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Bernd encouraged Daniel to bring his business acumen and drive to the group, which until then consisted entirely of engineers. One of the new faces, Bernd Roggendorf (who later went on to found Ableton), was a close friend of present-day CEO Daniel Haver. Generator attracted a tide of talent hoping to be involved in this new direction for musical instruments, despite the fact that there was initially no money to pay salaries. The pair, calling themselves Native Instruments, caused a storm at the 1996 Musikmesse in Frankfurt when they showed the results of their efforts. It was, in other words, the embryo of Reaktor. Generator allowed the user to construct instruments from low-level modules - oscillators, filters and so on - connected together in a graphical interface. Stephan teamed up with self-taught programmer Volker Hinz, and they drew up the plans for a modular synth environment. When Stephan found himself unemployed shortly afterwards, it was a perfect opportunity to try to realise his vision of a software synth.

I wanted to bring the stuff that was established only in the academic field to everybody, or people like me.' New Generation 'I was thinking about something similar, but on simple cheap PCs, with cards as cheap as possible, but in the end the cheapest solution was to create a software-only system. 'The main advantage of a computer of course is its screen and its input/output abilities.' Other organisations such as Ariel/IRCAM and Symbolic Sound were already experimenting with computer-based synthesis, but their implementations required expensive DSP cards. 'When I was reading about this PC stuff, for me the picture somehow became clear that the PC is a very good platform to build synthesizers on,' remembers Stephan, NI's founder and President. Stephan also has his Yamaha DX7-II with him - a synthesizer with a notoriously difficult user interface. At the house where he is staying, the only reading matter is a copy of the German computer technology magazine c't.

It's the early '90s, and hardware engineer Stephan Schmitt is taking a vacation from his job developing mixing consoles. Photo: Ingo KniestĪs Native Instruments celebrate their 10th anniversary we go behind the scenes at the company, remember the highlights, and look forward to the next decade in software instrument design. NI Founder and President Stephan Schmitt (left), and CEO Daniel Haver.

Images zoom native instruments komplete 10