This episode was written and produced by Marissa Flaxbart.

In the late 80s, a small French company found a way to pair analog film with pristine digital audio. But getting their system into theaters would involve a long legal battle, hiding out in a Vegas bathroom, and a last-ditch meeting with a famous director. Their struggle is part of a larger narrative about the groundbreaking work of women in the field of professional audio. Featuring audio engineer Leslie Gaston-Bird and LC Concept co-founder Elisabeth Löchen.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Greyleaf Willow by Resolute
Partly Sage by Bodytonic
Tralaga by Lillehammer
Building the Sled” by Resolute
Lahaina (No Uke) by Cloud Harbor
Rumoi Night by Kokura Station
In Your Dreams by Million Eyes
Partner of Doom by Walt Adams
Wah Jam by Gerhard Feng
Solving It by Frank Jonsson
Watching People Dance by Ave Air
Elsewhere by Watermark High
Magnolias by Steven Gutheinz

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View Transcript ▶︎

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

[music in]

Leslie: Every human has the right to express themselves, and what we do as audio engineers is, we're helping people tell their stories.

That’s Leslie Gaston-Bird.

Leslie: I'm an audio engineer. I am a Governor-at-Large for the Audio Engineering Society, and author of the book Women in Audio.

To write her book, Leslie collected almost 100 stories of audio pioneers. Leslie herself has worked in sound for decades. She’s been a classical pianist, she’s worked in radio, she’s been a post production mixer, and she’s been a college professor. These days, she spends most of her time mixing and sound editing.

Leslie: I would say mixing is my favorite. I think the reason why is because I did a lot of work restoring films early in my post sound career. So, when I first got my start, we would have these films from Sony Columbia pictures like The Mad Room.

[SFX Clip: Mad Room clip]: Unfortunately, Mrs. Armstrong had to leave town on business. But I am sure, when she returns, we will be able to tell her we have gone over the top and we have given until it hurts.]

Leslie: So as we were doing these restorations for the film, I would listen to the dialogue track, take out any clicks or pops or ticks [sfx: clicks on pops] so that we could re-release these titles on DVD.

Leslie’s experience in audio means she has a personal connection to the stories in her book.

Leslie: There are stories that broke my heart, there are stories that inspired me. I think my favorite story in the book was the story of Elisabeth Löchen. She worked with a man named Pascal Chedeville, and together they started a company called LC Concept Systems, L stood for Löchen, C stood for Chedeville. And I thought to myself, LC Concept Systems, where have I heard that before? It was a blip sort of on the history timeline.

So Leslie started digging. She quickly realized that this was much bigger than a blip in audio history. It was a story about film’s transition from analog to digital. Even more than that, it was a story of David taking on Goliath.

[music in]

Elisabeth: I'm Elisabeth Löchen. I have a story which is unusual.

In the 1980s, Elisabeth was the head of a recording studio in France. She and her business partner, Pascal, noticed that after a movie had been in theaters for a couple of weeks, the filmmakers would start complaining about the sound quality.

Elisabeth: After two weeks, when you go to the theater, when the black came, the first thing you were listening was (static sound). It was terrible.

Back then, movies were shipped to theaters with the audio physically printed onto the 35 millimeter film. As that film was run through projectors over and over again, the sound would degrade [sfx: Dallas’s sentence starts to degrade as he speaks]. These were the same pops and clicks that Leslie was fixing when she worked on those film restorations. Meanwhile, in the world outside the movie theater, digital audio like the CD was becoming more and more common.

Elisabeth: And Pascal and I, we were like, "Okay. We don't get it. Now we are entering the digital era and we're still in analog? Why?”

Their idea was to make a digital audio track for movies that wouldn’t degrade.

Elisabeth: We said, "Okay. Either the digital sound has to be on the film or next to the film." We discovered very quickly that putting the sound on the film was a nightmare because you don't have room.

