1. Rupert Neve is a well-known engineer of high end pro-audio recording equipment, particularly notable for his microphone preamps, equalizers, compressors and large format mixing consoles. He is often credited as the man who made the recording console.   He was the third person to receive a Lifetime Achievement Technical GRAMMY and became an inducted member of the Mix Hall of Fame in 1989.   He was named man of the century by Studio Sound Magazine in 1999, and was selected by his peers as the number one audio personality of the 20th century.

 Neve, living in Argentina at the time, began repairing and building radios in the early days of World War II. When he was 17, he volunteered as a soldier for the British navy. He soon after settled in England, and built a mobile recording studio in which he recorded choirs, operas, and public addresses. In the 50s he worked for Rediffusion, a maker of loudspeakers. Neve left the company and formed CQ Audio, and manufactured hifi speaker systems. In the early 1960s, he designed and built a mixing console for a composer named Desmond. In 1964 he built a transistor based mixing console with an equalizer for Phillips Record LTD. Demand for consoles increased rapidly and led Neve into a life of the manufacturing and designing audio recording equipment. Neve has founded or been involved with several companies. Currently he runs Rupert Neve Designs, which is based out of Wimberley, Texas.  Rupert Neve Designs has been honored three TEC Awards since its inception in 2005.  The Portico 5042 "True Tape" Emulator won for achievement in the category of Signal Processing Technology/Hardware . The 5088 Discrete Analogue Mixer won for achievement in the category of Large Format Console Technology. The Portico 5015 Mic Pre / Compressor won for achievement in the category of Mic Preamplifier Technology.

2. Ray Dolby (born January 18, 1933) is the American inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. He was also a co-inventor of video tape recording while at Ampex. He is the founder and chairman of Dolby Laboratories.  Dolby was born in Cumming, GA. He was raised in San Francisco, California.  As a teenager, in the decade following World War II, Dolby held part-time and summer jobs at Ampex in Redwood City, working with their first audio tape recorder in 1949. While at Stanford University, from 1953 to 1957, Dolby continued at Ampex, working on early prototypes of video tape recorder technologies for Alexander M. Poniatoff and Charlie Ginsburg.  In 1957, Dolby received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford. He subsequently won a Marshall Scholarship for a Ph.D. (1961) in physics from Cambridge University, where he was a Research Fellow at Pembroke College.  After Cambridge, Dolby acted as a technical advisor to the United Nations in India, until 1965, when he returned to England, where he founded Dolby Laboratories. In that same year, 1965, he officially invented the Dolby Sound System, although his first U.S. patent was not filed until 1969, four years later.  Dolby is a fellow and past president of the Audio Engineering Society. Ray Dolby is a member of the Forbes 400 with an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion in 2008.

3. Sir George Henry Martin CBE (3 January 1926) is a British record producer, arranger and composer. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"—a title that he owes to his work as producer or co-producer of all of The Beatles' original records as well as playing piano on some of The Beatles tracks—and is considered one of the greatest record producers of all time.  In 1969 he established the Associated Independent Recording (AIR) Studios. Although officially retired, he is still the chairman of the AIR board.   In recognition of his services to the music industry and popular culture, he was made a Knight Bachelor in 1996. He is the father of producer Giles Martin, and actor Gregory Paul Martin.

4. Willi Studer started his entrepreneurial career in 1948 in Zurich by building a small electronics equipment factory. The first products assembled by the small group of three employees were special oscilloscopes. But shortly afterwards, he started to specialize in the field of audio technology. The experience gained from the adaptation of US tape recorders for the European market gave Studer the confidence that he would be able to design and build such equipment himself and that it would be even better and more reliable. He demonstrated this with the development of the now legendary «Dynavox». To keep up with production he expanded his operation to 25 employees by the end of 1950. In the following year he founded his own sales company, ELA AG. For his tape recorders he chose the brand name REVOX, the Dynavox became the Revox T26. In parallel to this he started to develop a «big» tape machine with a 3-motor tape deck, the Studer 27, for radio stations.

Studer is a Swiss manufacturer of professional audio equipment, founded in Zurich in 1948 by Willi Studer. It is known primarily for the design and manufacture of analog tape recorders and mixing consoles. Studer also produce other technology solutions, such as telephony management systems and radio broadcast studio equipment. Studer originated the consumer brand Revox, but sold the group to private investors in 1990.  The Studer J37 recorder was used to record the Beatles renowned Sgt. Pepper album in 1967. The popular Studer-Revox A77 recorder was introduced the same year, and sold over 400,000 units. 
Studer's analog tape recorders were widely considered to be the best in world by Audio engineers due to their excellent reliability and sound quality. Studer was acquired by Harman International Industries in 1994.

5. Colin Saunders  Founded in 1969, SSL has since expanded to its present 15 acre (61,000 m²) science park in Oxfordshire, England[5]. The company invents, designs and manufactures technology for the manipulation of sound and the production and delivery of video.  SSL employs over 160 people worldwide and has regional offices in Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Paris and Tokyo, with additional support provided by an international network of distributors SSL analogue and digital audio consoles are used in both pre- and post-production for film, audio, video and broadcast sound. Notably, in May 2001, Studio 3 at Abbey Road Studios was refurbished with a 96-channel SSL 9000 J series console, the largest SSL console in Europe.  SSL also produces rackmount audio hardware for use in recording studios

6. Alan Dower Blumlein (June 29, 1903 in Hampstead, London – June 7, 1942) was an electronics engineer who made many inventions in telecommunications, sound recording, stereo, television and radar. He received 128 patents.  Alan Dower Blumlein was born on June 29, 1903 in Hampstead, London. His future career seems to have been determined by the age of seven, when he presented his father with an invoice for repairing the doorbell, signed "Alan Blumlein, Electrical Engineer" (with 'paid' scrawled in pencil). His sister claimed that he could not read proficiently until he was 12. He replied 'no, but I knew a lot of quadratic equations!'   After matriculating at Highgate School in 1921, he studied at City and Guilds College (part of Imperial College). He won a Governor's scholarship and joined the second year of the course. He graduated with a First-Class Honours B.Sc two years later.   He died on June 7, 1942 during a trial of the airborne H2S radar. The Halifax bomber he was flying in crashed at Welsh Bicknor, Herefordshire, killing everyone on board.

Sound recording  In 1929 Blumlein handed in his notice at STC and joined the Columbia Graphophone Company, where he reported directly to general manager Isaac Shoenberg.  His first project was to find a method of disc cutting that circumvented a Bell patent in the Western Electric moving-iron cutting head then used, and on which substantial royalties had to be paid. He invented the moving-coil disc cutting head, which not only got around the patent but offered greatly improved sound quality. He led a small team which developed the concept into a practical cutter. The other principal team members were Herbert Holman and Henry 'Ham' Clark. Their work resulted in several patents.  Early in 1931, the Columbia Graphophone Company and the Gramophone Company merged and became EMI. New joint research laboratories were set up at Hayes and Blumlein was officially transferred there on 1 November the same year.  During the early 1930s Blumlein and Herbert Holman developed a series of moving-coil microphones, which were used in EMI recording studios and by the BBC at Alexandra Palace.

Stereo Blumlein developed his ideas on what he called 'binaural sound', now known as stereo, during this same period.  In early 1931, Blumlein and his wife were at a local cinema. The sound reproduction systems of the early 'talkies' invariably only had a single set of speakers - which could lead to the somewhat disconcerting effect of the actor being on one side of the screen whilst his voice appeared to come from the other. Blumlein declared to his wife that he had found a way to make the sound 'follow' the actor across the screen.  The genesis of these ideas is uncertain, but he explained them to Isaac Shoenberg in the late summer of 1931. His earliest notes on the subject are dated 25 September 1931, and his patent had the headline "Improvements in and relating to Sound-transmission, Sound-recording and Sound-reproducing systems". Application date was Dec. 14, 1931, No. 34,657/31, complete left: Nov. 10, 1932, and complete accepted: June 14, 1933 as British patent No. 394325.  The Halifax V9977, which crashed in June 1942, killing Blumlein and several other key radar technicians Whereas work led by Harvey Fletcher at Bell Labs at about the same time considered sound systems using multiple channels, Blumlein always aimed at a system with just two channels.  The patent covered many ideas in stereo, some of which are used today and some not. Some 70 claims include: 
A 'shuffling' circuit, which aimed to preserve the directional effect when sound from a spaced pair of microphones was reproduced via a pair of loudspeakers instead of stereo headphones;  The use of a coincident pair of velocity microphones with their axes at right angles to each other, which is still known as a 'Blumlein Pair';  Recording two channels in the single groove of a record using the two groove walls at right angles to each other and 45 degrees to the vertical;  A stereo disc-cutting head;  Using hybrid transformers to matrix between left and right signals and sum and difference signals;  Binaural experiments began in early 1933, and the first stereo discs were cut later the same year.  Much of the development work on this system for cinematic use did not reach completion until 1935. In a few short test films (most notably, 'Trains At Hayes Station' and, 'The Walking & Talking Film'), Blumlein's original intent of having the sound 'follow' the actor was realized fully.

7. Georg Neumann GmbH (Neumann), founded in 1928 and based in Berlin, Germany, is a prominent manufacturer of professional recording microphones. Their best-known products are condenser microphones for broadcast, live and music production purposes. For several decades Neumann was also a leading manufacturer of cutting lathes for phonograph disks, and even ventured into the field of mixing desks for a while.

8. Michael Anthony Gerzon (4 December 1945 – 6 May 1996) is probably best known for his work on Ambisonics and for his work on digital audio. He also made a large number of recordings, many in the field of free improvisation in which he had a particular interest.
After studying mathematics at Oxford University, Gerzon joined Oxford's Mathematical Institute working on axiomatic quantum theory, until his work in audio took him into working as a consultant. At university he already had a keen interest in both the theory and practice of recording, which he shared with a few fellow students including Peter Craven (the two were later the co-inventors of the soundfield microphone, and collaborated on many other projects). Over the next few years, this interest led to the invention of Ambisonics, which can be seen as a theoretical and practical completion of the work done by Alan Blumlein in the field of stereophonic sound. Although Ambisonics was not a commercial success, its theory underpinned much of his later work in audio such as his work with Waves Audio and Trifield. He was also active in the development of digital sound techniques, such as noise-shaped dither and Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP, the lossless compression used in DVD-Audio disks). The Audio Engineering Society recognised Gerzon's work in audio by awarding him a fellowship in 1978 and the AES Gold Medal in 1991; he was also awarded the AES Publications Award posthumously in 1999.

9.Valdemar Poulsen (November 23, 1869, in Copenhagen – July 23, 1942) was a Danish engineer. He developed a magnetic wire recorder in 1899.  Poulsen's US patent for a magnetic wire recorder.The magnetic recording was demonstrated in principle as early as 1898 by Valdemar Poulsen in his Telegraphone. Magnetic wire recording, and its successor, magnetic tape recording, involve the use of a magnetizable medium which moves past a recording head. An electrical signal, which is analogous to the sound that is to be recorded, is fed to the recording head, inducing a pattern of magnetization similar to the signal. A playback head (which may be the same as the recording head) can then pick up the changes in the magnetic field from the tape and convert them into an electrical signal.  Poulsen obtained a Telegraphone Patent in 1898, and with his assistant, Peder O. Pedersen, later developed other magnetic recorders that recorded on steel wire, tape, or disks. None of these devices had electronic amplification, but the recorded signal was easily strong enough to be heard through a headset or even transmitted on telephone wires. On the 1900 World Exposition in Paris, Poulsen had the chance to record the voice of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria which happens to be the oldest surviving magnetic audio recording today.  Poulsen developed an arc converter in 1908, referred to as the "Poulsen Arc Transmitter," which was widely used in radio before the advent of vacuum tube technology. A stamp was issued in honor of Poulsen in 1969.

10. Les Paul (born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915) is an American jazz guitarist and inventor. He is a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible."  His many recording innovations include overdubbing, delay effects such as "sound on sound" and tape delay, phasing effects, and multitrack recording.  In 1947, Capitol Records released a recording that had begun as an experiment in Paul's garage, entitled "Lover (When You're Near Me)", which featured Paul playing eight different parts on electric guitar, some of them recorded at half-speed, hence "double-fast" when played back at normal speed for the master. ("Brazil", similarly recorded, was the B-side.) This was the first time that multi-tracking had been used in a recording. These recordings were made not with magnetic tape, but with shellac disks. Paul would record a track onto a disk, then record himself playing another part with the first. He built the multi-track recording with overlaid tracks, rather than parallel ones as he did later. There is no record of how few "takes" were needed before he was satisfied with one layer and moved onto the next. 

Paul even built his own disc-cutter assembly, based on auto parts. He favored the flywheel from a Cadillac for its weight and flatness. Even in these early days, he used the shellac disk setup to record parts at different speeds and with delay, resulting in his signature sound with echoes and birdsong-like guitar riffs. When he later began using magnetic tape, the major change was that he could take his recording rig on tour with him, even making episodes for his 15-minute radio show in his hotel room. 

Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford at work recording during the late 1940s.After World War II, Jack Mullin brought the German Magnetophon (tape recorder) back to the USA in pieces, reassembled and first presented it to Bing Crosby, who used it for his radio program in the late 1940s. The Ampex company, with Crosby's backing, created the Ampex Model 200, the world's first commercially-produced reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. Bing Crosby gave Les Paul the second Model 200 to be produced and Les immediately saw its potential both for special effects, like echo and flanging, and its suitability for multitrack recording, for which he is considered the father. Using this machine, Paul developed his tape multitrack system by adding an additional recording head and extra circuitry, allowing multiple tracks to be recorded separately and asynchronously on the same tape. Paul's invention was quickly developed by Ampex into commercially-produced two-track and three-track recorders, and these machines were the backbone of the professional recording studio, radio and TV industry in the 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1954, Paul continued to develop this technology by commissioning Ampex to build the first eight track tape recorder, at his expense. The machine took three years to get working properly, and Paul says that by the time it was functional his music was out of favor and so he never had a hit record using it. His design, later known as "Sel-Sync," (Selective Synchronization) in which a specially-modified recording head could either record a new track or play back a previously-recorded one, was the core technology for multi-track recording for the next thirty years.

 Like Crosby, Paul and Ford also used the now-ubiquitous recording technique known as close miking, where the microphone is less than six inches from the singer's mouth. This produces a more intimate, less reverberant sound than is heard when a singer is a foot or more from the microphone. When implemented using a cardioid-patterned microphone, it emphasizes low-frequency sounds in the voice due to a cardioid microphone's proximity effect and can give a more relaxed feel because the performer isn't working so hard. The result is a singing style which diverged strongly from un-amplified theater-style singing, as might be heard in musical comedies of the 1930s and 40s.

 In the early 1950s, Paul made a number of revolutionary recordings with his wife, Mary Ford, who sang. These records were unique for their heavy use of overdubbing, which he did by recording to disc and bouncing from one disc to the other. The couple's hits included "How High the Moon", "Bye Bye Blues", "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", and "Vaya Con Dios". These songs featured Mary harmonizing with herself, giving the vocals a very novel sound.