The Company: In 1983 veteran recording engineer Gary Ladinsky launched Design FX Audio, a company dedicated exclusively to serving the recording community with rental equipment and full support. While the rental division, still called DFX Audio, is still their main operation, there are now four other divisions: Design FX Remote Recording, Design FX Systems, Design FX Service Center and the newest, Design FX’s Transfer House. The combination of these five divisions offers the recording, film and television industries a full array of equipment and services—provided and serviced by their experienced staff.
How Design FX Grew: Working as a recording engineer for The Record Plant and as a free lance engineer, Ladinsky began accumulating and renting vintage and emerging digital audio gear––which led him to start Design FX Audio as a full time rental business.
In 1991, owner Gary Ladinsky bought and remodeled a remote truck from The Record Plant, remodeled and redesigned it and started the Remote Recording division. Over the years, the company has done recording for hundreds of live performances (from rock to opera) as well as MTV Unplugged shows, the Grammys and the Academy Awards.
The company then added its Systems division, the part of the company that specifically handles anything that relates to computers, primarily Digidesign/Avid Pro Tools. They advertise it as “the industry professional’s lifeboat in the tumultuous sea of hard disk recording and editing.” They excel at assessing what the client needs and assembling and interfacing all the right components for the clients recording needs. Design FX Audio’s extensive inventory of both analog and digital recording and playback devices enables them to offer their Transfer House, which allows people to archive copy or convert any project from one format to another. Design FX Audio’s Service Center offers a full service repair center performing repairs on everything from state of the art digital equipment to vintage recording gear.
The Owner: Gary Ladinsky began his career in pro audio in 1971 as a recording engineer with The Record Plant Studio in Los Angeles, working with everyone from Bill Withers and Quincy Jones to the Eagles, Steven Stills and Joe Walsh. After years of assistant engineering and engineering experience, Gary went out on his own, working with artists like Van Morrison, Dan Fogelberg, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cheap Trick, Moody Blues, Molly Hatchett and Blue Oyster Cult. In his early years of running Design FX, Ladinsky worked as a scoring mixer on many major motion pictures and TV shows, including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Naked Gun, The Naked Gun II, Trains, Planes & Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Weird Science, Ace Ventura, Star Trek: The Next Generation and MacGyver.
Contact Design FX, 818-843-6555
by Jonathan Widran
