Prosoniq - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Short for "Prosoniq Products Software", developer and license provider for tools in the audio

Sound recording and reproduction

Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...

and music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

industry, mostly known for their sonicWORX, OrangeVocoder, TimeFactory and the Hartmann

Hartmann

Hartmann is a surname and may refer to:- People :* Erich Hartmann , German fighter ace* Ernst Hartmann , German medical doctor, author and publicist* Felix von Hartmann , Cardinal Archbishop of Köln...

Neuron

A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling. Chemical signaling occurs via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. Neurons connect to each other to form networks. Neurons are the core components of the nervous...

synthesizer

Synthesizer

A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

products.

Description

Prosoniq are a German GmbH software corporation founded in 1990 by Stephan Sprenger

Stephan Bernsee

Stephan Bernsee is a Digital Signal Processing applications developer from Germany. He is the founder of the audio software company Prosoniq and the principal developer of the sound synthesis technology used in the Hartmann Music Neuron series of synthesizers, the technology behind Prosoniq...

(later married as Stephan Bernsee

Stephan Bernsee

) who are providing licenses for proprietary technologies in the audio/music DSP

Digital signal processing

Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...

sector to software manufacturers including Emagic

Emagic

Emagic was a music software and hardware company based in Rellingen, Germany and a satellite office in Grass Valley, CA. On July 1, 2002 Emagic was bought by Apple Computer. Emagic's Windows-based product offerings were discontinued on September 30, 2002....

, Steinberg

Steinberg

Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...

, Digidesign

Digidesign

Avid Audio is an American digital audio technology company. It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. The company began as a project to raise money for the founders' band, selling EPROM chips for drum machines. It is a subsidiary of Avid Technology, and during 2010 the Digidesign...

, TwelveTone Systems, Merging, DAVID

David

David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...

, AutoDesk

Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...

/Discreet and others. Headquartered in Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

, Germany, Prosoniq are said to have pioneered the use of artificial neural network

Artificial neural network

An artificial neural network , usually called neural network , is a mathematical model or computational model that is inspired by the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons, and it processes...

s for commercial audio analysis and processing in the music industry.

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

Morphing

Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes one image into another through a seamless transition. Most often it is used to depict one person turning into another through technological means or as part of a fantasy or surreal sequence. Traditionally such a depiction...

software for the ATARI

Atari

Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...

1040ST which was later ported to the Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...

computers and ultimately to the Apple Macintosh, for which it was sold under the name "sonicWORX" in the years 1994 - 2004. Distributed by Steinberg

Steinberg

and bundled with Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

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

Mac OS 9

Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...

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.

In 2008 Prosoniq released its OrangeVocoder

Vocoder

A vocoder is an analysis/synthesis system, mostly used for speech. In the encoder, the input is passed through a multiband filter, each band is passed through an envelope follower, and the control signals from the envelope followers are communicated to the decoder...

and audio morphing

Morphing

algorithm as a Cocoa Audio Unit plug-in, as well as a Mac OS X version of its TimeFactory time stretching and pitch shifting

Audio timescale-pitch modification

Time stretching is the process of changing the speed or duration of an audio signal without affecting its pitch.Pitch scaling or pitch shifting is the opposite: the process of changing the pitch without affecting the speed...

software, all developed by their former CTO Stephan Bernsee.

At Musik Messe

Musik Messe

The Musik Messe held each year in Frankfurt is Europe's largest trade show for musical instruments, lighting, recording and sound reinforcement equipment. Generally held in early March, the Musik Messe and the NAMM shows are where the world's manufacturers announce and show their new...

2009 Prosoniq announced that it would discontinue all Windows software development starting June 2009. Since Prosoniq's CEO alluded that this decision was primarily due to piracy on the Windows platform this created a lot of controversy in the blogosphere. A revised version of the press release that came out a few days later tried to make it more clear that even though piracy was a major problem on both platforms, Prosoniq had always been primarily a Mac software company.

At Musik Messe

Musik Messe

2009 Prosoniq also announced a successor of its sonicWORX audio editing software designed to extract, process or suppress individual sounds, notes and instruments in a song. This software got widespread coverage in the media when they demonstrated its capabilities (and potential impact on the music industry) by extracting Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel

Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...

's voice from his famous song "Don't Give Up"

Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush song)

"Don't Give Up" is song written by Peter Gabriel and recorded as a duet with Kate Bush for Gabriel's album So. The single version spent eleven weeks in the UK Top 75 chart in 1986, peaking at number nine. It describes the despair of a man who feels isolated and defeated by the economic system, and...

