TELEFUNKEN USA INSTALLS API 1608 CONSOLE

SOUTH WINDSOR, CONNECTICUT - MAY 2008: Telefunken USA, LLC has installed an API 1608 discrete analog recording console at its newly expanded headquarters in Connecticut. The mixing console has been installed in a new product development and test facility as part of a 2,500 square-foot expansion of the microphone manufacturer's corporate offices.

The API 1608 is the centerpiece for a brand new research, test and design studio facility here in South Windsor, Connecticut, just outside Hartford, explains Alan Veniscofsky, director of operations at Telefunken USA. "We use it in the room where we test every single microphone and every single piece of gear that we build. We also use the same room as a studio. We're very pleased with the 1608."

Telefunken USA recreates classic recording microphones engineered to precise historical specifications. The API 1608, installed in early March, following the recent completion of the first phase of a very large studio laboratory build-out at the location, is central to the testing of finished products and new designs. "It's wired and hooked up in a traditional manner," Toni Fishman, owner/CEO Telefunken USA, reports. "But we use some of the additional bussing and aux routing not as a traditional studio set-up, but more geared toward testing devices and frequency response, and things that we use for testing and building microphones."

Fishman selected the 1608 based on past experience with API and from the opinions of a number of the Telefunken USA staff that are also active in the
recording industry. He was very pleased with an older API 1604 restoration he completed a few years ago and has always trusted the API sound and design, dating back to when his company Vintage Tones was a dealer in the late 1990s. "Some of the people who have worked here over the past two or three years, plus other engineers, and I have had great success using API consoles on various projects," he comments. "We had a Neve console that was great, but a little too colored and too vintage. We wanted the best representation of what was out there and is modern."

The API 1608 incorporates the company's discrete electronics topology and is built to the same exacting standards as the flagship Vision and Legacy Series consoles, the standard model having sixteen input channels, eight buses, eight aux sends, eight reverb returns and full center section facilities. The standard mainframe also includes twelve 550A three-band equalizers and four 560 ten-band graphic EQ modules with space available for eight additional 500 Series modules. The support of 500 Series modules was another point in the 1608's favor. "You'll probably see Telefunken USA develop some 500 Series units over the next 18 months or so," Veniscofsky confides.

Automated Processes, Inc. remains the leader in analog recording gear, with the Vision surround production and Legacy Series recording consoles, the DSM Series rack-mounted mixers, and the classic line of modular signal processing equipment.

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