Harrison Audio at 50: Cutting-edge innovation with a warm analog heart
by Sarah Jones
29th August 2024
Sponsored by Harrison Audio
For 50 years, Harrison Audio has been synonymous with innovative console design and classic analog sound. Founded by Dave Harrison in 1975, the company’s legacy has always embodied more than technology; it’s shaped the sonic character of an era, alway aimed at capturing that raw energy that turns three chords and a cloud of dust into timeless rock and roll.
Harrison consoles were at the heart of the analog sound that defined the most iconic music of the 1970s and beyond, integral to the creation of legendary albums like Led Zeppelin’s In Through the Out Door and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. These large-format consoles transformed studio workflows, allowing musicians and engineers to explore new creative possibilities.
As Harrison Audio celebrates its 50th anniversary, the company reflects on its storied past with an eye to the future, reimagining its legendary designs to create high-performance solutions for the modern studio—continuing to inspire a new generation while honoring a legacy that captured the essence of so many cultural moments.
From concept to classic
Harrison Audio’s story starts with its founder, Dave Harrison, whose career began as a saxophonist and recording engineer at King Records in Cincinnati, working with legends like James Brown and John Lee Hooker.
Harrison eventually moved to Nashville and founded Studio Supply, a company focused on building and outfitting recording studios. There, he manufactured his own gear under the name Pandora.
It was during this era that Harrison conceived his revolutionary inline console design, in which channel inputs and outputs for recording and monitoring share the same physical channel strip, seamlessly integrating recording and mixing workflows.
At the time, most studio consoles were custom designs, built by studio owners and engineers or one-off models from small companies. Studio Supply was a reseller for MCI, a leading manufacturer of multitrack recorders. In 1972, Harrison approached MCI founder Jeep Harned with his groundbreaking concept. Their collaboration resulted in the release of the MCI JH-400, the first commercially available inline console.
For Harrison, this was just the beginning. Recognizing the potential for his innovations to transform music and film recording and armed with ideas for more feature-rich console designs with remote-controlled gain and switching systems, he founded his own company to bring his visions to market, and in 1975, the Harrison Audio 3232, the world’s first 32-bus inline console, was born.
The golden age of analog
In the 1970s and 1980s, Harrison consoles were the centerpieces of recording studios around the world. The list of albums made on the Harrison 32-Series is a roll call of era-defining classics: Led Zeppelin’s In Through The Out Door. The Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue. Donna Summer’s Bad Girls. Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. Queen, Steely Dan, and ELO recorded on the 32-Series. The console played a role in hit records by Supertramp, AC/DC, and Janet Jackson. ABBA installed one in their Polar Studios complex in Stockholm. Frank Zappa had one in his home studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. Perhaps most famously, legendary engineer Bruce Swedien recorded Michael Jackson’s Thriller on a Harrison.
Swedien was always outspoken about his affinity for his beloved Harrison board. “To say that I love it is a gross understatement,” he told Gearspace. “I adore it! It tickles my ear! It has a delectable sound! It can make me cry! It can make me smile! It makes me want to continue to do this forever! Personally I don't think the sound of recorded music gets any better than the Harrison 32 Series,” he said.
Harrison expanded into the film world with the PP-1, which featured some of the earliest computer-driven automation and other features catered to post-production workflows. That led to the 1985 introduction of the SeriesTen, the world’s first totally automated console.
In 2024, The SeriesTen was inducted into the NAMM TEC Awards TECnology Hall of Fame. “Even from its debut in a cramped hotel suite at the 1985 New York AES show, I could see that the Harrison SeriesTen—the first totally automated audio mixing system—would be a game changer, setting new standards for modern console design,” says pro audio journalist and NAMM TECnology Hall of Fame founder George Petersen. “Within a single video frame, its ability to reconfigure the entire console—levels, pans, equalization, dynamics processing, and routing changes—was unparalleled, while the excellence of its sonic performance is a tradition that continues with Harrison System consoles to this day.”
In the 1980s and 1990s Harrison continued to break new ground with fully automated, digitally controlled analog consoles for music, live sound, broadcast, and post. (Later, Harrison would dominate the post market with the largest digital mixing consoles ever made; in 2005, Universal Studios installed a massive MPC4-D, a 30-foot console designed for three simultaneous users.)
