Chris Wright (technologist)

Soundscape Digital Technology pioneered Windows based multi-channel studio recording, editing and mastering from the early 1990s, becoming one of the most widely respected Digital Audio Workstations.

Soundscape was formed in the UK when in early 1992, Chris Wright, the head designer and Technical Manager for Cheetah Marketing Ltd., with Belgian designer Johan Bonnaerens and Cheetah, together with Johan's employer Sydec NV agreed a plan to jointly design, manufacture and market a modular 4 track hard disk based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

The SSHDR1 DAW became, if not the first, certainly one of the first products of this kind available and was showcased as an 8 track system at the NAMM and Musik Messe trade shows in 1993. Cheetah's parent company Cannon Street Investments was struggling during the UK recession and closed the company in March 1993, splitting off the computer peripherals division (which principally manufactured joysticks such as Bart Simpson, Batman and Alien licensed designs) to another company in the group. Chris Wright along with Sales Manager Nick Owen bought the assets of the Cheetah music products division, forming Soundscape Digital Technology Ltd., immediately took on two of the ex-Cheetah employees (Marcus Case - Production Manager and Kirstie Davies - Operations Manager) and started to market and manufacture the Soundscape SSHDR1, shipping the first batch of 100 units in August 1993.

Like Chris, who had started designing products for music (synthesizers, effects, samplers, keyboards, drum machines) in his spare time (his day job was as a Senior Electronics Designer in telecoms), Johan was also an avid rock guitar player and music fan and had started the design at home. A long experienced audio designer himself, Chris contributed in some of the key elements of the DSP (Digital Signal Processing) code such as how to efficiently implement real-time fade curves, and digital compressors and chase locking to timecode, and his experience of EMC shielding and testing techniques enabled rapid EMC approval to be gained. He later concentrated on developing the specifications for the Soundscape products as they moved into the demanding high end markets in broadcast and film sound. Johan concentrated mainly on the Windows software and another engineer took over the DSP code.

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