PreSonus has announced the death of Bob Tudor, the company’s widely admired, respected and beloved Chief Technology Officer. A legend in the pro audio/MI industry, Tudor followed a long and winding road to PreSonus. A child prodigy, he studied piano with Arthur Rubinstein protégé and Julliard fellow Josephine Bacher. Tudor later studied electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute but switched to the Berklee College of Music, where he studied film scoring, jazz and music production. He cofounded Boston’s Metropolis recording studio and recorded such well-known acts as Peter Wolf/J.Geils Band, Extreme, Aime Mann, New Kids on the Block and Bobby Brown. He also played keyboards and acoustic piano on numerous records as a studio musician and remixed “Cradle of Love” for Billy Idol.
Fascinated with how gear worked, Tudor eventually combined his passions for music and engineering, creating a long list of companies, products and technologies. As one of the pioneers at Mackie Designs, he created the company’s line of digital mixers, hard-disk recorders and control surfaces. After leaving Mackie, he founded SaneWave, where he developed products for a wide assortment of pro audio manufacturers.
Overall, Tudor and the SaneWave team had designed more than 100 products, including such hits as the TASCAM US-2400 Control Surface and X-48 Hard Disk Multitrack Audio Recorder, Electro-Voice DC-1 Speaker Processor, M-Audio ProjectMix and Lexicon MX-500 FX Processor. He did additional projects for QSC, Samson, Shure, Alesis, Gibson, Fender and many others. One of SaneWave’s best clients was PreSonus, for which he helped define and design the FaderPort and the StudioLive digital mixer line. That led to his decision to join the company full time in 2008.
As Chief Technology Officer, Tudor oversaw all PreSonus advanced development activities and evaluated and implemented emerging technologies that have been utilized in many of the company’s most successful products. Along with PreSonus CSO Jim Odom, he developed the strategic direction of the company’s innovative products and technologies.
Jim Mack, PreSonus CEO, said, “Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of working with Bob, or even interacting with him at events or trade shows, was likely touched by his energy, enthusiasm and passion for technology and, specifically, technology that allowed people to make better music.”