Earth, Wind & Fire Earth, Wind & Fire (abbreviated as EW&F or EWF) is an American band formed in Chicago, Illinois in 1969. Their music spans multiple genres, including jazz, R&B, soul, funk, disco, pop, Latin and Afro-pop. They are among the best-selling ba ...
’s backing) bought the music recording studio and a company in Nashville bought the mastering studio. John Ariosa from Sheffield Recordings bought the voice over production studio which included the ITI EQ Prototype as well as several Little Feat masters, and further down the road bought the ITI console after it sank in the Baltimore harbor. Burgess Macneal bought the vinyl pressing plant, equalizers, intellectual property and other property of ITI and consequently became the owner of the ITI brand. Macneal continued some of the ITI operations, rehired many of the ITI staff and renamed the brand as Sontec. The first purchaser of the Sontec EQ was Sterling Sound, which still use their Sontecs at their facility. Sontec EQs are used in most of the world’s major mastering studios including
Masterdisk Masterdisk is an American multimedia company in New York, located at 8 John Walsh Boulevard in Peekskill. They provide production services such as audio mastering, vinyl cutting and enhanced CD and DVD production. Their clients include such n ...
in
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
and the Capitol Records mastering studio located in the iconic
Capitol Records Building The Capitol Records Building, also known as the Capitol Records Tower, is a 13-story tower building in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Designed by Louis Naidorf of Welton Becket Associates, it is one of t ...
in Los Angeles. Sontec products have been in production since the spring of 1975, with ongoing development. Macneal has relocated his residence and business operations from
Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...
to Pearisburg, Virginia.


Sontec Compudisk

Burgess Macneal and, software programmer, Gerry Block created the impressively precise Sontec Compudisk pitch and depth automation controller for disc cutting lathes, which they debuted at the 1980 AES Convention. The Neumann VMS-80 appeared at the same convention, which made it difficult for people to decide whether to upgrade the whole lathe, or just improve their existing lathe's automation. The most famous studio to adopt the Compudisk was The Mastering Lab, which added one to their highly modified vintage Neumann lathes. They added an entraining bar which connected the carriages of three lathes so that the master lathe's Compudisk could move the carriages of all three lathes identically. Depth coils of the three lathes were operated electrically, in parallel, using the one controller for base depth and automated depth gain. The Compudisk cost about 3 times as much as the Zuma, but both greatly improved on the space-saving capabilities of previous designs.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macneal, Burgess American electrical engineers American audio engineers Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Engineers from Baltimore People from Pearisburg, Virginia Engineers from Virginia Year of birth missing (living people) Engineers from Maryland 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors