“Ultimately, the product is the experience the music maker has when they’re manifesting their creativity”: Bill Putnam Jr on Universal Audio Apollo ConstellationsAt 7 am on the morning of our interview, Bill Putnam Jr wakes up to a text from members of his all-time favourite band, the Grateful Dead. They’re asking for three more Universal Audio Apollo interfaces.
As CEO of UA, is this part of Putnam’s typical morning? Not quite — usually, it’s coffee, meditation for 15 minutes, creative writing for three pages, and maybe taking a moment outside in the Santa Cruz air before working on that day’s project. Among the least pleasant parts of his day, he says, is taking Zoom meetings — “After a few Zooms, my creativity and my productivity go down,” he says.
He’s speaking to us, quite pleasantly over Zoom, five days ahead of the UA Apollo Constellations launch, which packs the brand’s biggest releases in 2024. This includes an upgrade to the lineup of beloved Apollo X audio interfaces, the Topline Vocal Suite, UAD Guitar Amp plugins, and the announcement of the Apollo Monitor Correction, in collab with Sonarworks. You might think Putnam would be overwhelmed by the imminent campaign. Actually, this is his “coasting period,” he says with a chuckle. With everything planned far in advance, he can watch the drop from afar.
In any case, UA and Putnam are approaching this release with a distinct principle: ”Yes, we make things,” says Putnam, “but ultimately, the product is the experience the music maker has when they’re manifesting their creativity. That’s the dopamine hit, that excitement of having an idea in your head and making it real. That’s the product.”
Universal Audio Apollo Twin X Gen 2, as part of Apollo Constellations. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
The Apollo Constellations launch is a big deal for Universal Audio; not just because the California-based brand expects some attention from music creators, but also because each product is “built on our passions,” says Putnam.
“When I look at the Constellations launch — the updated Apollos, Topline, AutoGain, the Apollo Monitor Correction and the Guitar Amp plugins… I know the detail we went to on each one, and how much heart and soul each person on that team put into it. That’s what’s cool. That’s what gets me excited. We channel this incredible amount of creativity and passion, and we do it in service of something that I can really believe in, which is music makers.”
Since the Constellations announcement on 8 October, the response to the Apollo X Gen 2 has been mixed. The new line of audio interfaces sports a slightly updated design, new 24-bit 192kHz AD/DA converters, built-in Auto-Gain and bass management features, plus new modes for alternate monitoring to switch between immersive and stereo setups. The Apollo Monitor Correction powered by Sonarworks is set to be included in a firmware update in November 2024 for Gen 1 and Gen 2 Apollo interfaces but isn’t available at launch.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Some social media commentary suggests it’s not worth upgrading to Gen 2 Apollo X if you’re already an owner. Other reviewers, such as AudioTechnology, have commended the lineup for its “extremely powerful features”. We’re currently putting the new models to the test to figure out who’s right, with results to be published soon.
Meanwhile, Putnam remains firm that the new Apollo X family is a positive for UA and its customers.
“This is the first time we’ve updated every single Apollo in our product line,” he says, and explains that one of UA’s main ambitions is to create tools that “work better together.” To that end, he adds: “These are the best sounding Apollos ever; we’ve increased the dynamic range, reduced the THD and noise, added an Auto-gain feature, and the headphone monitoring across the board has improved significantly. And the hardware and software — we want to make it easy and seamless to use it.”
Putnam has seen his share of major launches. It’s been 25 years since he revived Universal Audio, which his father, Bill Putnam, founded in 1958 before its closure in 1965. The team at this revived UA has overseen several high-profile product announcements, with the Luna DAW in 2020 being the most recent — this included an extravagant space-themed booth and demo station in the Anaheim Convention Centre for The NAMM Show 2020.
Despite his lineage, Putnam never imagined himself at the helm of a company that’s revered for its ambitious catalogue of audio products. He was studying to become a physics professor at Stanford and figured that music was “dad’s thing…I love my dad. I learned so much from him, but I wanted to strike out on my own,” Putnam says.
Bill Putnam Jr with a portrait of Bill Putnam Sr. Image: Universal Audio
Putnam Sr wasn’t just the original founder of Universal Audio and UREI — responsible for legendary LA-2A and 1176 compressors — but was also an audio engineer, producer and studio designer. Before his passing in 1989 at age 69, he worked with Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, among other legends, (“The first live music I saw was Duke Ellington; I was in sessions with my dad, Ella Fitzgerald, and Bing Crosby”, says Putnam Jr). Through his achievements, Putnam Sr became known as ‘the father of modern recording.’
“How can you live up to that?” laughs Putnam Jr. Still, a young Putnam picked up plenty from his father: they’d build HAM radios together and explore the art of problem-solving. Music, of course, was a staple in the family. “[Dad] had all sorts of talents that I didn’t pick up on,” adds Putnam. “I’m not the audio engineer he was, I’m not a recording engineer, I don’t build recording studios like he did…But his love of technology I did pick up on. To me, technology is still magic.”
