Live entertainment was not the only growth area. The home studio was now a reality even for musicians on modest budgets. Half inch 16 track reel to reel tape machines were affordable as was the outboard equipment like digital reverbs and signal processors. Studiomaster has always worked closely with users and quickly realised that the modern studio need inputs - lots of them! A typical home studio needed a mixer that could connect multitrack recorders, MIDI keyboards and sound modules, drum machines, samplers and one or two mics. The Mixdown console was the answer. With over 50 inputs on the 8 bus version, it became the standard for home and small studio recording. Like all Studiomaster consoles the inputs were expandable, the 3 band E.Q. had not only a mid but a bass sweep control- virtually not other console used this arrangement. All connectors were placed on the front panel making patching easy and the logical control layout helped even the novice get good results.

 

Mixer design was now a mastered art so Studiomaster looked at something new. Dynamics processing, although important, has always been difficult for the enthusiast to master. Terms like threshold, attack, release and make up gain can confuse even before the controls are touched! It was time for a radical new approach to dynamics processing that would help not hinder the user. The Intelligent Dynamics Processor or IDP1 was an apt name for Studiomasters first entry into this field. Being digitally controlled you could simply recall one of the 27 factory presets that suited the application - no controls to twiddle. The more seasoned user could take advantage of the 100 memories to store custom settings. All the features of pro studio processors were included and even MIDI control of program recall.