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Digidesign

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[b]Digidesign[/b] (operating as [b]Avid[/b] since 2011) is an American digital audio technology company and software developer, established in 1984 by [a=Peter Gotcher] and [a=Evan Brooks] and best-known for Pro Tools digital audio workstation. Gotcher and Brooks, high school friends who played in several bands together, graduated from the [l614635]. In 1984, they founded [b]Digidrums[/b] to sell sound replacement chips for the E-mu Drumulator by [l167425], the first programmable drum machine. They rebranded as Digidesign Software and developed [i]Sound Designer[/i], a sample/waveform editor for Macintosh II. In 1989, the company offered [i]Sound Tools[/i], marketed as "the first tapeless recording studio." In 1991, the first version of [i]Pro Tools[/i] multitrack "digital audio workstation" came out, offered as an integrated hardware/software system. In the following two decades, Pro Tools became a "de-facto" standard in a professional studio environment, earning Digidesign Grammy (2001) and Oscar (2003) awards. In 1995, [b]Avid Technology[/b], a multimedia company from Burlington, Massachusetts, purchased Digidesign. As part of the Avid company group, Digidesign acquired several notable music technology companies: [l306143] studio and plugin developer from California in 2003, [l515871] in 2004, and "Sibelius" scorewriter and notation editor (2006). Since 2010, as Pro Tools became a pure software DAW, Avid Technology gradually phased out the "Digidesign" brand.