On Thursday October 8th, or 10am on Thursday to 3am on Friday Eastern time to be precise, Waves are running their first ever Plug-in Day to celebrate 23 years of them making plug-ins.
You can sign up for this event on their Facebook page and you can sign up to get an email reminder when Plug-in Day starts.
Waves pioneered the first audio plug-in back in 1992, and has remained one of the world’s leading developer of audio plug-ins and signal processors for the professional and consumer electronics audio markets ever since.
That First Plug-in
Waves began in October 1992 with the introduction of the first audio plug-in, the Q10 Paragraphic equaliser which debuted at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention. The Q10 broke new ground in three major areas....
- It was the debut of the audio signal processor plug-in, and its a tool still commonly used today.
- Its graphic user interface gave users unprecedented control and eliminated the requirement for a DSP engineering background since it automated the filter coefficient calculations.
- The Q10 offered sound quality equal to or better than many of its hardware counterparts.
How Did Waves Start?
Waves founders Gilad Keren and Meir Shaashua share music as their first love. When establishing Waves, Gilad drew upon his experience as an accomplished sound engineer, having recorded and produced hits for major Israeli artists, while Meir had been a musician in successful bands. Both Gilad and Meir pursued engineering study: Meir went to Hebrew University and majored in Physics and Mathematics; Gilad attended Israel’s Technion Institute of Technology and majored in applied Mathematics. They met through a mutual friend at a recording studio in 1982. In 1990 they both worked for a start-up called AudioAnimation. Two years later, Waves Ltd. was formed. Gilad remembers Waves’ modest beginnings...
In the early days, a lot of people thought software would be a toy compared to hardware! But now, our products often replace multiple hardware boxes.
In the years since, Waves has grown into one of the world’s leading developers and suppliers of software-based audio signal processing tools, whilst also expanding to meet a demand for Waves processing in hardware-based products.