His passion for music and technology converged unexpectedly in his adolescence, when he was still adamant about not following in his father’s footsteps. After his mother passed away when he was 17, Putnam Jr dropped out of school, got a job at a digital audio company — “that’s where I learned digital signal processing in the 80s” — and was recommended some new music by a friend.
“It was the Grateful Dead. They were coming to California, we went and saw them, and that changed my life,” says Putnam. “Suddenly, I went out; I left home. I got on the road with a backpack, some shoes I borrowed from my brother and hitchhiked and met people and just travelled across the country seeing the band.
“That’s when I saw what music can do to really drive culture and energize a tribe. The band really pushed limits in technology. So that’s when I found out what I wanted to do, and it was music technology.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
In 1998, Bill and his brother, Jim Putnam, began reviving their dad’s audio brand, combining both their fields of expertise: “[Jim] was very analogue and I was very digital. We kind of argued with each other, and decided to do both…The vision was: there’s no reason I felt that digital audio couldn’t sound every bit as good and vibey as analogue and have that soul and depth. So let’s have it both ways.”
Now, with a global team of over 200 employees and hundreds of products, Putnam says: “[UA] means more to me than I ever knew.”
He still thinks technology is magic, too — even the tech that appears frightening at first. “I don’t think I’m ever going to lose this childlike glee with new technology. I still love new stuff,” he says. “And obviously, the most recent being everything that AI is bringing, both good and bad.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Putnam’s pretty relaxed about AI, excited even. He uses it to assist with prompts for his daily writing exercises and makes it known that Luna has some “important features” that are AI-based — “we don’t make a big deal of it,” he says. The UA CEO has been deep into neural networks and pattern recognition since studying for his master’s degree, with artificially generated music being a focus. However, he caveats that it has taken him into a “negative mind spiral” of wondering what happens when anyone can make music with a single line of text and a ‘Generate’ button. But, as his woodworking hobby proved to him, it’s much less about the result and more about the process.
“What AI means to Universal Audio is less important than what it means to the music-making community and the overall professional community,” he says. “Obviously, if a computer can make music fool a listener as to whether it was created by a human or a computer, it’s certainly provocative. And then I realised, [with woodworking], I will never make a piece of furniture as well as I can go out and buy one. …Yet I find joy in making. We’re makers — humans are creative beasts, you know? I can press a button right now and make music better than I’ll ever be able to, yet playing music with friends is still one of the biggest joys.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Putnam is fortunate to have an impressive network of friends to jam with. He and some colleagues at UA get together once a month but, during the COVID pandemic, he was testing online collaborative platforms and jamming with some special guests: Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead and Jay Lane, the drummer of the Wolf Brothers Band with Weir.
“Bob Weir reached out to me because he knew I was at Stanford, and he knew I was a geek and whatever,” Putnam says casually. “And so [Weir] was very keen on [online collaboration], because he is unstoppable. He wants to keep playing! We were online every day just trying out different online jamming things. That was fun — I get to do a lot of crazy fun stuff that’s not in my job description. But I’m super interested in [collaborative platforms] but latency is the challenge.”
Could we see a Universal Audio platform arise from his findings? Maybe. If you want.
“It’s certainly something we can do, given the technology we’ve already developed. But it just comes down to, ‘Is it worth the effort and also a great fit for our customers and what they want to do?’”
uring our conversation Putnam frequently stresses the importance of the customer and their needs. Although the immediate impact of Apollo X Gen 2 has been seen as lacklustre by some, the Constellations launch as a whole is focused on offering inspiration to all types of music makers. That’s also why UA recently made Luna a free download, too.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
With the Apollo Constellations launch, UA is heading into territory that’s already crowded: guitar amp plugins, a vocal tuning plugin, channel strip emulations, audio interfaces and room monitoring correction. Putnam praises the wealth of “amazing pedal companies” out there creating stellar products — particularly as a guitarist himself — and says that he’s always nervous about new releases. Fortunately for him and his team, UA already has a strong lineup of artists using its pedals and emulations. Including…
“Dream ’65 Reverb was the [UA pedal] I always used, which is the deluxe reverb model,” says Putban. “But now I’ve been using Ruby ’63 because Bob Weir uses Ruby on all his stuff. That and the Lion’68 are all available in software now, so it’s about spreading our product line.”
“Being able to connect and give something back to folks who’ve inspired me — it’s a special pleasure, and I don’t take it lightly. Sometimes I forget because I’m so effing busy! But I’ll tell you, my favourite moments are when I’m taking a walk in Santa Barbara, and I’ve got my UA Spark shirt on and someone’s like, “Oh, I love your shirt! How’d you get it?” And I just love that moment and the excitement — to hear someone, whether they’re the biggest stars we work with or someone I just run into on the street,​​ say: “I couldn’t have made my last album without you,” that’s super special. I mean, how lucky are we?”
Read more MusicTech digital cover features. 
The post “Ultimately, the product is the experience the music maker has when they’re manifesting their creativity”: Bill Putnam Jr on Universal Audio Apollo Constellations appeared first on MusicTech.