FXpansion

FXpansion

Type	Ltd
Industry	Music Software
Founded	1999
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Area served	World
Key people	Angus Hewlett (CEO), SKoT McDonald (CTO), Rhiannon Bankston-Thomas (COO/CFO)
Products	DCAM: Synth Squad, BFD, Geist, Guru, VST2RTAS, VST2AU, DR-008
Number of employees	18
Parent	Independent
Website	www.fxpansion.com

FXpansion is a Ltd company that produces music software including DCAM: Synth Squad, BFD, GURU and the VST-RTAS and VST-AudioUnit Adapters.

History

FXpansion is a company that develops music software, and was founded in 1999 in London, United Kingdom. Their base of operations from 2005-2009 was in London's inner East End, in the much-parodied^[1] media/bar zone of Shoreditch. In 2008, FXpansion opened a US subsidiary, FXpansion USA Inc, to handle sales and distribution in North America, and a development office in Australia. In 2009, FXpansion relocated their HQ to London's South Bank, which seems to be collecting a lot of noughties-era Shoreditch escapees.

Product history

• 1999
  • VST to DX Adapter, an adapter between the VST and DirectX audio plugin standards.

• 2000
  • Series One Bundle, a collection of low-cost creative sound effects plug-ins. Series One Bundle was subsequently licensed to Steinberg and in 2002 became part of Cubase VST 5 and Cubase SX.
  • DR-002 and DR-005, a pair of simple drum machines.
  • VST to DX Adapter v2, an updated version of the VST-DX adapter (awarded "Best Utility Software, 2000" by Electronic Musician magazine)
  • Mysteron, a freeware software synthesizer based on the Theremin.

• 2001
  • DR-008, a drum machine with sample playback, synthesis, effects, and triggered-sequencing abilities.
  • VST to DXi Adapter v3, an adapter between the DXi and VST2 audio plug-in standards based on VST to DX Adapter. (VST to DXi Adapter was subsequently sold to Cakewalk in 2003.)

• 2002
  • VST to DXi Adapter v4, an updated version of the VST-DXi adapter.

• 2003
  • VST to AU Adapter, an adapter between the Audio Unit and VST audio plugin standards. (awarded "Best Utility Software, 2003" by Electronic Musician magazine)
  • VST to RTAS Adapter, an adapter between the Digidesign RTAS and VST audio plugin standards.
  • VST to ReWire Adapter, an adapter between the ReWire and VST audio plugin standards.
  • BFD, a software instrument with a detailed set of multi-mic'ed, multi-velocity layered, and multi-articulated acoustic drum recordings with an "engineers mixer" interface, and onboard groove sequencer. (BFD received Electronic Musician magazine's "Best Drum Software", Remix magazine's "Best Sample Collection", and Computer Music's "Editor's Choice" and "Performance" awards.)

• 2004
  • BFD XFL, an expansion pack for BFD recorded at Eldorado Studios, LA.
  • BFD 8 Bit Kit, an expansion pack for BFD recorded at 8 Bit Audio, LA.

• 2005
  • GURU, a loop manipulating and sequencing virtual drum machine (awarded "Editor's Choice" and "Performance" awards, and Audiofanzine "Innovation Award")
  • BFD Deluxe, an expansion pack for BFD recorded at Electrical Audio, Chicago.

• 2006
  • BFD Jazz & Funk, an expansion pack for BFD recorded at Omega Studios, Maryland.
  • BFD Converter, an audio format converter from several of Toontrack's drum libraries into BFD format.
  • BFD Percussion, an expansion pack for BFD recorded at Omega Studios, Maryland.
  • Orca, a free subtractive VST synth featuring analogue circuit modeling technology.
  • VST to RTAS Adapter v2, a successor to VST-RTAS designed for Pro Tools 7.
  • VST to AU Adapter v2, an updated version of VST-AU.

• 2007
  • BFD2, a complete rewrite and redesign of BFD, with new recordings made at George Martin's AIR Studios, analogue circuit models of outboard recording hardware, a full onboard sequencer and more than five times the volume of data in BFD1. BFD2 includes recordings of drum kits formerly owned by John Bonham and Ringo Starr. BFD2 received Electronic Musician magazine's "Best Drum Software" award in 2009.

