Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 136

CHURCH TECH
THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY | Bill Gibson
This article is an excerpt from the newly released
3 rd Edition of one of my books, The Ultimate
Live Sound Operator’s Handbook. A lot of the
additions to this book have to do with digital
mixers, digital snakes, digital concepts, and
other modern developments. But, I ran across
a few historical references to the development
of digital technology that I thought worthy of
sharing. The fact that so much has happened
so quickly and that it just escalates even more
quickly from this point forward is exciting.
Some of this timeline is inspired by lists and
historical references that I discovered while
researching new material for the book; but, a
lot of it also comes from my own experiences
as a musician, and a live/studio engineer since
the ’70s.
Digital technology was on the horizon for a long
time before it reached anything resembling the
state of digital audio today. But the fascination
has been alive and well since at least 1937
when Alec Reeves, a British scientist, invented
pulse code modulation (PCM) for use in
telecommunications. It wasn’t until the ’60s
that Nippon Columbia and NHK, via the Denon
brand pioneered commercial digital music
recording.
Yamaha released its first digital mixer, the
DMP7. This mixer was really created to handle
the TX816—the eight-channel version the DX7.
However, the DMP7 included two microphone
inputs with accommodations for more mic
channels through additional hardware. A lot of
studios at that time saw the DMP7 as a step
forward into a brand-new way to work. This
started a long list of digital mixers from Yamaha
that continues today. It was the genesis of the
audio industry’s embrace of the modern digital
mixer and all it brings to the recording and live
sound worlds.
Even though digital technology continued to
mature, it wasn’t until the late ’70s and early
’80s that Fairlight and Synclavier introduced
high-quality, sampling, in-the-box, tapeless
multitrack recorders. At the same time, Sony,
3M, Studer, and Mitsubishi introduced tapebased
digital multitrack recorders. In 1982,
Sony released the first commercially available
CD player, and in October 1982, the first
commercially released CD, Billy Joel’s 52 nd
Street. And let the games begin!
Throughout the growth of digital technology
in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, mixers remained
analog. It took a while for processors to become
robust enough and small enough, but in 1987,
Yamaha led the pack, starting with the DX7 FM synthesis keyboard in 1983 and the multitimbral TX816 sound
module and DMP-7 digital mixer in 1987.
136 September 2020
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