As we promised in Podcast 190 we are running a weekly series profiling the companies on our Audio Market page where we offer smaller developers the opportunity to reach the Pro Tools community at a much lower price. This week we are going to turn the spotlight on Audified based in the Czech Republic. In the hot seat is Lubor Prikryl, an Audified director, university lecturer of acoustics and audio engineering, who in his spare time plays baroque music in public, jazz and rock at home.

PTE: How did you start? Tell us about your journey to setting up your company.

Lubor: We are all self made men, none of us started in a big famous company. Our background is a knowledge of mathematics, physics, engineering and in enthusiasm for music. Because of our focus on technologies, we firstly solved some problems such as native Mac OS X apps with plug-ins. But our main focus is in the audio processing. We have perfected technologies for creating digital models of analog circuits, and cooperate with universities in several branches of our research. Currently, we are improving our marketing to find a direct way to our customers, instead of selling our solutions to other companies.

PTE: Tell us a bit about your company and the products you produce?

Lubor: We developed the first guitar software effects at the time when most of the people in our industry predicted that guitarists would never use software for amp simulation. We have simulations of guitar and bass pedals, and complex guitar and bass solutions. Now that there are so many guitar products in the market, we utilise our exacting modeling technologies in simulation of studio effects. We are really proud of our simulation of a famous German compressor, U73b. This is a very rare device, very complicated for its time, (it contains several valves) but its sound is astonishing.

We have also very long tradition in creating applications for live performance with low latency with speedy and easy access to prepared configurations.

PTE: What challenges are you facing at the moment?

Lubor: About two years ago we created our own DSP hardware platform. It is a multifunctional box where we can load our top audio algorithms. Producing hardware is a real adventure, we changed the circuitry several times to get the best audio parameters, and we believe it is now comparable to, or even better than, very reputable companies in this sector. At this moment we are in pre-production phase for our Automixer. More details will be released soon.

PTE: What plans do you have for the future that you can share with the community?

Lubor: At present we are already working on another vintage studio unit plug-in.  Then we have a new free AAX plug-in coming very soon. We are also considering developing an extended version of our inTone 2 application, which is our effects and software instruments workstation optimised for live performance. Our professional software system for playback in theaters – Audified SceneFlow – needs our attention all the time as well.

PTE:  Wow you are vey busy working on all those different products! What is your favourite audio tool?

Lubor: Actually, there are many things I would call an "audio tool". For instance, my flute is my closest audio tool, really :-). Then I love the systems linking audio workstations and advanced controllers, much more than some digital audio consoles which I perceive are more like computers than audio tools. I much prefer the solutions where computer is a real computer, performing mixing, effecting and other tasks in software, connecting control, I/O and possibly FX hardware.

PTE: What one thing gets you annoyed about the audio business?

Lubor: Basically there is not much that would annoy us in this business, otherwise we wouldn't stay in it for so long. But the computer world continues to get faster and faster. New versions of operating systems, plug-in systems and DAWs are coming almost every two months. This forces us to spend a lot of our valuable time updating older products – time we would much prefer to spend on development of new products instead.

PTE: Is there anything else you would like to share with the Pro Tools Expert community?

Lubor: I love to work with communities. The comments, feedback and suggestions are great and we strive to reflect them in our products. We are glad that we can share our thoughts here, too as part of the conversation. So if there is anything you like or dislike about our products, please do share your experience with us. 

PTE: Thank you for taking time to share your thoughts and experiences with the community.

So please do visit the Audified web site, take a look at their various products like the German compressor, U73b plug-in, their range of guitar standalone processing applications like ampLion Pro, their inTone 2 effects and software instruments workstation optimised for live performance and their SceneFlow professional software system for playback in theaters.

Remember to visit the Audio Market page and support all the small developers, all trying to punch above their weight.