founded 1984 headquarters daly city california area served digital audio production products pro tools venue parent avid technology website avid audio official web site external video oral history peter gotcher talks about his first drumulator and working with evan brooks to change the sounds in it . interview date january 20 2012 namm national association of music merchants oral history library avid audio formerly digidesign is a north 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 brand was phased out . avid audio products will continue to be produced and will now carry the avid brand name . contents 1 products 2 history 2.1 history of avid audio software 2.1.1 sound designer 2.1.1.1 sound designer file formats 2.1.2 sound tools 2.1.3 pro tools 3 references 4 external links products edit digidesign s flagship software product was pro tools which came in three variants pro tools hd pro tools le and pro tools m powered . pro tools hd required a digidesign tdm system and interface and was intended for professional recording studios . pro tools le was a complete package intended for home users and some post production facilities . the package included the pro tools le software and hardware such as the m box 2 or digi 003 . pro tools m powered was simply the pro tools application adapted to run on m audio hardware and generally comparable in power to an le system . in 2010 these various editions of pro tools were mostly abandoned and it is now being sold by avid as a singular software product with the level of functionality dependent on the hardware chosen by the user . digidesign also made a number of products for the pro tools platform including several software plug ins . they also manufacture a wide variety of hardware add ons for pro tools such as audio interfaces midi interfaces synchronizers and control surfaces . in the spring of 2005 they introduced a system for live sound mixing called venue . history edit original digidesign logo digidesign d show profile live digital mixer on location at a corporate event 1984 founded as digidrums by peter gotcher and evan brooks . 1 later became digidesign . 1989 digidesign launches the first digital audio workstation system sound tools for the apple macintosh . the company refers to it as the first tapeless recording studio . 2 1991 digidesign releases the first pro tools multitrack system marking a significant advance in digital audio . this integrated software and hardware system digital audio workstation is among the most popular for audio production for television music and film . 3 1995 avid technology nasdaq avid acquires digidesign . digidesign now operates as a business unit of avid . 4 2001 digidesign wins a grammy award for pro tools . 5 2003 avid acquires bomb factory s extensive product catalog . these products are now included with pro tools systems . 6 2003 academy of motion picture arts and sciences recognizes digidesign s contribution to audio post production for film with an oscar . 2004 avid acquires m audio which now operates as a business unit of digidesign but maintains the m audio brand name and remains largely distinct from digidesign . 7 2005 avid acquires wizoo which now operates as digidesign advanced instrument research group a.i.r. but remains largely autonomous operating out of bremen germany . 8 2006 avid acquires sibelius the music software in a deal worth over us 23 million . 9 2010 the digidesign brand name is phased out with digidesign products now falling under the avid product banner . 2011 digidesign becomes avid audio history of avid audio software edit digidesign software was developed by uc berkeley graduate peter gotcher and his friend evan brooks both majors in electrical engineering and computer science . sound designer edit the first incarnation of today s pro tools started life in 1984 as sound designer while the pair were creating and selling drum sound chips under their digidrums label . sound designer was originally designed to edit sounds for sampling synthesizer like the prophet 2000 ensoniq mirage akai s900 and the e mu emulator sampling keyboard . sounds would be sampled into the synth and transferred into the mac where the user could manipulate the samples sound eq amplitude etc. as well as truncate to save memory or set loop points and then transfer back into the synth for playback . the software was originally written for editing drum samples and then burning new chips for the linn drum era drum machines . original ref to emulatorarchive.com deleted as it now hosts malware sound designer file formats edit the sdii sound designer ii sometimes seen abbreviated as sd2 is a monophonic stereophonic audio file format originally developed by digidesign for their macintosh based recording editing products . it is the successor to the original monophonic sound designer i audio file format . 10 sound tools edit gotcher and brooks discussed with e mu systems the possibility of integrating their renamed sound tools software into the emulator iii keyboard released in 1987 however e mu rejected this option and gotcher and brooks went on to start digidrums . 1 sound tools 11 was debuted on january 20 1989 at namm national association of music merchandisers . at this stage sound tools was a simple computer based stereo audio editor . although the software had the possibility to do far more it was limited by the hard drive technology which was used to stream the audio and allow for the non destructive editing that sound tools offered . 2 pro tools edit the first version of pro tools was launched in 1991 offering four tracks and selling for us 6 000 . digidesign continued to improve pro tools adding a sequencer and more tracks with the system offering recording at 16 bit and 44.1 khz . in 1997 pro tools had eventually reached 24 bit and 48 track versions . at this point the migration from more conventional studio technology to the pro tools platform took place within the industry . 3 references edit a b http www.eqmag.com article the software chronicles mar 06 19100 interview with evan brooks a b http www.namm.org library oral history evan brooks video interview with evan brooks a b http www.youtube.com watch v ing vgagm u digidesign 20th anniversary video on youtube http www.nytimes.com 1994 10 26 business company news avid technology plans to acquire digidesign.html http www.highbeam.com doc 1g1 70732700.html http www.avid.co.uk company press generic intl press.asp taxid 1150 http www.m audio.com news en us 348.html http www.digidesign.com index.cfm navid 48 & key news details.cfm & itemid 3450 http www.theregister.co.uk 2006 08 03 avid buys sibelius http www.riverpast.com en support tutorials convert sd2 aif.php sd2 format information riverpast.com http web.me.com protoolsman1 deprotoolsman geschiedenis files soundtools.jpg original sound tools brochure external links edit avid audio page on avid.com avid audio forums aka digidesign user conference john payne the software chronicles about evan brooks eq magazine march 2006 the studio files website pro tools users tech blog evan brooks namm oral history interview retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title avid audio & oldid 739423594 categories audio equipment manufacturerstechnology companies based in californiacompanies based in san mateo county californiatechnology companies established in 19841984 establishments in california navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages deutsch norsk bokm lportugu ssuomisvenskayor b edit links this page was last modified on 14 september 2016 at 16 09 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view