Native Instruments and Abbey Road Announce Partnership

Native Instruments has announced a close partnership with Abbey Road, the iconic British recording studios that have shaped the sound of popular music for over 75 years. Combining Native Instruments' expertise in music software design with Abbey Road's unique engineering facilities, the two companies say they will create "advanced software instruments of exceptional sonic quality and musical value", with the first product scheduled for release in early 2010.

As one of the most sophisticated recording and post production complexes in the world, Abbey Road's equipment includes one of the largest microphones collections as well as a selection of famed analog outboard gear custom-built by EMI. Combined with the studio's famous acoustics, and the expertise of Abbey Road's engineers, the studios form an ideal environment for the production of sample-based software instruments of the highest quality.

With the Kontakt sampler and its free Kontakt Player version, Native Instruments has established a versatile and widely adopted platform for sample-based instruments. Advanced features such as flexible scripting, sample morphing, and custom interface panels, which make Kontakt a premier platform for the authentic emulation of acoustic instruments, will be used extensively in the products developed together with Abbey Road in the future.

"Both popular music culture and the recording arts are indebted to Abbey Road Studios in many ways", says Sascha Kubiak, Director of the Producer Division at Native Instruments. "We are excited about the challenge to develop software instruments that will put the Abbey Road sound into the hand of musicians and producers everywhere".

"For over a decade, Native Instruments have been creating groundbreaking tools for artists to create and perform music", says Glyn Roberts, Head of Audio Products at Abbey Road. "We are looking forward to working closely with Native Instruments' developers to create exciting and innovative instruments for musicians of all genres".

Here's a video with more information on Abbey Road and on the new partnership: