Gemini Sound was established in 1981 by Audio Engineer David Wright, specialising at that time in high-quality real-time cassette duplication. David's own location recording activities had exposed a woeful lack of decent duplication facilities, so he decided to develop his own system which proved highly effective, soon attracting a circle of regular clients, a number of whom became firm friends and colleagues.
Very soon, David decided to launch his own cassette-based label 'Libra Realsound' with a set of 4 re-issues of some fine recordings originally released on the Crescent label. This was followed by a series of David's own recordings of instrumental and choral music, and his long collaboration with organist and harpsichordist Gerald Gifford was particularly fruitful.
David has long been an advocate of 'coincident' stereo, and the great majority of these recordings were made using just the legendary Calrec 'Soundfield' Microphone. His MkIV Soundfield purchased in 1985 has proved remarkably successful and is still in regular use, although these days it's not unusual to see it supported by the subtle use of a few spot mics.
The first few 'Libra' recordings were analogue - however the arrival of Sony's PCM-F1/Betamax digital recording system was eagerly welcomed, as indeed was their DTC-1000ES DAT recorder a few years later. The editing stage meant the analogue recorder was by no means yet redundant, in the absence of affordable digital editing. Nevertheless the limitations of traditional tape-splicing became increasingly irksome, and David succeeded in improving the success rate by using his wife's pinking shears instead of the usual EMI splicing block! He also devised and built a manual crossfader to deal with particularly intractable edits.
The advent of cost-effective digital editing in the late 80s eliminated many of these limitations, leading to a significant change of direction, and following the purchase of a Digidesign 'Sound Tools' workstation in 1991 David decided to concentrate on offering a comprehensive Location Recording, Digital Editing and Mastering Service, which continues to the present day. On sessions, DAT tape has largely given way to Digidesign's ProTools, enabling up to 18-tracks of recording, and even allowing some editing to take place on location.
David has been responsible for literally hundreds of CD productions for a variety of labels, featuring many fine choirs, singers and instrumentalists. His own long background as a choral singer, and his acquaintance with the pipe organ, has proved invaluable in his role as producer on quite a number of these projects. The pitch correction of a capella choral music, as well as early analogue source material, has become a particular speciality. The introduction of Altiverb reverberation software – enabling real acoustics to be sampled using 'convolution' technology – has been a major step forward in achieving a beautiful balance between musical performance and its sonic context.
One of the old 'Libra Realsound' collaborations, a recording of Percy Whitlock's music with organist Roderick Elms, was also to bear fruit in recent years. Roderick (producer) and David (engineer) have worked together on a number of projects, including several fine large-scale orchestral recordings, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, amongst others.