Putting digital audio onto an analog film wasn’t a great solution. For one thing, it was hard to compress all of that information into the tiny spaces at the edge of the film strip. On top of that, the audio track would eventually get worn-down, leading to the same problems as before.

Elisabeth: So we decided that the best medium for a digital sound was a digital medium.

[music out]

Elisabeth and her partner came up with a system where timecode was printed onto the film. The audio files were stored separately, on what was basically a high-capacity CD. The problem with this method, was the time it took to read those timecodes, and trigger the proper audio files. This would sometimes cause a delay between the picture and the sound.

Elisabeth: And at that point, was a big problem that nobody ever succeeded to do until we arrived on the market.

Elisabeth: How to stay in sync with no silence and no limitation of missing sound.

Eventually, they found a way to do it by using something called a “buffer memory.” Essentially, it’s a way to keep a device running smoothly, by giving it a small amount of short-term storage that it can quickly scan through. That way, it doesn’t always have to search through its larger, long-term storage. In this case, the buffer memory went between the projector and the audio disc. This guaranteed that the audio would stay in sync, with no lag. Elisabeth has a much more poetic way of explaining it.

[music in]

Elisabeth: Let's imagine, you have a rose, a flower in the desert [sfx: desert wind and ambience] and you have to put water on this flower [sfx: heavy stream of water], but this flower cannot stay one second without water because if not, she will die. How can you do that? You have a big, big tank full of water but you have to change the tank sometimes because the tank is empty. So how do you do, still being able to give some water to your flower? You put a tiny tank between the big one and the flower [sfx: light stream of water]. And so while you are changing the big tank, the tiny tank is still giving water.

So, the small water tank is the buffer memory, and it makes sure that the flower (which is the movie) is always given a constant supply of water—or audio signal.

Elisabeth: Simple. The idea was very simple.

Elisabeth and her partner patented their technology, under the name of their company, LC Concept.

Elisabeth: And that was the secret of the patent.

Elisabeth: Having a buffer between the disc and the projector so whatever could happen, the sound will always stay in sync without a silence or without a noise.

[music out]

Pascal didn’t speak English, so Elisabeth became the company’s global spokesperson. At one point, they even flew to the US, and presented their new technology at Skywalker Sound. That’s the studio behind the sound of Star Wars, ET, Indiana Jones, and tons of other movies. But Elisabeth and Pascal weren’t the only ones who realized that digital audio was the way of the future.

Elisabeth: We discovered that everybody was kind of thinking the same way we were thinking.

Pretty soon, this two-person team was competing with giant companies like Kodak and Dolby.

[music in]

Elisabeth: I remember Kodak spent millions of dollars to have their first prototype. And we were like just my partner and I and we had no money. I had just divorced and already filing for a patent is tremendously expensive. We were only two in a tiny, tiny office, dirty, full of mold, and we were facing these huge giants.

To defend her patent, Elisabeth went to the organization that regulates film and TV guidelines in France.

Elisabeth: And I went to see them and I say, "Guys, we patented our system." And they were like, "Okay. You know you're fighting against Kodak and Dolby?" And I remember I looked at them and I say, “Dolby and Kodak, they are two, and Pascal and I, we are two, it's a good fight. Okay. That's a good deal.” And they looked at me and thought, "She's crazy. She's insane." Everybody thought I was totally insane when I started to do that because I had no connection with the movie business. and I had no money, and I had my two kids.

Elisabeth: I felt so tiny and I was so tiny. I was a microbe against these giants.

Elisabeth: It was like David against Goliath.

[music out]

Over the next few years, LC Concept managed to get a few major films to use their system, especially in France.

Leslie: LC Concept was used for Cyrano de Bergerac [SFX Clip: Cyrano Music], and it was used for Basic Instinct.

[SFX Clip: Basic Instinct clip Why have you waived your right to an attorney Miss Tramell? Why did you think I wouldn’t want one? I told them you wouldn’t want to hide. I have nothing to hide.]

In the US, Dolby debuted their technology with Tim Burton’s Batman Returns.

