What We Do

It has been accepted by many people that digital audio recording, while it has brought many benefits such as ease of use, perfect repeatability, freedom from unnecessary artefacts like unwanted noise, clicks, pops, etc, often results in an unsatisfactory musical experience unless at some stage in the recording recourse is made to various analogue processing tricks.

We at Sintefex Audio believe that digital audio recording can combine digital perfection with the indefinable warmth and colour of analogue recording. We are dedicated to innovating digital processes that achieve this end, and our existing product range starts the ball rolling with a unique sampling system that brings many of the benefits of analogue signal processing while preserving the repeatability and precision of digital working.

So why does an analogue recording chain attract the ear so much? One reason is that each channel of an analogue desk contains equalisers (EQ) and often compressors that have been carefully designed to sound good, and recording engineers habitually augment these with "outboard" processors that have unique characteristics that the engineer can choose from to exactly suit the musical component on a recording channel.

With the advent of digital recording the essential elements of equalisation and compression have been implemented in the digital processor, often a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) so as to give as many channels as possible on a single Digital Signal Processor (DSP) chip. This is done to squeeze as many tracks of audio onto a hardware platform as possible.

Unfortunately all this means that the equalisation process (for example) is simplified to the text book minimum and it is often found that 4 bands of EQ are controlled by just 12 numbers (gain, frequency and Q for each band), and these are executed in perhaps a few dozen computer instructions at most. Such simple processes sound like EQ, and they may even measure beautifully, but the simplicity of the operation does not impress the ear. Need a bit of top? An analogue EQ would satisfy the ear with just a touch of lift, while the digital equivalent does not satisfy; you need to keep turning it up. Result? Often an ultimate recording that has been EQed to death and still does not sound great.

DAW designers have tried to address this in two ways. Increase the sampling rate so some of the problems with the cheap and nasty processes move out of the audio range (but double or quadruple (or worse) your storage requirements), and by adding many "plug-ins", which are various computer programmers' attempts to recreate favourite sounds. But the success of these is variable. Many great effects have been created but the "bread-and-butter" good EQ and dynamics often elude the boffins' number-crunching.

We at Sintefex Audio have developed a new sampling process that does not require a software designer to understand what may sound good and what doesn't. This sampling system can 'learn' the way favourite old analogue processors affect the sound, and then apply this digitally.

We have built a library of favourite processes, so a rack stuffed with analogue outboard can reside in the memory of the system ready for recall at the touch of a button. You can choose just the right effect by trying each of the appropriate processors quickly, and, once the correct process has been chosen you can store the effect and recall it exactly again and again, as often as necessary. You can apply the same processing identically to two channels for perfectly matched stereo, or across all the channels of a 5.1 or 7.1 surround mix.

"Can you do that as a plug-in" we are asked? But the DAW usually uses a "DSP farm" of a few DSPs laid out in in a general way. Great for simple processes as mentioned above, and great until you need to do the job properly. Then you find that the signal paths are not there, the sample memory is insufficient for this unique technology; the cycles run out. The simple DSP arrangements cannot handle the complexity the ear demands; for example each sampled EQ embodies many thousand of numbers, not just the few of simple digital equalisers. (In fact some of our EQ samples contain over a million 32-bit floating point values to define their sound.) We do not say "how many channels can I do on one DSP", we say "how many DSPs do we need to do the job properly". And we craft the hardware to do the job.

The first products offering this technology are here for you to browse through. Please visit our "Products" page to see the range, or our "Sampled Gear" page to see some of the equipment we have sampled.

And behind the scenes we are working on new approaches to digital processing with one aim: Let's finally make digital audio sound good!