Pioneering Ultimate Fidelity

Sonic Studio has lead the way to the ultrafidelity computer based audio of Amarra.

Since the early 1980s, SonicStudio workstations have been adopted worldwide by motion picture and recording studios, major record labels and high end mastering facilities. On award–winning motion picture soundtracks and more than two thirds of all commercially released CD, Sonic Studio’s customers consistently win Grammy®, Emmy® and Oscar® awards for their exceptional audio work.

Sonic Studio History

Overview

Under the auspices of Sonic Solutions, the Sonic Studio audio workstation has driven the professional production and delivery of commercial Compact Discs. The original “Sonic System” pioneered the desktop delivery of Red Book masters on recordable CD and DDP. To this day, two of every three commercially released CD titles were mastered on a SonicStudio workstation.

Sonic Studio’s NoNOISE™ noise reduction tools for sound production and restoration for television and film garnered Dr. James Andrew Moorer both an Emmy™ and an Oscar™ for technological achievement.

The Early Years

The Sonic System began life as a research into real–time, computer–based audio production, called the ASP (Audio Signal Processor) and was designed by James A. Moorer, our advisor. The ASP’s design started life in 1980 and was called the SoundDroid, an in–house project of Lucasfilm’s Ltd.’s subsidary The Droid Works, The development team went on to start Sonic Solutions and create the NoNOISE restoration system in 1987, hosted on a Motorola–powered SUN 1. Our current system is the 10th generation of this original design.

At just about that time a small company called Apple Computer’s released the Macintosh II. This became the platform for the first version of the Sonic Station. By 1988, the Sonic Station was in service at EMI Abbey Road and Finesplice in London, and MCA in California, performing “miraculous” feats of restoration and starting a trend of mining back catalogue that continues to this day.

Demand grew for a turnkey Compact Disc preparation system and, in 1990 with support for Sony the Sonic System was born.

Many firsts followed:

• First CD Production System    :: The Sonic System
• First Noise Reduction System :: NoNoise
• First audio workstation to offer full 24 bit 96 / 192 kHz support
• First network designed for high rate media :: MediaNet
• First DSD Production System

The Present Day

In 2002, Sonic Solutions started a joint venture with Sonic Studio, LLC to carry on the development, sales, and support of Sonic Solutions’ audio workstation products.

In 2004, Sonic Studio released its first Native OS X application SonicStudio•DDP. This was followed in 2006 by PreMaster CD, and in 2007 soundBlade was released as the replacement for the Sonic Studio HD workstation of the '90s.

Today, Sonic Studio, LLC continues to lead the industry in fidelity, value and ease of use. Our product lines address the needs of the world’s most discriminating listners. The Sonic Studio range remains the standard for professional audio production and computer music players.

Into the future, Sonic Studio is poised to lead the way for high resolution audio playback for the home.

For additional information on Sonic Studio, please contact our Marketing Communications Manager at 415-460-1201

Select Papers of Interest

48-Bit Integer Processing Beats 32-Bit Floating Point — James A. Moorer. Presented at the 107th AES Convention, September 1999, Preprint 5038 (L-3)

Breaking the Sound Barrier: Mastering at 96 kHz and Beyond — James A. Moorer. Presented at the 101st AES Convention, November 1996, Preprint 4357 (I-2)

Soundworks: An Object-Oriented Distributed System for Digital Sound — Jonathan Reichbach, Author. First network based system for Audio Editing and Playback. Readings in Computer-Generated Music, IEEE Computer Society Press 1992