[SFX clip: Batman Returns Trailer Clip I've been down here too long. It's time for me to ascend.

From the sewers of Gotham, a new villain emerges…]

Unlike LC Concept, both Kodak and Dolby were printing digital audio directly onto films, rather than syncing it with a disc. Of course, this could lead to the exact same popping and hissing they were trying to avoid. But a new challenger was about to enter the ring. It was called DTS.

[music in]

Leslie: DTS, Digital Theater Systems, is a sound format where the time code is printed on the film and that time code drives a CD rom, and that's how you hear the sound. So I did a little research, and I went back and I found Elisabeth and Pascal Chedeville's patent for the LC Concept system, which involved time code printed on a film, which drove a compact disc player.

In other words, DTS was using a technology that was almost exactly like the one that LC Concept had already patented. Elisabeth first learned about DTS at a convention in Brussels.

Elisabeth: I met a man who was working for American people. I told him that we were presenting our digital sound system and he looked at me like if I was crazy and he said, "But we have one digital system in United States which is called DTS."

But Elisabeth knew that she and her partner were the first ones to get a patent.

Elisabeth: And I say, "Oh. Oh. Good point. What year of the patent?" And it's how the fight started.

[music out]

Patents exist to protect inventors, but that protection only works if you can prove that your patent has been violated. If your competitor has expensive lawyers and big corporations on their side, good luck.

Elisabeth: Having a patent is not enough because even if you have the patent, you have to enforce it.

Elisabeth was willing to work out an arrangement with DTS, but the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement.

Elisabeth: I told them, "We just keep Europe and you can just take the rest of the world," which I found it was fair. No, they wanted the whole world.

DTS offered to buy the patent, but Elisabeth wasn’t happy with the offer.

Elisabeth: The amount of money was so insulting that I went out of the negotiation room and I never came back. I think they thought that they just could kill us because when you fight for a patent, it costs you zillions of dollars, especially when you're fighting these giants.

Worst of all, DTS was just about to make its global, cinema debut with a little movie called Jurassic Park.

[SFX clip: Jurassic Park Clip Hold onto your butts]

Elisabeth: He told me that they will release the DTS system in 1,000 theaters for the release of Jurassic Park. (Gulp) And I was like, "Wow."

[music in]

Elisabeth knew that Jurassic Park would be a make-or-break moment for her patent. As a last resort, she decided to appeal directly to the movie’s director, Stephen Spielberg. She tried to get in touch with him, but all of her attempts were fended off by lawyers. She needed to find some way to talk to him face to face. So, she packed her bags and got on a flight to Hollywood.

That’s coming up after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

In the late 1980s, a 2-person French company called LC Concept developed a groundbreaking new piece of film technology. The system they patented allowed for films to be shown in theaters with pristine digital sound. Soon, they were in a patent war with an American company called DTS, who released their competing system with Steven Spielberg’s, Jurassic Park [sfx: dinosaur roar].

[music out]

Over in France, LC Concept had the advantage. The patent was issued there, and the system had already been used in several big French movies. So when Jurassic Park premiered in France, Elisabeth got a court order preventing the DTS system from being used. [sfx: Projector + faint Jurassic Park theme]

Leslie: They had police officers [sfx: police radio switches] in the projection booth to make sure that the DTS soundtrack was not used for that film, because of the patent infringement that she was litigating.

She decided that her only hope was to talk to Stephen Spielberg directly. So she traveled to the US, leaving her kids behind in France. She was practically broke, sleeping on friends' couches, and out of options.

Elisabeth: I had no money and I was like, almost giving up, until the big film convention in Vegas.

[music in]

Elisabeth found out that Steven Spielberg would be at a film convention, so she bought a ticket. But she still had no idea how she’d actually get to him. At the convention, a friend arranged to meet her near the director’s greenroom. This friend said that if she appeared at exactly the right moment, they could walk into the greenroom together, without raising any red flags. So Elisabeth hid in a nearby bathroom stall for hours, waiting for her chance. Occasionally, a security guard would do a sweep of the bathroom. When Elisabeth heard them come in, she would just pull up her feet so they wouldn’t see her.

