In the mid ’80s New England Digital added Polyphonic Sampling option to the Synclavier. This was a huge step forward in the development of samplers. Others like the Mellotron and EMS had been developing samplers, but the Synclavier was the first to provide the technology to create virtual instruments that could convincingly recreate real instruments. In 1986 we recorded the world’s first commercially available orchestral library, the Prosonus Orchestral Collection. At the same time a handful of composers contributed material to NED which was packed as a library from NED but this library was more of a mismatch of material which was primarily used to help sell the Synclavier. The Prosonus library was sold in two parts, strings in one volume and brass, woodwinds, percussion and misc in another volume. Each was packages on a 12″ Winchester platter and sold for a bundled price of $10,000.
In the ’90s we repackaged the library for the Akai platform and the product skyrocketed in popularity. The String portion of the library was bundled with the Roland S700 series samples and the library was featured on the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audio Card.
Later we recorded a critically acclaimed orchestral percussion library called London Orchestral Percussion followed up by London Solo Strings and First Call Horns. In 2006 we teamed up with producer Vir2 Instruments and began development on a new line of next generation instruments.