SN - Soundware Scene

This issue not only heralds the fourth anniversary of the Soundware Scene column, it also marks the fourth anniversary of Sweetwater’s Soundware Development Facility here in Ft.Wayne. Four years ago, Chuck Surack (our Founder and Chairman) had an idea that seemed pretty radical at the time: “Why couldn’t a music retail company create their own brand of professional-quality soundware for the keyboards and equipment they sold?

“And why not build the Soundware Facility right inside the main retail building so that all of the equipment knowledge learned while creating sounds on the various brands could be quickly passed along to our Sales Engineers and Technical Support team?”

Many times, over the past four years, this concept has proven itself as a contributor to the successful history of Sweetwater and its widespread recognition as the industry leader in technical awareness with a sales force who’s hands-on equipment experience is unmatched by any other music retailer.

As Sweetwater Sound grew so did our Soundware Development Facility with two in-house offices as well as additional soundware contributions coming in from all over the world which has resulted in 23 CD-ROMs, five Power Translators, four Audio CDs, and 387 Floppy Disk sets that covers Kurzweil, Akai, Alesis, E-MU, En-soniq, Roland, Korg and Yamaha. The Soundware Facility also created comprehensive audio test media for Alesis, TASCAM and other recording devices.

Finally, we took the knowledge that we’ve gained from working with all this equipment and made it accessible to our customers with our unique Value Added program. Our hundreds of value added “Question and Answer” guides are just another part of the “Sweetwater Difference.” They contain all of the most commonly asked questions and answers for each of the major pieces of equipment we sell, which will get you up and running quickly.

This issue we are proud to present our latest soundware offering for Yamaha’s A3000 Professional Sampler (Version 2). Many of our customers use it as a powerful phrase-based sampler with its many DSP processing effects, but we felt that they would also appreciate having our highly-acclaimed Stereo Triple Strike Grand Piano available for it as well. So we created a special A3000 “Mini” CD-ROM with this file for an unheard of low price of just $79.95. At this price, you just can’t pass on the chance to own one of the best sampled grands ever recorded. For more information on this and our ever expanding library of soundware, call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer today!