Elisabeth: I hid myself in the restroom for 10 hours, and I was able to meet Spielberg. I just jumped on the man. I started to talk to him and we had a long conversation.

Leslie: She was in the green room, and she went up to Steven Spielberg, and she said, "I didn't know what to do. I just told him my story, you know, I'm out of money litigating this stuff and I'm just a little woman from France.”

[music out]

For Elisabeth, this was her last chance.

Elisabeth: I couldn't eat. It was like the end of the road. My patent lawyers stopped working with me because they say, "Well, you don't have any more money." And really, the day when I met Spielberg was my last shot. My last shot.

After explaining her situation, she gave Speilberg her card, in the hopes that he would get in touch about finding a solution.

[music in]

Leslie: The next day she heard from Steven Spielberg's lawyers, and they said, "Work it out." And so they worked it out.

Elisabeth: Spielberg called back Universal saying “Now, I want you to find a solution with her.”

That’s when things finally turned around in her legal battle.

Elisabeth: I have to admit that thanks to Mr. Spielberg, they accepted to reopen the negotiation to get our patent.

Elisabeth: I have to say that without him, we wouldn't be able to resume the fight.

Eventually, the two sides came to an agreement, and DTS bought the patent from LC Concept. Elisabeth had stood her ground, and all of her hard work had finally paid off.

[music out]

Of course, technology is always evolving, and the system that Elisabeth pioneered wouldn’t be around for long. Remember, this method was designed for pairing digital audio with analog video. Before long, video also went digital, making this system obsolete. Today, only a tiny fraction of movie theaters even have projectors for 35 millimeter films.

[music in]

The year after the patent battle, all of the major players won Oscars for bringing digital sound to movie theaters. Dolby was honored for their system. DTS got an award for theirs. As for LC Concept, also known as, Löchen Chedeville Concept? For that award, rather than honoring the two-person team, the Oscar went to her partner, Pascal Chedeville.

Elisabeth: I remember that Dolby, they were like 15 on the stage, and DTS, they were like 12 on the stage. And only my partner got the award. Everybody, I mean, they were all coming to my table congratulating me, and I say, "I didn't get the award," and they say, "Yeah. Yeah. But you know who did that." "Yeah, but I didn't get the award.” That was a very hard moment. A moment where I was just crying in the Academy, "It's not me who got the award," and everybody told me, "Yeah, but we know who was behind." And I say, “Yeah, but I would love to be out there to get the award also.”

The way Elisabeth saw it...

Elisabeth: I was a woman, so I didn't get anything.

[music out]

When Leslie heard this story, she was blown away.

Leslie: I got all this information, we got off Skype. My heart was pounding. And I walked out of my house up to a hill nearby our house where there's a park [sfx], and I looked up at the sky and I'm like, "Holy crap. This is a big responsibility. Writing this book, this is not a research paper I'm writing here. Women are trusting me with these stories to get out.” The weight of that hit me and I’m like, “This is not a whimsical endeavor. This is serious history that I'm writing about.”

[music in]

Elisabeth: Remember, we were in 1990, and at that point women in the sound business were like fly in milk. Almost no women were working a sound business.

Elisabeth: I remember we had our first demonstration. It's so funny, but they were just looking at me when I was presenting and introducing our machine and I literally clearly read in their eyes, "She is French. She is a female. How is it possible she found the solution?” And it was so clear.

Elisabeth: Because I was a woman, I was not a real technical woman, even if it was like my butt in the projection booth dealing with all these machines but I was only a woman.

Once social media came around, Leslie started hearing lots of similar stories.

Leslie: I started seeing a lot more through social media with other women who were saying, "Has this ever happened to you, when you go to a gig and you get a client and the client asks for the sound engineer and you have to say, ‘Well, I'm the sound engineer,’ and they look at you sideways?” And lots of people were saying, "Yeah, that's happened to me. Yeah, hey, that's happened to me, too." This sort of renaissance I guess, was happening with women who needed to find each other in these ways.

