Marc Aubort, legendary Grammy winning recording engineer and producer, died peacefully at his home in Connecticut on Sunday, March 19, 2023.  He was 93.

Born in Switzerland on April 27, 1929, Marc Aubort first came to the United States in 1955 and worked as an assistant producer for Vanguard Records in New York City.  In 1958, Aubort became chief engineer for the company.  It was also during these early years that he worked together with Ray Dolby to develop the Dolby Sound System we know today. Ray Dolby, an American engineer and inventor of the noise reduction system, was founder of Dolby Laboratories. Aubort's years at Dolby Labs were a ground-breaking era for noise reduction technology and high definition sound. They remained dear friends until Dolby's death in 2013.

Branching out on his own in 1965, Aubort founded his own company, Elite Recordings, producing iconic classical recordings of major orchestras and musicians all over the world. In the 1970s, he was joined in his company by the late Joanna Nickrenz (d.2002), and together they recorded and produced the bulk of the company's releases. Winning 6 Grammys as the Aubort/Nickrenz team, he won 2 for himself including Classical Producer of the year in 1983.

Aubort's countless recordings were revered for their clarity and richness of sound. He was known in the industry as the minimalist sound engineer, often using only two Schoeps microphones strategically  placed to get optimal sound and balance.  For big orchestral works, he maintained his belief that a minimal amount of miking was ideal and sometimes, much to a conductor's chagrin, he re-organized sections within an orchestra for certain symphonic repertoire to achieve a homogenous orchestral sound. He did little post production mixing to preserve sonic purity and raw musical expression. He also became known for his "piano sound" due to mic placement and balancing levels before recording.

Music training began in his early years in Switzerland. As a teen he became fascinated by sound engineering; he first trained in Zurich and began his career in the late 1940s working initially with wire recordings and later with tape. Aubort's first engineering and producing job was recording for Vanguard Records in Vienna.

Once in the US,  Aubort continued to record classical performances but was also involved in the recordings of American folk music in the early 1960s. He recorded and produced Joan Baez's Vanguard debut album, following her around the country during her rise to produce "Joan Baez in Concert." He recorded other great American folk artists such as Bob Dylan and The Weavers at the Newport Folk Festival. Among some of the more unusual recordings that Aubort released was the spoken album "Moses" with Charlton Heston, and live recordings of Frank Zappa's concert tributes to then recently fallen Beatle, John Lennon. Aubort also did a series of preservation recordings of dying global traditional music for National Geographic in the early 1970s.

An avid private pilot up until twenty years ago, Aubort was also an amateur photographer. Some of his photographs were used by National Geographic for a few of their publications. He continued recording with his company Elite Recordings until just a few years ago. He and his late wife Esther Bereuter Aubort (d.2011), also of Switzerland, lived in Greenwich Village, New York. They met in Zurich in the 1950s and were reunited when Esther came to the US in 1961 for the first time. They married in New York and started a family. He proudly became an American citizen in 1972.

He is survived by his daughter Nadine Aubort Oundjian of Connecticut; his son Eric Aubort of California; his son-in-law Peter Oundjian; his grandchildren Lara Oundjian and Pete Oundjian, Christopher Aubort and Nicole Aubort; his brother, Jacques Aubort of Zurich, Switzerland.