Founded in 1994 by Los Angeles composer 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 1984, Eric was already well-known in the music industry for creating many of the most popular sounds in their classic synthesizers, including the ground breaking Roland D-50. By infusing his years of product design 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, session players, remixers, game developers and film & TV composers. The company’s instruments can be heard in thousands of hit records, top-selling games, popular television shows and major motion pictures. Every Spectrasonics product has been given a top industry award and garnered rave reviews on the Web and in leading publications such as Keyboard, Electronic Musician, Future Music, Downbeat, Billboard, The New York Times, EQ, Mix, and Sound on Sound.

The company innovated right from the beginning: In 1994, Spectrasonics was the first sample developer to guarantee its products as 100% "Copyright Clean." It introduced the unique Chromazones™ system of chromatically sampled phrases on the Bass Legends sample library, and originated the technique of dynamic string bending on Hans Zimmer Guitars. The following year the company broke uncharted territory with its Distorted Reality series, widely regarded as the most popular sample library of all time. Between 1997-98, Spectrasonics released the award-winning Symphony of Voices and Vocal Planet which even a decade later remain unsurpassed as the world’s largest compilation of vocal samples. Throughout its history, Spectrasonics has also been involved in sound licensing deals with prestigious companies like Roland Corporation Japan to create distinctive sounds for numerous synthesizers, expansion boards, and the award-winning V-Drums system.

In 1999, Spectrasonics created Groove Control®, a method of sound development for rhythmic phrases that provided unprecedented flexibility for producers. Many of the top composers and recording artists rely on Groove Control activated libraries in their work - including Spectrasonics' best selling Backbeat, Retro Funk, Metamorphosis, Vocal Planet, Bizarre Guitar and Liquid Grooves collections.

In 2002, Spectrasonics launched the next era of the company with three pioneering software-based, ‘Virtual Instruments.’ The potential of combining powerful software with premium sounds infused the company with new product development strengths, along with a much broader market reach for its products. Spectrasonics emerged as a major player in the virtual instrument software business with the original "Stylus® groove module, which rapidly became the best-selling virtual instrument plug-in on the market. The company’s Trilogy Total Bass Module® was the first and only virtual bass instrument on the market dedicated to acoustic, electric and synth basses, and the ethereal Atmosphere® dream synth module became an essential instrument in every professional composer’s toolkit.

In 2004, Spectrasonics began a major new direction - to develop all its core technology with its own in-house software development team. The first result was the revolutionary S.A.G.E.™ technology - the most flexible groove engine in the world. S.A.G.E. (Spectrasonics Advanced Groove Engine) allows extensive real-time control, creation and manipulation of grooves while retaining state-of-the-art sound quality.

The award-winning Stylus RMX Realtime Groove Module was the first Spectrasonics virtual instrument to benefit from the in-house groove technology. RMX is widely regarded as the industry benchmark for all groove-based virtual instruments and continues to evolve with ground-breaking features such as the new Time Designer™, which for the first time allows audio loops to be intelligently transformed to other time signatures in real time.

In 2008, Spectrasonics released its state-of-the-art STEAM Engine™ software synthesis technology with the award-winning Omnisphere®. The STEAM Engine completes the in-house technology transition from earlier instruments, and will be used as the core technology of future Spectrasonics instruments.

Omnisphere® is the company’s most ambitious and successful project to date. Years in the works, this flagship ‘Power Synth’ was the first virtual instrument built with the STEAM engine. Omnisphere breaks completely new sonic ground by combining a wide variety of hybrid realtime synthesis techniques, an epic library of remarkable "psychoacoustic" sounds, and many innovative features that have never been seen before in any hardware or software synthesizer.

In 2009, Spectrasonics released Trilian®, the successor to their award-winning Trilogy bass instrument. Trilian completes the company's transition to having it's entire product line on it's own technology.

Now in 2010, Spectrasonics has entered the new decade as the first company to provide full cross-platform native 64-bit support of its entire product line - and is busy experimenting with new concepts like "Omni Live" - the first wireless remote control iPhone app for a software synthesizer.

Building on many years of accomplishments, 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.


All specifications subject to change without notice. All trademarks are the property of their respective holders Groove Control® is a registered trademark of Spectrasonics and Ilio Entertainments