Technology in transition
The 1990s and 2000s were a transformative period for the recording industry, as the digital revolution reshaped the landscape. As the music business cratered, many major studios and record labels went out of business; at the same time, analog formats were replaced by digital media, and professional equipment was suddenly within reach of project studios. Yet despite these challenges, Harrison flourished, launching some of its most acclaimed consoles, earning prestigious industry awards for innovation, and making inroads into the software market in 2008 with the Mixbus DAW, which continues to drive modern music production today.
“The evolution of Mixbus has been an extraordinary 15-year journey,” says Harrison Audio Product Manager Ben Loftis. “During the development process, [Harrison President] Gary Thielman and I shared the opinion that a typical DAW software wasn't optimized for the purpose of mixing in context, like you would have done traditionally on a console. From this, we set about conceptualizing a DAW modeled after true console workflow, eliminating the need for pop-up plug-in windows and implementing practical features designed to speed up your workflow.”
When you develop new digital tools, how do you ensure they complement Harrison’s analog heritage, and what role do they play in the company’s future?
Every product development goes through a rigorous vetting process, not only to ensure technical excellence, but to tie the design to as many historical elements as possible to maximize the power of the brand. Digital products are included in this process, as all of them tie back to a previous time in Harrison and carry those successes forward.
How do design and testing evolve into real-world scenarios?
We have very experienced design engineers and testing people who work in studio environments every day, so the feedback we get is practical and specific, which helps greatly.
How do you cultivate a company culture of creativity and innovation, especially as you balance the legacy of past achievements with the demands of modern technology?
This is pretty easy at Harrison. Many of us have been here a very long time; 20 to 40-plus years of service is not uncommon. Those experiences can be seen by and passed down with confidence to the younger group within the company, which sustains a quality level of culture and understanding about where we have come from.
What do emerging technologies like generative design and AI bring to product design?
We are beginning to look at iterative design exploration processes. They have not played a major role in our current designs but we do see a bright future for those processes as we roadmap future design solutions.
For 50 years, Harrison has been a leader in console design. What do you think the founders would be most surprised to know about today’s business?
Having worked with those founders for many years, I think what they would be most surprised about is how well their initial designs have withstood the test of time. The concepts, designs, and circuits were really good back then, but with todays’ advancements in technologies, they are even better today and are still widely admired.
The Mixbus design incorporated processing tools and direct control over sends and buses for each channel in the mixer, all organized the way they would be structured in a physical console. “The result of this was developing an open-source channel strip GUI in the Ardour workstation [platform] and an accompanying closed-source DSP plug-in that implemented Harrison’s legendary console EQ, compressor, panning, saturation and summing engine,” Loftis explains. “We learned a lot about users’ expectations for their DAW, which only fueled our commitment to the continuous development of Mixbus all the way through to Mixbus 10.”
During the pandemic, when film production and recording studios were forced to close and musicians and producers were isolating in their homes, Mixbus became central to Harrison’s business, and development accelerated. Harrison continued to make inroads in digital platforms, developing the Mixbus VBM Virtual Broadcast Mixer and numerous high-performance plug-ins.
SSL and synergy in sound
In 2023, Harrison was acquired by Solid State Logic, bringing together two iconic console brands under the Audiotonix technology umbrella and opening new avenues in both hardware and software development.
“It has been refreshing to learn that both companies have very similar approaches to the culture,” says Thielman. “You’d never really know looking from the outside in, but now, after 18 months of tight cooperation it has become very apparent that we are not that different after all. As we move forward I think we can both learn from each other and keep that cultural foundation solid.”
That year, Harrison began re-imagining its legendary historic designs to craft high-performance solutions for the modern studio. “Every product development goes through a rigorous vetting process not only to ensure technical excellence, but to tie the design to as many historical elements as possible to maximize the power of the brand,” Thielman explains. “Digital products are included in this process, as all of them tie back to a previous time in Harrison and carry those successes forward.”
The company’s new flagship console, the 32Classic, draws inspiration from the original 32 Series, offering the warm analog tone of the original and cutting-edge features like built-in converters, an integrated Dante interface, and Dolby Atmos monitoring. In 2024, Harrison introduced three 500 Series modules: The 32Cpre+ delivers Harrison’s signature warm tone with a Jensen JT-MB-CPCA transformer-coupled preamp and versatile filters straight from the 32Classic console. The MR3eq, inspired by the iconic MR3 console, is a musical, flexible three-band parametric EQ with shelving and bell mode for versatile sound shaping. And the Comp offers quick, high-quality gain control and is adept at achieving rich saturation, drawing on the feed-forward VCA compressor design of Harrison’s TV950 console. Together, they bring the legendary Harrison sound within reach of studios of any size.
