Ed Dukstein BIO
Ed “Duke” Dukstein, like many of us interested in music, began playing drums in 5th grade. He joined the concert band, orchestra, jazz and marching bands in high school as a percussionist. During an electronics class, Ed met a guest speaker from Bell and Howell, who talked about Audio as an upcoming field in electronics. After graduating high school, Ed attended the University of Miami, [Coral Gables, Florida,] School of Music, Music Engineering Program. It was considered a major in Music and a minor in Electrical Engineering. The director of the programs at UM at the time was Bill Porter, Elvis Presley’s long time sound engineer. During his sophomore year, 1980, and for 8 years thereafter, he began working for a live sound company from Miami called Off-The-Wall Sound. While there, he worked for Blair Simmons. By his junior year, 1982, Ed was promoted to chief engineer and designing systems. He worked with Tina Turner, Greg Allman, Bobby McFerrin, Roberta Flack, Bob Hope, Ella Fitzgerald, among other superstars and Miami Sound Machine. In 1986 he became monitor engineer and drum tech for the Miami Sound Machine “Dr. Beat” and “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” tours.
In 1988 he returned to Pittsburgh and began working at AirCraft Studios in Dormont, Pa (a suburb of Pgh) where he met Vito DiSalvo. During late evenings with Vito at MHM Studio, Ed engineered five WE THREE albums, Eh Cumpari, Salute, Buona Festa, Con Amore, We Can Dance; John Bigante and WE Three’s Champagne and Best of Naples albums; Celestial Lite’s An Hour a Day and An Hour a Day Vol II albums; Matt Morgan with WE THREE double album and DVD for PBS; and Jack Bogut’s and Vito DiSalvo’s the Joys of Growing Up Italian, Big Sky Cafe, Mental Movies and Word Painter albums in addition to several Terry Harr, Jim Guerra, John Walters recordings and Fred Dancenko’s Russian Orthodox choir albums mixed and mastered in MHM Studios.
In 2000 he accepted a job with the Sextant Group, which in 2019 was acquired by NV5, which became NV5 Technology and Acoustics, a division of NV5 a large consulting, testing and engineering firm with a world-wide footprint. To date, Ed has become one of the industry’s leading designers of medical simulation and related systems, manikin and actor-based, as well as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, designing more than 100 Medical Simulation Centers.
In 1988 he returned to Pittsburgh and began working at AirCraft Studios in Dormont, Pa (a suburb of Pgh) where he met Vito DiSalvo. During late evenings with Vito at MHM Studio, Ed engineered five WE THREE albums, Eh Cumpari, Salute, Buona Festa, Con Amore, We Can Dance; John Bigante and WE Three’s Champagne and Best of Naples albums; Celestial Lite’s An Hour a Day and An Hour a Day Vol II albums; Matt Morgan with WE THREE double album and DVD for PBS; and Jack Bogut’s and Vito DiSalvo’s the Joys of Growing Up Italian, Big Sky Cafe, Mental Movies and Word Painter albums in addition to several Terry Harr, Jim Guerra, John Walters recordings and Fred Dancenko’s Russian Orthodox choir albums mixed and mastered in MHM Studios.
In 2000 he accepted a job with the Sextant Group, which in 2019 was acquired by NV5, which became NV5 Technology and Acoustics, a division of NV5 a large consulting, testing and engineering firm with a world-wide footprint. To date, Ed has become one of the industry’s leading designers of medical simulation and related systems, manikin and actor-based, as well as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, designing more than 100 Medical Simulation Centers.