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My first job in software was at elektron. Glad to see they are still putting out stuff!

by bobowzki 4y ago

b20000 4y ago
how was it working there and how did they get funded?
- capableweb 4y ago
  > how did they get funded? Correct me if I'm wrong (also hard to know since it's a private company), they are self-funded. Started out with a school project and building the SidStation (with a Commodore 64 SID chip), and went from that. Bit of links that go through the history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektron_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektron_(company) - https://sonicstate.com/news/2014/06/04/elektron-from-sid-to-rytm-a-brief-history/ https://sonicstate.com/news/2014/06/04/elektron-from-sid-to-...
  - b20000 4y ago
    i doubt you could have hired all the staff on the sale of some obscure c64 nostalgia in the beginning.
- bobowzki 4y ago
  I worked with them almost 20 years ago. Back then they had two products, SIDstation and Machinedrum. Pretty much all of they guys came from the local technical University and we were sitting in an office right next to the campus entrance. I'm not sure where the funding came from, probably some seed funding from the school.
unwind 4y ago
Cool! I see that they are hiring one software position at the moment [1], a Rust audio developer. Cool that they're using Rust, I wonder if that implies that they have ported earlier embedded code over, so at least their new products are based on Rust. I didn't see a breakdown of what's inside this new product, that is always very interesting to me, the collapsing of all those cool UI features and (virtual) audio-generating "machines" down onto actual CPU/FPGA resources. Also makes me wonder if they can source whatever chips they need, now seems like a sad and annoying time to release new hardware products. :( By the way, if it's not obvious, "Syntakt" is an amalgamation of "synth" as in synthesizer, and "takt" which is the Swedish word for "beat" (and/or "rythm", I guess) in the musical sense. So it makes sense for a combined synth and drum machine, I guess. [1] https://www.elektron.se/rust-audio-developer/ https://www.elektron.se/rust-audio-developer/
- renaudg 4y ago
  > and "takt" which is the Swedish word for "beat" (and/or "rythm", I guess) in the musical sense. Wow, TIL ! Thanks, I had always assumed it was made to sound like "tactile" or "Kontakt"

My first job in software was at elektron. Glad to see they are still putting out stuff!

b20000 4y ago

how was it working there and how did they get funded?

capableweb 4y ago
> how did they get funded? Correct me if I'm wrong (also hard to know since it's a private company), they are self-funded. Started out with a school project and building the SidStation (with a Commodore 64 SID chip), and went from that. Bit of links that go through the history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektron_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektron_(company) - https://sonicstate.com/news/2014/06/04/elektron-from-sid-to-rytm-a-brief-history/ https://sonicstate.com/news/2014/06/04/elektron-from-sid-to-...
- b20000 4y ago
  i doubt you could have hired all the staff on the sale of some obscure c64 nostalgia in the beginning.
bobowzki 4y ago
I worked with them almost 20 years ago. Back then they had two products, SIDstation and Machinedrum. Pretty much all of they guys came from the local technical University and we were sitting in an office right next to the campus entrance. I'm not sure where the funding came from, probably some seed funding from the school.

unwind 4y ago

Cool! I see that they are hiring one software position at the moment [1], a Rust audio developer. Cool that they're using Rust, I wonder if that implies that they have ported earlier embedded code over, so at least their new products are based on Rust. I didn't see a breakdown of what's inside this new product, that is always very interesting to me, the collapsing of all those cool UI features and (virtual) audio-generating "machines" down onto actual CPU/FPGA resources. Also makes me wonder if they can source whatever chips they need, now seems like a sad and annoying time to release new hardware products. :( By the way, if it's not obvious, "Syntakt" is an amalgamation of "synth" as in synthesizer, and "takt" which is the Swedish word for "beat" (and/or "rythm", I guess) in the musical sense. So it makes sense for a combined synth and drum machine, I guess. [1] https://www.elektron.se/rust-audio-developer/ https://www.elektron.se/rust-audio-developer/

renaudg 4y ago
> and "takt" which is the Swedish word for "beat" (and/or "rythm", I guess) in the musical sense. Wow, TIL ! Thanks, I had always assumed it was made to sound like "tactile" or "Kontakt"