2024 also ushered in the release of Mixbus 10, which features Dolby Atmos mixing and rendering capabilities and integrates an SSL 9000J EQ into the channel strips to accompany the legendary Harrison 32C EQ.
Over the decades, Harrison has consistently introduced products and technologies that have set benchmarks for sonic performance. The company’s legacy, Thielman says, is rooted in a focus on practical innovation. “Everything we have made and make now is painstakingly designed to solve problems and to be as easily useful as possible in real-world applications,” he says. “If you listen to your customers and focus on those things, you can and will achieve long-term success.”
Learn more about Harrison Audio and their products here!
Bruce Swedien and Quincy Jones (with engineer Ed Cherney, at left) mixing Michael Jackson’s Thriller on the Harrison 32 Series console at Westlake Studios in Los Angeles
For 50 years, Harrison Audio has been synonymous with innovative console design and classic analog sound. Founded by Dave Harrison in 1975, the company’s legacy has always embodied more than technology; it’s shaped the sonic character of an era, alway aimed at capturing that raw energy that turns three chords and a cloud of dust into timeless rock and roll.
Harrison consoles were at the heart of the analog sound that defined the most iconic music of the 1970s and beyond, integral to the creation of legendary albums like Led Zeppelin’s In Through the Out Door and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. These large-format consoles transformed studio workflows, allowing musicians and engineers to explore new creative possibilities.
As Harrison Audio celebrates its 50th anniversary, the company reflects on its storied past with an eye to the future, reimagining its legendary designs to create high-performance solutions for the modern studio—continuing to inspire a new generation while honoring a legacy that captured the essence of so many cultural moments.
From concept to classic
Harrison Audio’s story starts with its founder, Dave Harrison, whose career began as a saxophonist and recording engineer at King Records in Cincinnati, working with legends like James Brown and John Lee Hooker.
Harrison eventually moved to Nashville and founded Studio Supply, a company focused on building and outfitting recording studios. There, he manufactured his own gear under the name Pandora.
Dave Harrison
At the time, most studio consoles were custom designs, built by studio owners and engineers or one-off models from small companies. Studio Supply was a reseller for MCI, a leading manufacturer of multitrack recorders. In 1972, Harrison approached MCI founder Jeep Harned with his groundbreaking concept. Their collaboration resulted in the release of the MCI JH-400, the first commercially available inline console.
For Harrison, this was just the beginning. Recognizing the potential for his innovations to transform music and film recording and armed with ideas for more feature-rich console designs with remote-controlled gain and switching systems, he founded his own company to bring his visions to market, and in 1975, the Harrison Audio 3232, the world’s first 32-bus inline console, was born.
ABBA at the 32-Series in the legendary Polar Studios in Stockholm
In the 1970s and 1980s, Harrison consoles were the centerpieces of recording studios around the world. The list of albums made on the Harrison 32-Series is a roll call of era-defining classics: Led Zeppelin’s In Through The Out Door. The Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue. Donna Summer’s Bad Girls. Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. Queen, Steely Dan, and ELO recorded on the 32-Series. The console played a role in hit records by Supertramp, AC/DC, and Janet Jackson. ABBA installed one in their Polar Studios complex in Stockholm. Frank Zappa had one in his home studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. Perhaps most famously, legendary engineer Bruce Swedien recorded Michael Jackson’s Thriller on a Harrison.
“Personally I don’t think the sound of recorded music gets any better than the Harrison 32 Series,” said Swedien
Harrison expanded into the film world with the PP-1, which featured some of the earliest computer-driven automation and other features catered to post-production workflows. That led to the 1985 introduction of the SeriesTen, the world’s first totally automated console.
Dave Harrison with the SeriesTen at the AES show in 1985
In the 1980s and 1990s Harrison continued to break new ground with fully automated, digitally controlled analog consoles for music, live sound, broadcast, and post. (Later, Harrison would dominate the post market with the largest digital mixing consoles ever made; in 2005, Universal Studios installed a massive MPC4-D, a 30-foot console designed for three simultaneous users.)
