Founded in 1994 by Los Angeles synthesist Eric Persing and his wife Lorey, Spectrasonics quickly became a leading developer of world-class sampled sound libraries. As Chief Sound Designer for Roland Corporation since the development of MIDI in the early 1980s, Eric was already well-known in the music industry for creating the most iconic sounds in their classic synthesizers, including the ground-breaking Roland D-50 and many others. By infusing his years of product design and sonic expertise, Spectrasonics earned a reputation for setting the standard of excellence in the industry.
Today, Spectrasonics has become a team of many gifted, creative people that Eric directs - sound designers, software engineers, musicians, visual artists - all working together to produce extraordinary software instruments that have a global impact on music. Spectrasonics users include the world's foremost recording artists, producers, players, remixers and composers. The company's work can be heard everywhere - in thousands of hit songs, top-selling games, popular shows, and major motion pictures.
Right from the early days in the 1990s, Spectrasonics introduced innovations in sampling like Groove Control®, chromatic phrase sampling and dynamic string bending in its first libraries. The company quickly broke uncharted territory with its Distorted Reality series, widely regarded as the most popular sample library of all time - which defined a whole era of sound design in films, music and gaming. Their most ambitious sampling project was the award-winning Symphony of Voices and Vocal Planet collections - which even decades later remain unsurpassed as the world's largest compilation of vocal samples.
Spectrasonics launched the next era of the company in the early 2000s with three pioneering software-based instruments - Atmosphere®, Trilogy® and Stylus RMX®. Introducing the powerful potential of combining custom software with premium sounds, the company was infused with new product development strengths, along with a much broader market reach for its products. Spectrasonics emerged as a major player in the promising new virtual instrument business.
Now a full software developer, Spectrasonics released its state-of-the-art STEAM Engine™ software synthesis technology with the award-winning Omnisphere® - the company's most successful project to date. Years in the works, this flagship 'Power Synth' was greeted overwhelming critical and commercial success as a result of the instrument breaking completely new sonic ground by combining a wide variety of hybrid realtime synthesis techniques, an epic library of remarkable organic soundsources, next level DSP and many innovative features that have never been seen before in any hardware or software synthesizer. Omnisphere provided an extraordinarily versatile platform to build many new sonic explorations including the Trilian® Total Bass Module and the boutique Sonic Extensions® product line.
A seismic event happened in the industry when the company revealed its next instrument creation, Keyscape® - which features the largest selection of collector keyboards in the world. Ten years in the making, each of the rare and sought-after keyboards were carefully restored and then deeply multisampled by the renowned Spectrasonics Sound Development Team. Reaching a broader group of players, Keyscape quickly became the industry standard and the best selling keyboard plug-in in the world.
Leading up to the next decade, Spectrasonics developed a major innovation called “Hardware Integration”, which bridges the physical experience gap between software and hardware with a totally unique approach. To this day, Omnisphere is the only software synth in the world to offer this remarkable feature - which transforms hundreds of well-known existing hardware synthesizers and keyboards into hands-on controllers that unlock Omnisphere's extensive synthesis capabilities. Simply put, this ground-breaking feature makes using Omnisphere feel just like using a hardware synth. Spectrasonics has also been actively involved in the development of the MIDI 2.0 specification and is passionate about pushing the next generation of expressive control.
Building on over 30 years of accomplishments and creativity, the company has become one of the world's leading music software developers. Through it all, Spectrasonics' success remains the result of its original philosophy: Create “powerfully simple” products that are truly inspiring and unique.