Prosoniq
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| Prosoniq Products GmbH | |
|---|---|
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| Type | |
| Founded | 1990 |
| Headquarters | Karlsruhe, Germany |
| Key people | Stephan Bernsee, Frederic Schelling, Bernhard Bouché |
| Industry | Software |
| Products | Audio software, DSP technology, Synthesizers |
| Website | www.prosoniq.com |
Short for "Prosoniq Products Software", developer and license provider for tools in the audio and music industry, mostly known for their the OrangeVocoder, TimeFactory and the Hartmann Neuron synthesizer products.
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[edit] Description
Prosoniq are a German GmbH software corporation founded in 1990 by Stephan Sprenger (later married as Stephan Bernsee) who are providing licenses for proprietary technologies in the audio/music DSP sector to software manufacturers including Emagic, Steinberg, Digidesign, TwelveTone Systems, Merging, DAVID, AutoDesk/Discreet and others. Headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, Prosoniq are said to have pioneered the use of artificial neural networks for commercial audio analysis and processing in the music industry.
[edit] Company history
In 1990, Prosoniq was a privately held company involved in artificial neural network software development for medical applications. Stephan Bernsee, being a music enthusiast and an avid keyboard player became interested in the application of artificial neural network processing to sound manipulation. He created an automatic audio morphing software for the ATARI 1040ST which was later ported to the Silicon Graphics computers and ultimately to the Apple Macintosh, for which it was sold under the name "sonicWORX" in the years 1994 - 2004. Distributed by Steinberg and bundled with Sony and Creative Labs hardware, sonicWORX reportedly reached a distribution of over 500,000 copies quickly becoming the most successful product of the company. However, with the PC becoming more popular in the 1990s and sonicWORX being an Apple Macintosh-only software specifically optimized for Mac OS 9 it was finally discontinued in 2004.
In 1993 the company was acquired by the rapidly growing UCMG Under Cover Music Group founded by Joachim Keil who drew benefits from custom tailored software solutions for their music production facilities and in turn provided funding for the future research and development of Prosoniq.
In 1995 the UCMG network had outgrown its company structure and was split into individual subsidiaries - Prosoniq became a separate company again. This was when Bernhard Bouché, a former colleague of Stephan Bernsee joined the company. Both filled the position as CEO and CTO from 1995 - 2004.
In 2003 the UCMG who at that time held 54% shares in Prosoniq filed for insolvency, nearly killing Prosoniq in the process.
In 2004 Stephan Bernsee retired from the daily business at Prosoniq to concentrate on the development of new technologies at the DSP Dimension, leaving Bernhard Bouché in position as the CEO.
[edit] Products and Developments
- MCFE (Multi-Component Feature Extraction) analysis, a neural network-based adaptive time-frequency transform replacing the use of the Discrete Fourier Transform in their products
- automatic audio morphing algorithms
- polyphonic formant correction for pitch shifting applications
- PANDORA voice reduction software/vocal separator
- sonicWORX audio editing software
- TimeFactory polyphonic time stretching and pitch shifting algorithm "MPEX"
- OrangeVocoder VST/RTAS vocoder plug-in
- Hartmann Neuron synthesizer
- Hartmann NeuronVS synthesizer
- Magenta resynthesizer
- Rayverb inverse ray tracing room simulation
- Ambisone 3D audio effect
- Prosoniq morph audio morphing
- Dynasone Multiband Dynamics Compressor
- Pyramix Time Stretching [1]
- Cakewalk Sonar Time Stretching [2]
- Steinberg Nuendo Time Stretching [3]
[edit] Hartmann Music
In 2001, "Hartmann-Music", a joint-venture spin-off with designer Axel Hartmann was founded.
Some of the well known shareholders of this new company were former Waldorf Music CEO Wolfgang Düren, Axel Hartmann of Design-Box and composer Hans Zimmer. Hartmann-Music developed the Neuron synthesizer which was based on Prosoniq's artificial neural network technology to create "models" from sampled sounds and allow for extensive sound manipulation.
Despite winning many awards for innovation and having widespread support in the music industry Hartmann music had to file for insolvency in 2005 after a dispute over the product distribution rights with their former distributor.
