The Digital Shift: Mixing Consoles - Text 2
The tape recorders found in auditoria, such as Revox, made possible increasingly complex effects. These effects were first heard on 33 RPM discs and then in cinema. In the 1960s, with the development of stereophonic music, first for jazz and then for popular music, the public became accustomed to more sophisticated sound. The sound experiments on the albums Pet Sounds (The Beach Boys, 1966) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles, 1967) brought the use of effects on magnetic tracks into wider use. Following the work of the music arranger and producer Phil Spector, the recording of pop and rock albums became complex, with echo and reverberation effects, different kinds of filters and multiple tracks.
Mixing multiple magnetic tracks in cinema was possible for 70 mm versions of films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) in a few movie theatres only. In the 1970s, the general public acquired high-fidelity sound systems. But few movie theatres could show anything other than monophonic films. In the 1960s and 70s, the smaller size of electronic equipment facilitated the production of more powerful devices.
In 1975, Robert Altman released Nashville. A mixing console with fifteen inputs and eight tracks was designed by Jim Webb and developed by Jack Cashin. Nashville had complex sound mixes with several simultaneous tracks both for dialogue (which sometimes overlaps) and music (played live). In some movie theatres, the film was shown in stereo, which had appeared in the 1950s (alongside 3D and CinemaScope), but this only really spread throughout movie theatres after the success of Star Wars (1977) and Dolby Stereo. This opened up numerous mixing possibilities on increasingly complex consoles. The lengthy work of mixing Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), under the supervision of Walter Murch, showed that dozens of sound elements could be mixed to make audiences feel the jungle or a battle. At times, up to 110 tracks were mixed in the same sequence. Mixing consoles designed for musical recordings or for radio have increasingly come to be used when mixing films (such as the brands Neve in 1977 and Studer in 1978).[3] Sound mixed in an auditorium can be played in movie theatres by transferring magnetic sound onto the optical sound track of 35 mm film prints.