. According to its developer sonicWORX Pro is based on their PANDORA technology developed in 1996 which allowed automatic suppression of voice in a mono or stereo mix. Limited by the processing power of desktop computers of that era and due to contracts that gave the exclusive right of use to an unknown party the product was never developed into a fully featured end user product until 2009.

As of May 2010 Prosoniq sells a scaled down "sonicWORX Isolate" version that contains the key features demonstrated in the YouTube video at a reduced price. The Pro version with its additional modules has been announced for end of 2010.

Within the first days of the FIFA World Cup 2010 Prosoniq came out with a free "VuvuX" AudioUnit plug in to remove the Vuvuzela noise from the audio commentary without affecting speech and background atmosphere. According to their web site the plug in is not using a notch filter and is based on their sonicWORX de-mixing technology which utilizes statistical signal properties.

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

Discrete Fourier transform

In mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform is a specific kind of discrete transform, used in Fourier analysis. It transforms one function into another, which is called the frequency domain representation, or simply the DFT, of the original function...

in their products

- automatic audio morphing

Morphing

algorithm

Algorithm

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...

s

- polyphonic formant

Formant

Formants are defined by Gunnar Fant as 'the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P|' of the voice. In speech science and phonetics, formant is also used to mean an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract...

correction for pitch shifting applications

- PANDORA

Pandora

In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. As Hesiod related it, each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts...

voice reduction software/vocal separator

- sonicWORX audio editing software

- TimeFactory polyphonic time stretching

Time stretching

Time stretching can refer to:* Audio timescale-pitch modification, in audio* Time stretching, in video* Time dilation, in physics * Time stretch analog-to-digital converter, in electronics...

and pitch shifting algorithm "MPEX"

- OrangeVocoder VST

Virtual Studio Technology

Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware with software...

/RTAS

Real Time AudioSuite

Real-Time AudioSuite is a format of audio plug-in developed by Digidesign, currently Avid Technology for their Pro Tools LE, and Pro Tools M-Powered systems, although they can be run on Pro Tools HD and Pro Tools TDM systems. RTAS plug-ins use the processing power of the host computer rather than...

vocoder

Vocoder

plug-in

- Hartmann

Hartmann

Neuron

synthesizer

- Hartmann

Hartmann

NeuronVS synthesizer

- Magenta

Magenta

Magenta is a color evoked by light stronger in blue and red wavelengths than in yellowish-green wavelengths . In light experiments, magenta can be produced by removing the lime-green wavelengths from white light...

resynthesizer

- Rayverb inverse ray tracing room simulation

- Ambisone 3D audio effect

3D audio effect

3D audio effects are a group of sound effects that attempt to widen the stereo image produced by two loudspeakers or stereo headphones, or to create the illusion of sound sources placed anywhere in 3 dimensional space, including behind, above or below the listener.There are several types of 3D...

- Prosoniq morph audio morphing

- Dynasone Multiband Dynamics Compressor

- Pyramix Time Stretching http://www.merging.com/2002/News_Folder/pr_MPEX.htm

- Cakewalk

Cakewalk

The Cakewalk dance was developed from a "Prize Walk" done in the days of slavery, generally at get-togethers on plantations in the Southern United States. Alternative names for the original form of the dance were "chalkline-walk", and the "walk-around"...

Sonar

Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...

Time Stretching http://www.cakewalk.com/support/kb/kb2004222.asp

- Steinberg

Steinberg

Nuendo

Nuendo is a music software product developed by Steinberg for music recording, arranging, editing and post-production as part of a Digital Audio Workstation. The package is aimed at audio and video post-production market segments, but it also contains optional modules that can be used for...

Time Stretching http://www.steinberg.net/1482_1.html

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

Waldorf Music

Waldorf Music AG is a German synthesizer company. It was founded on 1 January 2003 to take over the actual business of the Waldorf Electronics GmbH which had become insolvent. Waldorf is best known for its Microwave wavetable synthesizer and Q virtual analogue synthesizer lines.- History :Waldorf...

CEO Wolfgang Düren, Axel Hartmann of Design-Box and composer Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer

Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...

. Hartmann-Music developed the Neuron

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

Insolvency

Insolvency means the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due. Usually used to refer to a business, insolvency refers to the inability of a company to pay off its debts.Business insolvency is defined in two different ways:...

in 2005 after a dispute over the product distribution rights with their former distributor.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.