Music technology company ROLI has acquired FXpansion, a developer of software instruments including BFD3, billed as “the world’s largest collection of acoustic drum sounds,” and Strobe2, an analog-modeled software synthesizer.
Spokesmen for ROLI, makers of the Seaboard RISE and Seaboard GRAND, say that the acquisition of FXpansion adds a “vast collection” of sounds and effects to ROLI’s expanding “ecosystem” of music creation tools. The touch-responsive Seaboard instrument will now be developed alongside FXpansion’s virtual instruments. The expanded ROLI team will integrate its technologies, as the company “creates a new class of digital instruments that are more expressive and versatile than anything before it.”
Acquiring FXpansion products also extend ROLI’s stack of technologies. In addition to the Seaboard, ROLI already has developed Equator, a software synthesizer; NOISE, a free app that “turns iPhones into musical instruments”; the Blend social platform for music collaboration; and JUCE, the C++ coding framework for audio developers.
Roland Lamb, founder and CEO of ROLI, said, “We’re excited to continue pushing the boundaries of musical expression and technological innovation with FXpansion, which has been at the forefront of audio software development for the past 15 years.”
ROLI will support and develop FXpansion’s existing family of products which also includes beat production system Geist2, which was released earlier this year, and a range of sound effect plug-ins such as Maul and Bloom. FXpansion products will continue to be sold in their current form, and spokesmen assure that customer support and product maintenance will be available “on all of the current channels.” Anticipated updates – including the release of BFD 3.2 and Cypher2 – are progressing. All FXpansion team members will join ROLI, where they will take on new roles as they continue to develop FXpansion’s products.
More information about the ROLI acquisition of FXpansion and about the respective companies is on the ROLI website.
they should make a hardware workstation. i´d buy that board in a nanosecond. same goes for ni, if they implement their komplete 11 into a standalone komplete kontrol s board.
All I want for Christmas is a 5 octave keyboard that hosts VSTs with 8 output analog audio interface + USB multitrack audio. If you build it, we will buy it.
ROLI doesn’t make sense as a company and this just makes it more confusing. They’ve raised almost $45MM to sell niche products into a market that’s in the $500-750MM range. They would need to displace not only the other boutique vendors, but also a few heavyweights (Roland, Korg, Yamaha) to have a chance at realizing value for their raises.
Is this acquisition just something to spend their money on to show the investors they have a plan? Or are they buying revenue? Will we see them take a roll-up strategy and try to consolidate other companies to build their market share?
The business side of this is interesting to watch…
Roli, please look after fxpansion. Their software is great. It sounds great. It works well. It’s really versatile. Etc etc
haven’t used fxpansion in quite some time. Use roli rise and equator a lot. Might have a reason now to revisit fxpansion when roli implements more expressive control. nice aquisition.