[music out]

In the last few decades, things have started to change.

Elisabeth: You have a lot of women who are now sound engineers. I'm happy for the other women. It really opened to them.

Leslie: When I went to National Public Radio, half of the tech staff were women. I thought it was completely natural to have large numbers of women, in the case of D.C., large numbers of women of color.

But we still have a long way to go.

[music in]

Leslie: If you're looking for a woman working in audio, you can find them everywhere.

Leslie: The problem is they're not as visible, and unfortunately, the numbers are low. If there are 200,000 sound engineers in the United States, probably only 5% of them are women.

Leslie: Every year, if you ask an educator, “How many women are you letting into your program, or how many women more specifically, are applying to your program?” They say, "Oh, I let in about 75 kids and maybe 10 are women." This number is repeated time and again, especially in the United States. “How many kids in your program?” “500.” “How many are women?” “30.”

Leslie: So the question of why, there are fewer women in audio, and women of color in audio, is something that takes a lot of unpacking.

Leslie: And this phenomenon has to do with the sense that a technical space is a male space, and a music recording studio is a male space.

There’s a concept called the “leaky pipeline” that seems to apply here. The idea is that early in their lives, lots of women are interested in careers involving engineering, math and science. But over time, there’s a phenomenon where many of these women leak out of that career path.

Leslie: You get a lot of young girls saying, "Yeah, I'd love to be a music producer. I'd love to be a music engineer.” That number keeps going down, at age 15, maybe 30% say they want to do it. At age 18, maybe 20% want to do it. By the time they are actually enrolling into a program, the number goes down to 10%. And so, what happened? What happened to the 13 year old who thought it would be cool, who now doesn't?

[music out]

Every woman in Leslie’s book made it through that pipeline.

[music in]

Leslie: You've got to look at the story of Marie Louise Killick; she invented the Sapphox Stylus. There are successful hardware and software engineers like EveAnna Manley if you look up Manley Labs, another really amazing story is the story of Robin Coxe-Yeldham who was a Berklee professor, she was dubbed the godmother of audio education.

These women all have unique experiences, but Leslie says there’s one thing they agree on. Here she is on the Amps Podcast.

[SFX Clip The one thing that unites all these stories is we don’t want to be “women in audio.” We are audio engineers. And that’s that. Across the board, everybody I interviewed just wants to be an “audio engineer.” And the fact that we need a book called “Women in Audio” is telling.]

Leslie says that part of her goal is to help connect this network of women.

Leslie: Because once you find yourself interested in something, you need to be able to network with people. Once you find yourself interested in an area, you need a job. We need women working in the field so that we have the representation that I know a lot of people are saying we so desperately need.

The world of professional audio is constantly evolving. There are always new technologies to develop, and new problems to solve. In order to move forward, we’re gonna need lots of creative minds working on these things. Because you never know where, or who, the next big idea will come from.

Leslie: We need to expose girls to music technology, soldering, electronics, and keep them interested so that they follow through, so that we're fixing the leak in the pipeline and get away from this notion of, “A recording studio is a place where just guys are.”

Leslie’s book Women in Audio is fantastic, and in my opinion, essential reading for anyone in audio. There are stories about female 70s rock, location sound recording, MTV, podcasting, video game audio, and so much more. Women in Audio is available anywhere books are sold, and I highly recommend you pick it up.

[music out]

[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more at defacto sound dot com. This episode was written and produced by Marissa Flaxbart, and Casey Emmerling. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound edited by Soren Begin. It was sound designed and mixed by Colin Devarney.

Thanks to our guests, Leslie Gaston-Bird and Elisbeth Löchen. Thanks also to the AMPS podcast, for letting us use a clip from their show. AMPS stands for the Association of Motion Picture Sound, and you can find their show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]