Home of Sonnox in Oxfordshire

Sonnox traces back to Sony Oxford who besides making a legendary digital console (OXF-R3, ‘the Oxford console’) also made some of the most popular plug-ins ever. Not long ago they released their first plug-in since the breakup from Sony so I thought it would only be fitting to ask them some questions.

Sonnox was previously Sony Oxford. Could you please tell us a little about the breakup and the history of the company?

The heritage of the Oxford Plugins does indeed trace back to the OXF-R3, which was the flagship digital mixing console designed at Sony Oxford. By the early part of this decade, our plug-ins business was evolving rapidly into an isolated unit that had little in common with Sony’s core business and was even using separate sales channels. The opportunities for a fledgling business were being limited by lack of investment, and it seemed a natural step to spin the business out of Sony as an Management Buy Out. Although this was a time-consuming process, the transfer was completed a year ago and we are now seeing the benefits. Since then we have taken on four additional full-time employees and have moved out of a large Corporate building to a barn conversion in a pleasantly rural location.

Pretty much all the Sonnox plug-ins are critically acclaimed, but if you could only pick one, which would be your favorite?

It’s difficult to pick a favourite, but perhaps I would choose the new SuprEsser for several reasons. Although one is always proud of a new baby, in the case of the SuprEsser we are all genuinely pleased with the performance and functionality, and we do think it will be a great addition to the portfolio of almost anyone working with audio. In addition, we’ve had terrific, positive feedback from early magazine reviews and beta testers (one said simply “fantastic - you have a winner”). Another element is that this is the first plug-in designed and released by us as an independent Company, so it’s very important that it’s a winner in order to maintain our image and re-assure everyone that more good things will continue to come from us.

How did the decision come to develop the SuprEsser, and what lead up to it being what it became?

People had been asking us for a long time to look at a de-esser. We hit early on the concept of processing in a band using FFTs and linear phase filters.

It underwent significant changes during development ,as we thought through more potential uses and improvements in the functionality and the GUI. We spent a long time with the GUI, trying to make it more intuitive, and it turned into an exciting time as improvements in the GUI led to new thoughts about functionality, which in turn refined the GUI. Quite late in the design process we started to address the delay issues, which resulted in the idea to split into 3 variants with differing delay.

SuprEsser is obviously more than a de-esser. Do you have any interesting tips or tricks for it to share with us?

All recordings contain resonances that derive from the instrument itself, the reaction of the room to the instrument, and the design of the microphone and its electronics. Normally we would have to use an EQ to carve out these resonances but at the expense of destroying the original sound of the instrument. The SuprEsser allows you to effectively tune out these resonances leaving the original natural sound untouched. The end result is a more natural sound without phase distortion. Engineers are now discovering they can almost remove the need to carve the sound with a traditional EQ and simply rely on SuprEsser to remove the unnatural sounds from the recording process.

Using the SuprEsser during mastering can also allow the user to tune into mix down resonances. This is where instruments have occupied the same frequency spectrum and created peaks in the final program. Using an EQ to remove these peaks can destroy the original tonal picture of the mix, but using the SuprEsser allows all the original mix to pass untouched until the resonances actually occur.

Care to spill the beans on any new products and/or developments?

So many ideas, so little time ! Tricky to give specific details on any future initiatives, of course, but there are so many opportunities and ideas that the difficult thing for a small Company such as ours is to prioritise the development and then doggedly stick to it through to perfection. It is true to say we have a couple more products at varying stages of development, but this does take many months for single products. We support several platforms (AU, VST, Pro Tools, PowerCore) and both Windows and Mac, so after a product has emerged from the development cycle, there is still a very significant overhead in testing before a product is ready for launch.

Thanks to Sonnox for taking the time to answer these questions. Expect a review of Sonnox SuprEsser this week.