| Music synthesizer software |
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When the music recording world went digital, people were still using contemporary musical instruments and hardware synthesizers to create music. Despite the research and development of several companies to transfer at least the samplers into the computer environment and making thereby the large behemoths of the past obsolete, the solutions did not function as well, most of them missed an overall solution, a way in which they would not have to be separate from the recording program, some kind of standard. While the market leader Digidesign completely ignored the wishes of users and stuck to the Apple Macintosh platform, despite the increasingly bothersome incompatibility of hardware solutions with every new emerging operating system, the smartest of the smart, Steinberg introduced the VST solution and cracked the ProTools dominance with one strike. Steinberg introduces Cubase with the Virtual Studio Technology - VST in the nineties of the twentieth century, trying to compete with Digidesign's ProTools, which concentrated on professional users and ignored any other people that were interested. Interestingly enough the widespread popularity of Cubase came with a pirated copy of Cubase VST that was freed of copy protection and surprisingly stable. Every single wannabe musician and every single music professional
had such a copy and played around with it. Follow up versions, like Cubase VST24, up until the Cubase SX and the introduction of Nuendo, were still developing the platform and provided mostly only VST effects, VST instruments started appearing, and the way was paved for Steinberg's dominance in the music production. While in the United States, perhaps because of the national pride, Steinberg is German, Digidesign is an American company, people still prefer ProTools, which is still deemed the music production standard, Cubase and Nuendo have taken off a huge chunk of Digidesign's market share, particularly in Europe. Most of the music synthesizer software is now automatically written for Macintosh and Windows platforms, all of the plug-ins, unless promotional contractual obligations with Apple prohibit it - most prominently Emagic products, provide VSTi, AU and RTAS plug-in capability. Virtual instruments, usually capable of working in any of the popular environments, are generally either reproductions of classic hardware synthesizers, improved models, derived technology, or completely new ideas and solutions. Many of the new virtual instruments are sample players, with vast sample libraries, similar to the legendary Emulator sampler libraries, but much more technologically advanced. Whole symphonic orchestras, even symphonic choirs, can be integrated into the music production, without the hassle of recording the actual musicians' performance. Other replicas of real instruments, like pianos, saxophones, horn sections, even vocals do exist and have been available for some years now. |
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