Andy Bereza


Andy Bereza was born at Penley Hospital, Wales in 1949. He has a younger brother and sister Stanislaw and sister Marysia.

Career

After moving to London in his early 20s to study a degree in electronics, he embarked on a notable career as an electronics engineer. He built cutting edge audio mixers in partnership with Ivor Taylor for bands such as Pink Floyd, The Who and The Bee Gees. In 1969, he was obliged to resuscitate a loss-making company with the help of "old man Batiste" called Allen & Heath, which to this day still specialises in the manufacture of audio mixing consoles.
In the early 1970s, Andy Bereza formed a company called AB Audio.

Portastudio

Andy Bereza's audio engineering career peaked in 1979 with the creation of the Portastudio, finally developed by TASCAM. The Portastudio was a device which enabled artists, for the first time, to carry a "portable studio" around with them. Although today, with digital technology, portable recorders are almost ubiquitous; at the time, the Portastudio revolutionized how artists recorded music. It was the first device that had four inputs for microphones and a tape recorder to record four simultaneous tracks. This meant that musicians, for the first time, could record almost studio quality music whenever and wherever they liked.