The audience started laughing, and Slate continued to recite his “fan” mail: “‘ Your plugins suck, your hardware sucks, your videos suck, your face sucks, and your voice sounds like a washed-up strip club announcer…now update my plugins to AAX* you big dumb Jersey Shore-looking loser.’”Īt that, the crowd’s guffaws rose two octaves in pitch, but I’d wager seeing Slate make fun of himself constituted only half of the reason for such a titter this, it seemed, was more like the laughter of recognition.

“‘ Dear Steven Slate,’” he read from the iPhone which had materialized in his hand, “‘ I hate your f-king face.’” Then he moved on to an email he received from a fan-a little note which, he said, had moved him deeply. On a Saturday evening towards the end of June, Slate gave a rather unconventional acceptance speech at the Pensado Awards. Here’s a good Steven Slate story for you, one that pretty much captures his style: Meet Steven Slate, one of the most successful tycoons in this new goldmine of pro-audio software, and what is more, one of the audio industry’s most identifiable personalities-a man who puts just as much energy into marketing some of the world’s best digital signal processing as he puts into crafting an April Fool’s joke (a few years ago, he filmed a promotional YouTube segment demonstrating methodologies behind his “ fart expansion pack ” when he released the video, some people in the industry didn’t realize he was joking). One software company, quickly rising to the top of this business, sports quite a recognizable spokesman, a fellow as synonymous with his own product as Steve Jobs was with Apple.īut, as you can plainly see, this is no hawkish, socially awkward nerd-at least, not in outward appearance and affect: URS, IK-multimedia, iZotope, Fabfilter-yet it’s tough to think of a pro-audio entity sporting as recognizable a spokesman as, say,Īpple’s Steve Jobs, or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.Īnd if we could imagine such a person, he or she would inevitably carry the same vaguely hawkish air, right? The same wily nerdiness that engenders standoffish social awkwardness, right? To be sure, there are a plethora of top-notch software companies-Waves Audio, UAD (a devision of product lines within Univeral Audio), PSP,

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