Novation Digital Music Systems
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| Industry | Electronics |
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| Founded | 1992 (as Novation Electronic Music Systems) |
| Headquarters | Windsor House, Turnpike Rd, Cressex Business Park, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England |
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Key people
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Chris Huggett |
| Products | Keyboards, Synthesizers, MIDI Controllers |
| Parent | a Division of Focusrite Audio Engineering Ltd |
| Website | www.novationmusic.com |
Novation Digital Music Systems Ltd. is a British musical equipment manufacturer, founded in 1992 by Ian Jannaway and Mark Thompson as Novation Electronic Music Systems. Today the company specialises in MIDI controllers with and without keyboards, both analogue and virtual analogue performance synthesizers, grid-based performance controllers, and DJ controllers and interfaces. At present, Novation products are primarily manufactured in China.
Novation's first commercial product, released in 1992, was the Novation MM10, a portable battery-operated keyboard controller with full-sized keys, designed to operate with the Yamaha QY10 music workstation. It was based on a device called the MidiCon, which was never released and was the first hardware controller the company made. The MM10 combined with the QY10 arguably constituted the first completely portable modern music workstation.
In 1993 the company released the Novation Bass Station (also known as the Bass Station Keyboard), today regarded as a classic synthesiser. Influenced by the Roland TB-303 Bassline, a portable compact synthesiser designed for instrumental accompaniment, Bass Station used digitally controlled analogue oscillators (DCOs), LFO and filter to replicate the sound of a traditional monophonic twin-oscillator analogue synth.
The core technology of Analogue Sound Modelling (ASM) was introduced in 1995 with the Drum Station, which modelled the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines using digitally synthesised models of the original waveforms.
Novation's first technical director was Chris Huggett, who designed the Wasp and OSCar synthesisers and wrote the operating system for the Akai S1000. While working for Akai, he gave Novation's founders advice and support, contributing to the design of the Bass Station and Drum Station - the former featured the filter Huggett had designed for the EDP Wasp - and joining full-time in the mid-1990s to design the Novation Supernova. He has been a consultant to the company ever since and has been involved in the design of many of the company's products.
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