Dieter Meier Interview

My band, Yello, always lives in a world of digital emotions. For us, it's all about creating music with a digital instrument but giving this music warmth, giving it emotions, giving it life. So when I came across a company that lived this tenet in the form of the CS digitally controlled analog console when everybody else was all-analog, I knew Euphonix would make history. Euphonix was a Silicon Valley based company that was solving the problems of artists in a digital world. Back then, Euphonix was the only company providing the best of analog and digital at an affordable price point and they did this very successfully, and they enabled me to create emotion and sound in this digital world.

When I purchased Euphonix, I had this very clear idea for the future of the company. It took some financial commitments, but I was convinced that it was a very good investment in order to open a new world of technology. I became the owner of the company and that gave me all the freedom to go my way without any compromise. You can only do this when you are a single owner and you are convinced that you have seen the future of audio in a world of music, film and TV and its name is Euphonix. We did that, of course, based on the technical nucleus of the System 5 generation of digital audio mixing systems, EuCon protocol, and the creation and introduction of our Artist Series media controllers.

On EuCon technology

I always believed that the future of music technology, and video technology as well, would be a future with no walls, a future with no proprietary barriers to close people out, or making it difficult to work with alternative applications. Thanks to EuCon, our high-speed Ethernet control protocol, this future is now a reality. We are living in a networked world - EuCon helps to connect artists to their music and films - and as a company we are reaching out and connecting with other major companies in the media production world such as Apple, Steinberg, MOTU, Apogee and Metric Halo to help bring all these products together.

The beauty of EuCon is its ability to control any application being used. You see with EuCon, whether you are a consumer, a pro-sumer, or a professional, we belong to one big family where we can communicate with each other. This was always my dream; this was my vision; to free the artist, to free the musician on all kinds of different levels to work in a world without constraints and to communicate with everyone. However if you come with a new technology, you need partners. Our technology was always designed to talk to "partners" in the technical sense so we were very honored and pleased, to say the least, that such prominent companies as Apple and Steinberg endorsed the EuCon protocol from the start. Without Apple and Steinberg, we would have had a much more difficult time finding such an immediate and widespread community that uses, respects, and loves our technology.

On the Artist Series today

Now the Artist Series has been launched and is proving highly successful its time to take Euphonix to the next level. Despite difficult economic times we have some new and highly innovative products coming out this year that really address the needs of the modern artist living in this digital computerized world. Our approach, thanks to EuCon, is unique, so we are finding that despite all the difficulties we are growing as a company, increasing our sales and market share. In fact orders for the fourth quarter of 2008 continued to be strong and company sales for 2008 were the highest for the past 10 years, which is pretty amazing. 2009 will see our move into the world of video and film editing with the Artist Series where we will match our success in the music markets so I feel very positive. And on the pro side we are very strong in broadcast and audio post and will continue to support these markets. We are currently planning a move to a new larger facility in Silicon Valley to handle our growth and I am committed to continue to make Euphonix a world leading company.

Right now we are living in a difficult economic environment, but that doesn't mean an artist should be forced to live in the prison of a proprietary world where one audio company tries to dictate what you have to buy, how much you have to pay and with whom you can communicate. Now it's a matter of being able to build partnerships that allow communication between equipment in order to make it easier and more affordable to work. So that even in a recession, the artist is free to work without any restrictions - you are free to choose which applications and hardware work best for you at your own price point. That is the beauty of Euphonix' new line of media controllers, appropriately called the Artist Series. The Artist Series is all the power, heritage and technology of Euphonix hi-end digital mixing consoles packaged in a compact and highly affordable unit for the personal studio. With the Artist Series, an artist is no longer in a world designed to squeeze as much money out of him as possible, but instead he's in a world that is designed to give him his freedom to work for competitive wages and still be at the top of the latest technology.

On Euphonix users winning the Sound Mixing Oscar.

One of the things we are most proud of at Euphonix is the impact we have made in the hi-end film console market. It's been very successful for us, in fact, six of the last eight Oscars won for Sound Mixing were movies mixed on a Euphonix System 5 digital console, including Slumdog Millionaire. What really stuck in my mind was what sound re-mixer Mike Minkler said after he won the Oscar for Sound Mixing on Dreamgirls, he summed up exactly what Euphonix is all about by saying 'We were able to focus on the art of the film, the delicate blend of sound elements, and not the technology'. As a Euphonix user for both my music and my movies, I understand firsthand what an honor and accomplishment that is. For instance, right now I'm in post-production of a very complicated film with vendors from all over the world. We do sound design in Zurich, hard effects in Los Angeles and mix on my System 5 here in Hollywood. Because of Euphonix state-of-the-art technology this works out absolutely beautifully on the highest level of technology and the highest level of sound. It's marvelous, how the scale of the Euphonix family of machines is working out for me now on this very complicated project.

My movie, called The Lightmaker, is almost an analogy for Euphonix. It's about a contemporary New York musician who follows the woman he loves into an underworld - into a world of darkness where only a musical genius, somebody who understands how to play this magic instrument can bring soul and light to this dark world. When I planned and wrote this movie, I wasn't thinking of Euphonix. But this whole analogy fits; a world of darkness where nobody speaks with each other and then along comes an instrument - or in Euphonix' case, a technology - that if it's played by a true musician can give light and beauty back into the darkness. We had a world where nobody could, or at least it was very difficult to, talk to each other and thanks to EuCon technology there is this now communication.

With this EuCon principle, Euphonix will free the filmmaker from many of the complexities that were involved before. I believe post-production will go into a totally new world, where the artist himself will be able to post-produce his movie because it is easy, it's affordable, and it's communicative. There will be a new area of post-production thanks to Euphonix. At the end of the day, every console has to do with freeing the artist from the technology to create emotions and this is what Euphonix does and they've been doing it for 20 years.

On the future of Yello

Yello is very active. We just finished a new CD called Touch Yello and for the first time, we are planning to be on stage, live, but not with a concert, I call it a "presentation" of Yello music. Euphonix technologies, of course, are playing an integral part. It's going to be a very special show, in which a virtual reality that is created by music is morphing into a reality on stage.

On the future of Euphonix

As long as we focus on freeing the artist from the chains of technology - allowing them to concentrate on unleashing their creativity by allowing them to harness the power of the technology, I think we will continue to forge a leading position. And we are very aware that it is important to provide this leadership both for the professional and the home consumer - in fact by addressing both segments of the market - we are in a much stronger position as our work for the pros benefits the consumer and our broader reach to the consumer makes our partnerships with leading companies such as Apple much more attractive.

The perspective I give Euphonix is one of the artist who wants the most accessible, most technologically advanced, yet affordable, equipment so he doesn't have to think about the technology anymore. And that's absolutely wonderful for me to inspire Euphonix to go in that direction. Knowing the technology of Euphonix, knowing what we have already done, I'll often ask the R&D team, 'In an ideal world, can we do this?', and they said, "Thanks to EuCon and thanks to over 20 years of experience living in a digital world, yes, we can do this."