Plugin Perspective: Q&A with Matt Ward, CEO of Brainworx USA

March 23rd, 2014 by Trenton

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“The quality customers expect from a plugin now is really quite high,” says Matt Ward – and he’s not kidding.

Introduced as CEO of brainworx USA in February, Ward knows exactly what plug-ins mean to pro audio. And he’ll be leading the American expansion of one of the most innovative plug-in developers out there, producing hugely respected mixing and mastering solutions including the bx_digital V2, bx_hybrid, Vertigo VSC-2, bx_limiter, and Dangerous BAX EQ for UAD.

And the company’s reach goes far beyond its own product line. As the development team behind Plugin Alliance, Brainworx’ software partners include SPL (Germany), Shadow Hills Industries (USA), Millennia Music & Media Systems (USA), Mäag Audio (USA), elysia (Germany), Dangerous Music (USA), among others.

In his latest endeavor, Ward will be guided in one way by his deep experience with the audio industry and in another way by a wholly open mind. Over the years, he has worked with the likes of Studer Revox, Otari, and E-mu Systems, along with a ten-year tenure at the executive level with Universal Audio.

As he’ll readily tell you, the biggest thing he’s learned from each professional post is to be ready for anything.

Ward spoke with SonicScoop from his Scotts Valley, CA office about why he joined this fast-growing company, and what he and Brainworx Germany CEO Dirk Ulrich have planned. In the process, he provided an up-to-the-minute snapshot of the enormous opportunities – and intriguing challenges – that the plug-in sector faces in 2014.

Matt, why are you joining Branworx as CEO of Brainworx USA? What makes you and the company a good match at this time?

Matt Ward, CEO of brainworx USA

Brainworx, while still relatively small, is growing very fast so while there is tremendous opportunity, managing growth at this rate has its challenges.

There is a constant balance which needs to be struck between the growth of a company’s sales and its expenses. When you’re growing quickly, making these choices at the right time can become difficult.

Hopefully, the experience I’ve had managing growth at other companies will help us to find the right balance for our growth path.  For me personally what’s really exciting is that the people and technology here are so great.  There is so much passion for music and quality audio in this company and it shows in the products!

You spent ten years at Universal Audio, which were followed by strategic advisor roles for Manley Labs and PreSonus. How have those different experiences informed you as an executive?

I think the most important thing I learned is not to get stuck into the mindset that, because something you did at one company worked there, it will work everywhere.

UA, Manley and PreSonus are all very successful companies but they have very different cultures and do things in very different ways.

When I first started working with Manley, my instinct was to try to get Manley to be more like UA as UA had enjoyed such strong growth and success.  At one point I took a step back and said “Wait, EveAnna has run this company successfully for 20 years and it’s become an icon of the pro audio industry, so clearly she’s doing something right.”  At that point I was able to take a little clearer look at the whole picture and work effectively with her, building a strategy focused on the highest value items.

With PreSonus, they’re an amazingly bold company.  Their product development cycles are very aggressive and they are fearless about branching out into new markets.  This was a big change from the approach we used at UA, which was more methodical — we focused on what we thought we were best at and moved into adjacent markets and product categories more slowly.

Obviously, these different methods have worked out well for both companies so again, the lesson for me was there is no “by the book” way to build a company.  You have to find the right path for each company based on its culture, capabilities and philosophy.

So how would you characterize your role now with Brainworx USA? What’s a typical day/week/month going to look like for you?

Brainworx’s bx_hybrid is a Mono & Stereo EQ (click to enlarge)

Initially, my focus will be on business development and marketing.  Partnering has become a big part of our business and increasingly we’re partnering more with US-based companies so it makes sense for me, both geographically and because of the strong relationships I’ve built with US. companies over the years, to drive those efforts from here in the US.  We’re working on a few really exciting deals with US companies right now so stay tuned!

On the marketing side, it makes sense to build up our marketing team here as the US is our largest market.  This will also allow us in the future to offer things like local customer support.

What is it about Brainworx’ offerings that make them unique – what is the specific design philosophy of Dirk Ulrich and his team?

We want to solve problems.  Dirk, before starting Brainworx, was a successful musician and producer and he still works in the studio frequently so he’s always been interested in creating tools which solve real world problems and offer useful creative tools.

Matt, how does Brainworx see the overall production landscape changing? How are the preferences of studios, producers, engineers and artists shifting, and what part do plugins play in that environment?

The trend of more and more music production getting done in home or small project studios which are based around a computer continues, and the requirements of these users are also becoming more sophisticated.

The quality customers expect from a plugin now is really quite high.  This has led us to try and combine the deep musical and production roots of the company with our sophisticated technology to bring high-end studio tools to these users.

So, in turn, how is the Brainworx line evolving? What’s going to be new in 2014, and what’s on the horizon?

