Wiardgroup

Please see John Loffinks article in this month's SEAMUS newsletter:

http://www.seamusonline.org/

Also please see:

http://www.seamusonline.org/luening.html

about Otto Luening, whom I was fortunate enough to have had lunch with at the tender 
age of 18 (at the invitation of my mentor August Wagner). Mr. Luening was a most 
gracious and kind person, kind enough to tolerate the presence of a really ignorant 18 
year old. He stopped by the University while visiting family in Milwaukee. Luckly, I was so 
awestruck I shut up and listened carefully.

Remembered indirect quotes from that lunch:

"We originally wanted to be able to patch a tape recorder input or output directly to 
anything, that is why we specified a 1 volt peak to peak signal level for all devices. (like the 
Buchla 100 and 200 and Moog 900 series) we soon realized that subtractive synthesis, 
subtracted audio power, and so signal to noise ratio degraded rapidly. That is why we 
were happy to see later instruments using a 10 volt peak to peak standard, which allowed 
more signal processing while preserving acceptable signal to noise ratio." 

(He did not specify if Columbia-Princeton buying specifications were involved in the 
change. Bear in mind that for a time, Columbia-Princeton WAS the biggest marketplace for 
electronic music synthesizers, their buying specifications significantly affected early 
synthesizer).

Otto Luening ruefully paraphrasing Vladimir Ussachevsky:

"Bob Moog called one day and asked if they wanted to make an envelope generator with 
more than two segments, what should the extra segments be? I walked into my office and 
found an book that referenced attack, decay, sustain and release, which I told Bob about. 
Had I known it would become an industry standard, I would have thought about it for 
more than 10 seconds!".