• 2008
  • BFD Big Orchestral Marching Band (B.O.M.B), an expansion pack for BFD2 recorded at Omega Studios, Maryland
  • BFD Decatoms, an expansion pack for BFD2 featuring a set of 10 Octobans
  • BFD2 8BK, a rerelease of the 8BK expansion pack reformatted for BFD2
  • Japanese Taiko Percussion (with Sonica), a Japanese Taiko ensemble expansion pack for BFD2
  • BFD JEX, an expansion kit for BFD2 featuring a high-end, custom hand-made drum kit from XDrum's Xotica line

• 2009
  • DCAM: Synth Squad, a collection of three modeled synthesizers - Strobe, Amber and Cypher. Also included is Fusor, a semi-modular layering and performance environment for the DCAM synths with a high-quality FX suite, advanced step-sequencer/arpeggiator and flexible modulation. DCAM: Synth Squad has been reviewed in many industry publications and received Future Music's Platinum award and Computer Music's Performance award.
  • BFD Oak Custom, an expansion kit for BFD2 featuring a high-end Yamaha Oak Custom drum kit and Bamboo snare.
  • BFD Maple Custom Absolute, an expansion kit for BFD2 featuring a high-end Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute drum kit and a Yamaha FHP (fiberglass) snare.
  • BFD Signature Snares Vol.1, an expansion pack for BFD2 featuring five unique snares.

• 2010
  • BFD Eco, an entry-level BFD2-based product
  • BFD Heavy, a BFD Expansion pack oriented towards metal and heavy rock.
  • BFD Jazz Maple, a BFD Expansion pack oriented towards Jazz Fusion.
  • Geist, a more powerful successor to GURU; a loop manipulating and sequencing virtual drum machine

• 2011
  • FXpansion concentrated on releasing free 64 bit updates to their main product lineup: BFD2, Geist, and Synth Squad
  • BFD Sleishman, BFD Titanium (Dunnett) expansion packs for BFD
  • Worked with Zildjian to produce a custom version of BFD Eco focused on Zildjian's catalogue of cymbals, BFD Eco DV (Digital vault).

• 2012
  • Tremor, a drum synthesizer and step-sequencer
  • Etch, a modulated filter
  • Etch RED, a port of Etch for Propellor Heads' Reason 6.5 software.
  • DCAM Dynamics, a suite of Dynamics Processor effects including a Bus Compressor modelled after SSLs, a Channel Compressor modelled on the UA1176, an Envelope Shaper.
  • Maul, a multi-band distortion processor with step sequencers, LFOs and Envelope Followers as modulation sources.
  • Bloom, a delay and spatial processor with step sequencers, LFOs, Envelope Followers as modulation sources.

• 2013
  • BFD3, featuring new kits recorded by Platinum Samples and John Emrich, including brushed and mallet options. Data size is three times larger than BFD2, at 160GB equivalent, but occupies 50GB using a custom lossless audio compression algorithm. New drum articulations include tom rim shots and rim-clicks, hihat bell and splash, snare rim click. New audio mic channels include 3 mono room, 2 compressed direct, and sub kick. Additional effects processing include FXReverb, Envelope Shaper, Mid-Side EQ, Mid-side/stereo encoder/decoder, FFT Scope, Drive/Filter Delays. Groove Editor adds rudiment note-painting tools. Cymbal Swell and Tom Resonance modelling added to synthesis. BFD3 abandons physical DVDs for delivery, instead being available via download, or USB stick.

• 2014
  • BFD Oblivion, a metal and hard rock engineered expansion pack for BFD
  • BFD Imperial Drums, (with Chocolate Audio) expansion pack for BFD
  • BFD Stanton Moore Cymbals, (with Cymbal Masters) expansion pack for BFD, featuring Stanton Moore
  • BFD Virtually Erskine, (with Cymbal Masters) expansion pack for BFD, featuring Peter Erskine

• 2015
  • BFD Sabian Digital Vault, (with Sabian) a collection of Sabian cymbals for BFD.
  • BFD Eco NFUZD, (with NFUZD Audio / KHS) a special edition of BFD Eco designed to work closely with the NFUZD Audio "NSPIRE" electronic drumkits, featuring direct "Export-To-Module" capability.

Notes

1. ↑ The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Barley