General Category > Off topic
The history of Tone2
Markus Krause:
I got asked by email about the origins, motives and philosophies that gave birth to Tone2.
Since this info might be interesting also for others i'll post my answer also to the forum.
Markus:
Back in the 90s me and some friends we part of the 'demoscene' and inspired by 'The Future Crew'. At the age of 13 I started programming Trackers for SoundBlaster-cards and DOS. There was not much software available on the marked and we were not able to afford real synthesizer hardware.
That's why me and some friends programmed stuff in Pascal and Assembler in our freetime.
At the end of the 90s i was part of the team which developed 'All Sound Tracker'. A sample-based sequencer tailor-mode for the EMU 8000 chipset of the SoundBlaster AWE 32 and AWE64.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv7kIswAGxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwtJ5qVC5p8
In the early 2000s i played with some friends in a band called 'Wellental'. It was somewhere inbetween of Ambient, Electronic and Jazz Music. We did play everything live and recorded some of our jam-sessions.
http://www.bnro.de/~feilei/obertone-homepage/mp3/wellental/Wellental%20-%20Ambienz.mp3
That's the point where i started programming my own vst-plugins. It was mainly for myself and my friends.
Hans-Peter Diechler and myself did work in a project called 'Druckwelle'. It was trance and dance music.
http://www.Obertone.com
http://www.bnro.de/~feilei/obertone-homepage/mp3/dance/Druckwelle%20-%20Dream%20dimension.mp3
http://www.bnro.de/~feilei/obertone-homepage/mp3/dance/Druckwelle%20-%20MIXXS.mp3
http://www.bnro.de/~feilei/obertone-homepage/mp3/fun/Druckwelle%20-%20Fart.mp3
Later i programmed the audio engine for several plugins released by refx:
Vanguard, Junox, PlastiCZ and Slayer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jroyPUALulo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMDtqVZ1Lo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoiufpOrWBo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYaM4NBN04E
Tone2 was founded since Michael from refx was unwilled to translate some of my ideas into action (FilterBank and the HCM synthesis of FireBird).
Here is some info about the company Tone2 (scroll down):
https://www.tone2.com/about-tone2.html
----------
I translated some of my old demoscene creations from the 90s (written in pascal and assembler) to html5 (scroll down):
https://www.tone2.com/electronix.html
https://www.tone2.com/ims-exclusive.html
Alex_Longard:
Thanks Markus!
It's very interesting!!!
LeVzi:
That is interesting, I bet they are regretting not going with your ideas now at refx , what have they produced in the last decade ? banks for nexus. that's it.
Markus Krause:
Initially i had planned to release FireBird and FilterBank with ReFX. The engine was working and there was a working prototype. However Mike refused to publish these products. Mike said 'the HCM synthesis is not useful, i don't like the sound'. Luckily he was wrong with this. Gladiator later became one of the most successful synthesizers.
It became even worse. He kicked me from reFX. So i had to found Tone2 to be able to release new products. It was a difficult time, since i had to start a new and unknown company from the scratch.
Later i it was clear why Mike didn't want to release FireBird and FilterBank. He and Manuel Schleis have been working on Nexus secretly.
If i look back now founding Tone2 was the right way. It was a very difficult one but i do not regret it.
LeVzi:
No, and rightly so.
Nexus quickly became an industry standard, very popular, very used. BUT as with all ROMplers, the sounds have become stale and boring. You cannot change the stock sounds in it hardly at all.
Which is why Tone2 synths are superior as they are infinitely changeable. I never owned nexus, I don't like ROMplers tbh. That damn German Trumpet patch dominated UK Hardcore for too long and made the scene stale.
I am thankful you founded Tone2 and I remember when Gladiator was released, people were initially sceptical, I was a regular at the IL forums, and ppl started talking about it, slated it but then started using it and it won them over. Quality always shines through in the end.
You should take a bow for all you have achived and will continue to do so :) All the people at T2 should.
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