Rupert Neve

Rupert Neve, born 31 July 1926 in Newton Abbot, England, is a British electronics engineer and entrepreneur, who is particularly known as a pioneering designer of professional audio recording equipment.

Neve is known for his work on microphone preamplifiers, equalizers, compressors and early large format mixing consoles. Many of his long discontinued products are considered classic equipment and are very highly sought after by the professionals in the recording industry. This has resulted in several companies releasing products that are Neve replicas or clones. He is often credited as the man who made the recording console. He was the third person to receive a Lifetime Achievement Technical Grammy Award 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. Dave Grohl has interviewed him in 2013 documentary Sound City.

Rupert Neve was born a British national although he spent much of his early childhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father was an agent for the British and Foreign Bible Society. He began designing audio amplifiers and radio receivers from age 13. The start of World War II increased demand for radios and Neve began repairing and selling radios. At 17 years of age he volunteered as a sailor for the British navy and soon after settled in England where he built a mobile recording studio in which he recorded choirs, operas, and public addresses.

In the 1950s, Neve worked for Rediffusion, primarily a forerunner in early cable TV systems. Neve left the company, and formed CQ Audio, a company specialising in the manufacture of hifi speaker systems. In the early 1960s, he designed and built a mixing console for a composer named Desmond Leslie, from Castle Leslie, Ireland, where the original desk is still housed. In 1961, he formed Neve Electronics.

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