The ENGL® E765 Retro Tube Plug-In, designed for the UAD platform

While we’re still deeply involved in creating studio processors and you’ll see some great new products from us in this category later this year, we’ve also expanded quite heavily into guitar amplifier emulations.

Last year we released Engl amp emulations for the UAD platform which have been well–received and you’ll see some really cool additions to that lineup soon.  We’re really proud of these amps as they solve a huge problem for customers who want great guitar tone but don’t have the studio, mics and processing gear to get it by miking a conventional amp.

We spend a great deal of time in the Brainworx studio tweaking the impulse responses, which include a variety of speaker cabinets, microphones and studio hardware signal paths, so that users can quickly get a really solid tone inside the box.

Is there a user base you’d say Brainworx currently appeals to most? And who would you like to see your user-base grow to encompass next?

As I mentioned above, we’re really excited about our expansion into the guitar space, so I’d say getting guitar players to love digital is our next big mission.

(M/S mastering, M/S recording, L/R stereo)

What has been the most popular Brainworx plugin to date? Why do you think it’s been a success?

The bx_digital EQ has done really well. It’s an incredibly powerful EQ that does a lot of things ranging from MS mastering to surgical tweaking of individual tracks. Customers love it because it can do so many things and they tell us it sounds very musical.

bx_digital V2 is an 11-band EQ that works in 3 modes – M/S mastering, M/S recording, L/R stereo.

What are the big opportunities that exist in the audio plug-ins market now?

The key word is quality. A lot of opportunity has been created by the increases in computer power, combined with advances in technology. As the technology behind the plugins gets more sophisticated, the requirements they place on the processor also increases and the fact that customer expectation of, and their wiliness to pay for, better quality drives these advances and expands the market.

In other words, customers want products that sound great and modern computers now have more than enough power to allow us to deliver that quality with more sophisticated algorithms, without being so concerned about how many instances they can run.

Conversely, what are the most serious challenges that your vertical faces?

One challenge plugin developers face is that myriad of formats they have to support. It seems every time you turn around someone has a new plugin format they’d like you to develop for and the overhead associated with all these different formats can be pretty extreme.

We want to make our products available to as many users as possible so we’ve built a development system which simplifies a lot of the work associated with supporting all these formats, so this is less of a problem for us than a lot of developers. But it is still something we have to account for in all of our development.

And how is the development of plugins itself changing? How would you say Brainworx is set up to best take advantage of changes in workflow?

A major change that’s happening in the plugin space is the increasing use of plugins while tracking under very low latency.  With the emergence of the Apollo interface line from UA, a large number of native DAW users are now working in this manner which used to be pretty much the exclusive domain of Pro Tools HD systems.  We’ve partnered with UA to bring a number of Brainworx titles to the UAD platform so we think we’ve placed ourselves in a good position to become of key part of this workflow.

Brainworx has always been based in Germany. Why did Dirk Ulrich choose to open a US office? In a world of globally distributed software, why was a regional extension of the company deemed necessary?

Matt Ward (left) with Dirk Ulrich, founder of brainworx and Plugin Alliance.

The US is the largest market in the world and home to many, many important audio companies so there are great benefits to setting up shop here.

The Brainworx team in Germany is a fantastic development team which has produced an amazing amount of high quality products. And all the marketing and business development work was done largely by Dirk himself in addition to his duties running the team, crafting company strategy etc…so there really was a need to bolster our efforts in those areas.  Besides, I live in the USA! (laughs)

Will you be working with a team, or are you flying the office solo? What positions do you expect to add in the near future?

We have a couple of marketing positions we’re going to fill right away including Web development and a marketing projects coordinator.  We’ll also be enlisting the help of some contractors for other marketing tasks. I’ll be working business development and partner relations, along with Dirk, for now but I can foresee growth there also.

What kind of staff is needed to successfully drive a technology company today? What type of people do you look for when you’re building up a team?

It’s a difficult question to answer simply, as what you look for in a DSP developer is quite different from what you would look for in, say, a customer support rep, but one thing that really helps is a passion for music and audio. I’d say that even though our team is a very diverse group of individuals, that passion is something we all share.

Given the chance, some talented people are departing from the audio industry. Did you ever consider taking your career in a totally new direction? What made you decide to remain in this often challenging sector?

Well, in a way I did leave.  In the late 90’s I went to work for an Internet music company and then a small multi-media–to–handset company.  When the 2001/2002 recession dried up investment capital I gave writing fiction a try.  If you think it’s tough making a buck in the music business, you should try writing novels!

So in a sense I was out of the audio business when Bill Putnam called me and asked me to come help out at UA, and brought me back to pro audio.  I have to say that I haven’t regretted the return one bit.

— David Weiss