Get with the programmers

Soundspot co-founder Rio Lorenzo talks Union, UX design and uniquely powerful synth engines

Give us a potted history of Soundspot. “We founded the company back in 2014, the main objective being to create cool products that would make a difference to people’s productions. Things really came together for us because of the skillsets that my co-founder and I brought to the table. He was a mastering engineer that had gone on to learn how to code audio algorithms in C++, and I was a producer and sound designer who’d also worked in UX design. This meant we could not only design and build the products, but do so in a way that we knew the end result would sound great.

“We were able to build a lot of plugins in a very short space of time, and being selffunded, we had no corporate hoops to jump through, so when we came up with a great idea, we could move on it right away. It definitely wasn’t easy, and we both found ourselves working pretty much 24/7 at the start, but it was certainly worth the effort after seeing the support rolling in from some of the world’s most talented producers and engineers, and, most importantly, all the messages from our customers telling us how much our plugins have helped.”

Union is your first synth. What challenges did you face?

“One of the biggest was designing a user experience that didn’t overwhelm people, especially those new to synthesis. I set out to build an interface that inspires people to experiment with creating their sounds.

“From a development point of view, the synth engine itself is an analogue-modelled beast that can run up to 96 voices of Unison per note. This amount of power can obviously be very CPU-intensive if pushed hard, so we had to look for ways to optimise things without reducing the sound quality. Union can still be a little demanding on the CPU for modest systems, but we’re currently exploring new techniques to reduce this.

“Another challenge was making sure the factory presets were solid. Luckily I co-own a sound design label called Diverge Synthesis with Standerwick, so we were able to draw on the talent from our team of sound designers to get the job done right.”

“We were able to build them and knew they would sound great”

What is it that sets Union apart from other synths?

“First, it has to be the synth engine under the hood. Our developers have an extensive history of creating powerful hardware synths, and they really pushed the boat out to make Union sound and behave like a real analogue unit. Second, I’d say it’s ease of use. You can make your own sounds from scratch in no time at all with a very small learning curve.”

What are the advantages of the resampling wavetable oscillator? “The benefit of generating the wavetable from Oscillators 1 and 2 is that the new wavetables in Oscillator 3 share the same harmonic characteristics, which means the sound glues together well without much need for more processing. Also, the wavetables are created in true stereo, so you have detailed control over the balance and phase of the sound.”

What’s next for SoundSpot?

“We’ve got some great new products currently in development, and we also have a really exciting update coming for Union in 2020.” soundspot.audio