Interesting blast from the past. I used to be the Sub Mastering Technician at AEI Rediffusion - I might have been the person who recorded those Argos programmes (from DAT tapes put together by our programmers) to Ampex 1 inch tape Sub Masters, from which the cassettes were then produced. What fun I had... especially considering we started recording the Christmas music programmes in June! I seem to remember that whatever the supposed 'theme' of a programme, Sade was always on it somewhere. She must have had shared in AEI!
@RediffusionMusic
9 ай бұрын
This is very interesting! One thing is for sure, at least the Christmas playlists were half decent back then. My day job has a system from a competing manufacturer to Mood Media and the Christmas rotation is just unhinged. More Christmas carols than the oh-so-overplayed top 20 Christmas tunes. I have a really good friend who worked at the main AEI offices in Seattle and he’s most certainly got some stories to tell. Head programmer at one point and a major part in developing the original ProFusion system. According to him in the US, AEI programmes had to have a certain percentage of the music be from the WEA label. One theme I certainly notice with my cassettes is the recurring instance of “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. But even still to this day, that song plays in every retail store constantly, it’s practically the retail “rick roll” at this point! If you go on archive (dot) org, there’s actually a full archive of American AEI propacs, from contemporary instrumentals, audio wardrobe and urban contemporary… it’s really quite niche!
@52split
9 ай бұрын
Yes bloody Sheryl Crow! She was in a hell of a lot of programmes. I also remember that the Gypsy Kings featured heavily too, completely regardless of the language theme. Starting the Christmas music in June was hard on the ears and the mind. Sometimes the people who were overseeing the tape duplicators would nip off for a cigarette and when they came back the master had mashed itself, forcing me to record it again! By Christmas I was ready to kill someone! I was at AEI Rediffusion in Orpington, Kent. Thanks for the reminders!@@RediffusionMusic
@benpickford9024
4 жыл бұрын
Great collection you have, nice to see this quality gear.
@RediffusionMusic
4 жыл бұрын
It's taken years though, many many years! 😂
@Woodroff2
4 жыл бұрын
I used to work for Morrisons many years ago, and we had an RM2 system there - one deck for music and the second deck for audio ads. It was quite a reliable system, though aei didn't install an RMa, they installed some cheap unmarked amp which we could guarantee the psu would fail on after being switched off for Easter and Xmas lol
@RediffusionMusic
4 жыл бұрын
Unmarked you say? Can you remember what it looked like at all? I'm thinking possibly an Integra MA6-120 amp... AEI installed lots of those.
@Woodroff2
4 жыл бұрын
@@RediffusionMusic nah I've googled the integra - it looks far too modern for what we had lol. It was a rack mount unit, (though it wasn't rack mounted, it just sat on the desk with the RM2 on top), quite big (easily twice the height of the integra) it was a light grey colour with chrome Handles on, and had a black volume knob on the right hand side, and an LED volume meter on the right hand side which was made of several rectangular green LED's mounted horizontally - the meter also showed the peak volume too by keeping the highest led lit for a couple of seconds. Im pretty sure it had a red neon power switch on the front too, though not 100% sure about that as it was later replaced with a more reliable one. I've also looked online and have never seen any pics of the RM2's with the ad playing tape deck in either - I thought they'd be pretty common but I guess not lol
@Woodroff2
4 жыл бұрын
So what was the difference between the RM1 and RM2 decks? Just an extra deck?
@RediffusionMusic
4 жыл бұрын
That and a better amp section, higher power with bass and treble controls. I had an RM2 at one point! - you can see it in my older videos if you have a skim through
@Woodroff2
4 жыл бұрын
@@RediffusionMusic so would the 2nd deck always be used for ads? Or can you have 2 music decks so technically an 8 hour music loop?
@RediffusionMusic
4 жыл бұрын
@@Woodroff2 either or, oodles of different modules were produced for them :D
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