Prosoniq Products Software was a German software developer of

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

and

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

tools, mostly known for their sonicWORX, OrangeVocoder, TimeFactory and Hartmann Neuron

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

products. It also licensed proprietary technologies in the audio/music

DSP DSP may refer to: Computing * Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal * Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing * Dynamic Reconfiguration port * Yamaha DSP-1 ...

sector to software manufacturers including

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

Steinberg Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH (trading as Steinberg; ) is a German musical software and hardware company based in Hamburg. It develops software for writing, recording, arranging and editing music, most notably Cubase, Nuendo, and Dorico. It ...

Digidesign Avid Audio (formerly Digidesign) 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 machin ...

, TwelveTone Systems, Merging, DAVID,

AutoDesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

/Discreet and others. Headquartered in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...

, Germany, Prosoniq pioneered the use of

artificial neural network In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

s for commercial audio processing.

Company history

Prosoniq was founded in 1990 by Stephan Sprenger (later married as Stephan Bernsee). It began as 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 is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes (or morphs) one image or shape into another through a seamless transition. Traditionally such a depiction would be achieved through dissolving techniques on film. Si ...

software for the

ATARI Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames) and its focus is on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and bl ...

1040ST which was later ported to the

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

computers and ultimately to the

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

, for which it was sold under the name " sonicWORX" from 1994 to 2004. Distributed by

and bundled with

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

and

Creative Labs Creative Technology Ltd., or Creative Labs Pte Ltd., is a Singaporean multinational electronics company mainly dealing with audio technologies and products such as speakers, headphones, sound cards and other digital media. Founded by Sim Wong ...

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

-only software specifically optimized for

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth and final major release of the classic Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever", highlight ...

it was finally discontinued in 2004. In 1993, the company was acquired by the rapidly growing Under Cover Music Group (UCMG), 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 to 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 th
DSP Dimension
leaving Bernhard Bouché in position as the CEO. In 2008, Prosoniq released its OrangeVocoder and audio

algorithm as a Cocoa

Audio Unit Audio Units (AU) are a system-level plug-in architecture provided by Core Audio in Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems. Audio Units are a set of application programming interface (API) services provided by the operating system to generate, ...

plug-in, as well as a Mac OS X version of its TimeFactory time stretching and pitch shifting software, all developed by their former CTO Stephan Bernsee. At Musik Messe 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 also announced a successor of its sonicWORX audio editing software designed to extract, process or suppress individual sounds, notes and instruments in a song. The software got widespread coverage in the media when they demonstrated its capabilities (and potential impact on the music industry) by extracting

Peter Gabriel Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and human rights activist. He came to prominence as the original frontman of the rock band Genesis. He left the band in 1975 and launched a solo career wit ...

's voice from his famous song "Don't Give Up". 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 The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010. The bidding process for hosting the tournament finals was open only to ...

, 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. In September 2013, Prosoniq announced that it has sold its entire line of products, intellectual property, patent rights and research data to the Hannover-based Zynaptiq startup company, who will continue to offer and maintain their products in the future. Prosoniq also entered

liquidation Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a Company (law), company is brought to an end. The assets and property of the business are redistributed. When a firm has been liquidated, it is sometimes referred to as :wikt:wind up#Noun, w ...

, a process by which a company is brought to an end, and the assets and properties of the company are to be redistributed. Stephan Bernsee, founder of Prosoniq came back as CEO to oversee the process. Liquidation ended in January 2016 with the dissolution of the corporation.

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 mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) converts a finite sequence of equally-spaced Sampling (signal processing), samples of a function (mathematics), function into a same-length sequence of equally-spaced samples of the discre ...

in their products * automatic audio

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s * polyphonic

formant In speech science and phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. In acoustics, a formant is usually defined as a broad peak, or local maximum, in the spectrum. For harmo ...

correction for

pitch shifting Pitch shifting is a sound recording technique in which the original pitch of a sound is raised or lowered. Effects units that raise or lower pitch by a pre-designated musical interval ( transposition) are known as pitch shifters. Pitch and t ...

applications *

PANDORA In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...

voice reduction software/vocal separator * sonicWORX audio editing software * TimeFactory polyphonic

time stretching Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compa ...

and

algorithm "MPEX" *

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

Vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

VST/ RTAS

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

plug-in *

Hartmann Hartmann is a German surname. It is less frequently used as a male given name. The name originates from the Germanic word, "hart", which translates in English to "hardy", "hard", or "tough" and " Mann", a suffix meaning "man", "person", or "husband ...

Neuron A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

synthesizer *

NeuronVS synthesizer *

Magenta Magenta () is a purple-red color. On color wheels of the RGB color model, RGB (additive) and subtractive color, CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located precisely midway between blue and red. It is one of the four colors of ink used in colo ...

resynthesizer * Rayverb inverse ray tracing room simulation * Ambisone

3D audio effect 3D audio effects are a group of sound effects that manipulate the sound produced by stereo speakers, surround-sound speakers, speaker-arrays, or headphones. This frequently involves the virtual placement of sound sources anywhere in three-dimens ...

* Prosoniq morph audio morphing * Dynasone Multiband Dynamics Compressor *

Pyramix ''Pyramix'' is the first remix album and sixth album by rapper/DJ, Egyptian Lover Gregory James Broussard (born August 31, 1963), better known by his stage name Egyptian Lover, is an American musician, vocalist, producer and DJ, and was a pa ...

Time Stretching *

Cakewalk The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Unit ...

Sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...

Time Stretching *

Nuendo Nuendo is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music recording, arranging, editing, and post-production. The package is aimed at audio and video post-production market segments (marketed as a 'Premium Media Production Sys ...

Time Stretching

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 is a German synthesizer company best known for its Waldorf Microwave, Microwave wavetable synthesis, wavetable synthesizer and Waldorf Blofeld, Blofeld virtual analogue synthesizer. History Waldorf Electronics GmbH was founded i ...

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

Hans Zimmer Hans Florian Zimmer (; born 12 September 1957) is a German film score composer and music producer. He has won two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, five Grammy Awards, and has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, Emmy Awards and a Tony ...

. Hartmann-Music developed the

synthesizer which was based on Prosoniq's artificial neural network technology to create "models" from sampled sounds and allow for extensive sound manipulation. Despite winnin
many awards
for innovation and havin

in the music industry Hartmann music had to file for

insolvency In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company ( debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet i ...

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

References

{{Reflist

Company history

Products and developments

Hartmann Music

References

External links