Plugin Alliance is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first Brainworx plug-in. Plugin Alliance’s founding partner and sister company Brainworx launched its first plugin, bx_digital, 10 years ago and as part of the celebrations, Plugin Alliance is offering 10 Brainworx plug-ins at some very special prices. Check out the offers on our Partner Deals section of our Deals page. But how did it all start? 

We are going to let the man behind Brainworx and Plugin Alliance Dirk Ulrich take up the story...

10 years ago I was producing music for a living, and I was at a big studio in Cologne to have some of my mixes mastered,” he recalls. “The guys there were using a custom-built M/S matrix with some decent, regular EQs, and I was blown away with what they could do with it. This is when I decided I wanted to build a hardware analog EQ with an M/S matrix built in, so I started working on this with a friend of mine. To help develop a prototype we worked with a software development kit from a German company, Creamware. Once we had a functioning prototype of an M/S EQ inside the box, we showed it to the Creamware guys and they said, ‘Wow! You should absolutely make a plug-in out of this.’ Funnily enough, the hardware never went into production because we had a plug-in ready, took it to some trade shows, and it completely took off, so we’ve focused on developing software ever since. We began to create more plug-ins based on M/S technology, and people seemed to really dig what we did with each new release. The rest, as they say, is history... with the Brainworx-branded M/S standard EQ, bx_digital V3,  representing where the company is at today. This is the third generation of bx_digital, the EQ plugin that basically started Brainworx as a plugin company, seeing the V3 come to life... daddy couldn’t be prouder!”

Maybe he could, the most recent Brainwrox release from Plugin Alliance is the bx_console E, that represents its past, present, and future, and reinforces the Brainworx ethos of combining analog and digital DNA. The bx_console E is a 72-channel emulation of the high-end, hit-making British E Series console, but this Brainworx brainchild is more than a channel strip plug-in representing 10 years of refinement in its development of EQ and dynamics processors with circuit modelling of the analog domain. With Brainworx’s TMT (Tolerance Modeling Technology) it simulates the channel-to-channel variances of the E Series’ electronic components on each and every instance of the plug-in. Dirk told us...

It’s hard to describe the excitement of sitting at a real analog, large-format E Series console, comparing it to our bx_console E plug-in emulating the exact same console, and not being able to tell the difference. Other emulations miss the most crucial part of what makes those big boards so desirable, which is the depth and width of the sound; you can only get that from many slightly different channels together, working their magic on the music.

The technical achievements of the last 10 years alone are enough, but perhaps Brainworx’s success is also deep-rooted in Dirk’s experience as a producer and audio engineer, work which continues to this day. This hands on experience helps to drive his desire to build better tools for everyone in the pro audio and music business.

Thank you, Dirk, for your commitment to our industry and developing tools that have helped many fellow creatives bring their projects to life. Here's to the next 10 years.