About Seneschal

Seneschal
The Presidio of San Francisco
California USA 94129
1-415-750-1659

e-mail us for more information…

Seneschal is owned and operated by Oliver A. Masciarotte, a 28 year veteran of the professional audio and digital production industries. After finishing his schooling with two certificates from MIT’s Lowell Institute School, he worked for manufacturers such as dbx, ADS, Lexicon and Neotek. While at Analog & Digital Systems in 1977, he had the opportunity to work as a tech on the world's first consumer digital audio product, a reverberation synthesizer. After his stint at ADS, he tech’d for Lexicon on their first generation of professional digital reverberators, the legendary 224.

Moving into production, he was hired as staff engineer at Criteria Recording in North Miami, where he worked on a broad range of gold and platinum hits and Grammy winners. During that time in South Florida, he became a Staff Lecturer at the University of Miami, Coral Gables in the Music Engineering department. Mr. Masciarotte helped guide several current industry captains through their formative years before leaving for the Midwest. At the Optimage division of Philips NV in Chicago, he worked with a small team of engineers on first generation authoring tools for CD-i, the premier digital optical distribution format and ancestor of the wildly popular DVD. His time in The Windy City also provided the opportunity to sell a then-new product, CD-R or recordable Compact Discs.

After leaving Philips, he was hired as the 12th employee by a small company in San Francisco involved in pioneering desktop CD production and restoration systems, Sonic Solutions. He held the positions, first of Support, then Training Manager prior to his departure to form his own company. During his time at Sonic, he participated in the creation of CD-V, VCD and DVD production systems. The dawn of DVD saw his founding, along with industry veteran Gary Hall, of the first independent, full service facility for DVD production, dHouse. After leaving his creation in capable hands, he has concentrated on consulting and engineering with his own professional services gig, Seneschal.

From 1997 to the present, Seneschal has helped pro audio, forensic and new media practitioners and manufacturers make the most of their investments. Past clients in the new media space range from radio and television broadcasters to international law enforcement agencies. During that time, he also provided marketing muscle to top IT vendors such as Hitachi Data Systems, Pirus Networks/Sun Microsystems, Seagate - XIOtech and Ricoh SV, through his work with the “SAN Warriors” at The Storage Consulting Group. In 2005, Mr. Masciarotte joined Sonic Studio, to provide marketing communications services.

Oliver has been a contributing editor of Surround Professional, dB magazines, and Mix Magazine. He is also an active member of the San Francisco chapter of the SMPTE.

Seneschal (sen eh shall) noun :
{of Gothic & Old High German origin}

1. In feudal times, an agent or bailiff in charge of a lord's estate
2. That guy on the horse

A seneschal was a trusted servant of the household, an agent or steward in charge of a lord’s holdings in feudal times. The historic seneschal of the Middle Ages was responsible to the “Lord of the Manor” for the efficient administration of the estate. As senior servant, he had his authority and responsibility invested directly by his lord. In some versions of the Arthurian legends, King Arthur made Sir Kay his seneschal.

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