David Baldwin is an audio engineer with many years experience in virtually every aspect of sound.  In addition to extensive recording engineering and mixing, he has worked in equipment manufacture and design, customer service for major manufacturers, sound editing and sound design for film, TV and commercials, and design and construction of sound facilities.

 

His career started in the early 70’s in New York, working for John Chester’s Chaos Audio,  located in Bill Graham’s Filmore East.  Chester was the designer for all of Graham’s venue and touring sound reinforcement systems.  Baldwin built and tested the circuit boards for Graham’s FM Productions touring consoles, as well as the first custom console for the Bottom Line night club in New York.  In the summers, he worked on the Jazz On The River series, mixing live jazz bands on the Staten Island Ferry.  Bands included Dave Brubeck, Lionel Hampton, Joe Cuba and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Baldwin then was hired by Dave Hewitt to work on the Record Plant Remote Truck (New York), doing live recordings of major acts such as Aerosmith, Kiss, Hall and Oates, Billy Joel, Frank Zappa, Kansas, Crosby/Nash, and others.  He spent one month each with Kiss, Aerosmith, and Brownsville Station recording basic tracks for their albums.  These were in locations outside of New York that were set up in a rented estate or theatre and outfitted with complete multitrack equipment, temporary control rooms with custom acoustic treatment and mic and video lines to various record rooms.  After each month-long session, equipment was re-installed in the Remote Truck, which then went back on the road for more live recording.

In 1979, Baldwin was hired as Chief Engineer for Suntreader Studios in Vermont , where he worked not only as technical engineer, but also as recording engineer for various acts that came to the studio.  These included projects with producers Craig Leon (of Capitol records, previously with Blondie and The Ramones),  Gino Vannelli and John Pilla (Arlo Guthrie), and various bands from Boston, New York and Canada.  When working with John Holbrook (a.k.a. Brian Briggs), he designed and built a custom “sound organ”, which worked similarly to a Mellotron, except that it was an interface used in conjunction with a 24-track tape which had pre-recorded tracks of vocal samples of various pitches.

Two years later, Baldwin was hired by New England Digital, to help with the manufacture of  the nascent Synclavier computerized music system.  There he created the customer service department to service Synclavier customers around the world.  He worked with clients such as Frank Zappa, Oscar Peterson, Pat Metheny, Stevie Wonder and Sting.  He hand-built the first 50kHz sampler, used in the Synclavier’s Sample-To-Disk system, and designed several ancillary devices sold as options to the system.