Technology in transition
The 1990s and 2000s were a transformative period for the recording industry, as the digital revolution reshaped the landscape. As the music business cratered, many major studios and record labels went out of business; at the same time, analog formats were replaced by digital media, and professional equipment was suddenly within reach of project studios. Yet despite these challenges, Harrison flourished, launching some of its most acclaimed consoles, earning prestigious industry awards for innovation, and making inroads into the software market in 2008 with the Mixbus DAW, which continues to drive modern music production today.
“The evolution of Mixbus has been an extraordinary 15-year journey,” says Harrison Audio Product Manager Ben Loftis. “During the development process, [Harrison President] Gary Thielman and I shared the opinion that a typical DAW software wasn't optimized for the purpose of mixing in context, like you would have done traditionally on a console. From this, we set about conceptualizing a DAW modeled after true console workflow, eliminating the need for pop-up plug-in windows and implementing practical features designed to speed up your workflow.”
Innovation from the inside
Harrison President Gary Thielman on being at the intersection of technology and tradition
Harrison President Gary Thielman on being at the intersection of technology and tradition
When you develop new digital tools, how do you ensure they complement Harrison’s analog heritage, and what role do they play in the company’s future?
Every product development goes through a rigorous vetting process, not only to ensure technical excellence, but to tie the design to as many historical elements as possible to maximize the power of the brand. Digital products are included in this process, as all of them tie back to a previous time in Harrison and carry those successes forward.
How do design and testing evolve into real-world scenarios?
We have very experienced design engineers and testing people who work in studio environments every day, so the feedback we get is practical and specific, which helps greatly.
How do you cultivate a company culture of creativity and innovation, especially as you balance the legacy of past achievements with the demands of modern technology?
This is pretty easy at Harrison. Many of us have been here a very long time; 20 to 40-plus years of service is not uncommon. Those experiences can be seen by and passed down with confidence to the younger group within the company, which sustains a quality level of culture and understanding about where we have come from.
What do emerging technologies like generative design and AI bring to product design?
We are beginning to look at iterative design exploration processes. They have not played a major role in our current designs but we do see a bright future for those processes as we roadmap future design solutions.
For 50 years, Harrison has been a leader in console design. What do you think the founders would be most surprised to know about today’s business?
Having worked with those founders for many years, I think what they would be most surprised about is how well their initial designs have withstood the test of time. The concepts, designs, and circuits were really good back then, but with todays’ advancements in technologies, they are even better today and are still widely admired.
The Mixbus mixer
During the pandemic, when film production and recording studios were forced to close and musicians and producers were isolating in their homes, Mixbus became central to Harrison’s business, and development accelerated. Harrison continued to make inroads in digital platforms, developing the Mixbus VBM Virtual Broadcast Mixer and numerous high-performance plug-ins.
SSL and synergy in sound
In 2023, Harrison was acquired by Solid State Logic, bringing together two iconic console brands under the Audiotonix technology umbrella and opening new avenues in both hardware and software development.
“It has been refreshing to learn that both companies have very similar approaches to the culture,” says Thielman. “You’d never really know looking from the outside in, but now, after 18 months of tight cooperation it has become very apparent that we are not that different after all. As we move forward I think we can both learn from each other and keep that cultural foundation solid.”
That year, Harrison began re-imagining its legendary historic designs to craft high-performance solutions for the modern studio. “Every product development goes through a rigorous vetting process not only to ensure technical excellence, but to tie the design to as many historical elements as possible to maximize the power of the brand,” Thielman explains. “Digital products are included in this process, as all of them tie back to a previous time in Harrison and carry those successes forward.”
The 32Classic: Heritage sound meets modern workflows
The MR3eq, 32Cpre+, and Comp 500 Series modules bring the legendary Harrison sound within reach of studios of all budgets
Mixbus at 15: Mixbus 10 debuted in 2024
Over the decades, Harrison has consistently introduced products and technologies that have set benchmarks for sonic performance. The company’s legacy, Thielman says, is rooted in a focus on practical innovation. “Everything we have made and make now is painstakingly designed to solve problems and to be as easily useful as possible in real-world applications,” he says. “If you listen to your customers and focus on those things, you can and will achieve long-term success.”
Learn more about Harrison Audio and their products here!
