“Growth should come from inside, we don’t want to rely on venture capital in order to grow”
We look back on 25 years of zplane and everything we’ve achieved in the audio software industry since the year 2000.
This January, we are extremely pleased to be celebrating 25 years of zplane. Since being founded in the year 2000 by friends Martin Schwerdtfeger, Tim Flohrer and Dr. Alexander Lerch, the zplane name has maintained its reputation as one of the industry’s most innovative audio software developers.
In this article, we’re taking the opportunity to reflect on a quarter of a century of zplane. From zplane’s inception to launching its first (and only) hardware product, partnering with the likes of Ableton, Dolby and Native Instruments to expanding into the consumer software market, let’s look back at 25 years of zplane.
We’re also celebrating this momentous occasion by giving away 25 copies of ELASTIQUE PITCH V2 to 25 lucky winners! Find out how to enter at the bottom of this article…
Pre-2000: Studying in Berlin
zplane’s three founders met while studying Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. At this time, Tim had been passionate about music for a number of years, while Martin had recently developed a greater interest in music and audio while studying.
2000: zplane is Established
Driven by the desire to be their own bosses and develop innovative audio software products in their own way, Martin (left), Tim (right) and Alexander established zplane in January 2000. Starting as a three-man band, zplane’s founders agreed early on to remain a small independent company in order to evolve organically.
2001: The First zplane Products are Born
After a year of development, zplane was ready to launch its first product, z.MATRIX. Designed for the Scope DSP platform, z.MATRIX was an early immersive audio tool that allowed users to position up to 16 sound sources anywhere within a 3D space.
Now widely known for the
ELASTIQUE PITCH V2 plugin and seamless Pro Tools integration, ELASTIQUE is zplane’s industry-leading time stretching algorithm and Software Development Kit, or SDK. The ELASTIQUE V1 SDK was the first iteration of this powerful technology.
A third-party client initially commissioned the development of ELASTIQUE for a specific project, but was unable to complete payment for the work. This turned out to be a stroke of luck, as it meant zplane retained the rights to the technology and its future implementation.
This also paved the way for future models of professional partnership, whereby a third party could pay for the initial development of a piece of technology. They would then receive the license to use the algorithm while zplane retained the rights, and could therefore advance the technology further.
2004: The Next Generation of SDKs
In the mid-2000s, the AUFTAKT V1 and ESPACE SDKs were launched. Now on version 4.2, AUFTAKT is zplane’s tempo and beat tracking algorithm as adopted by many leading brands including Ableton in 2005, and Dolby and Gemini in 2014. ESPACE is a convolution reverb algorithm now used by Native Instruments, among others. Unlike traditional convolution-based reverbs, ESPACE allows the user to adjust parameters as they would with algorithmic reverbs.
2007: zplane’s First and Only Hardware Product
zplane are known for their contribution to the audio software world, but most people don’t know that there was once a physical hardware device within the product range. The zplane Range-X Pro V2 ADAT Extender was an audio, ADAT and MIDI interface that reliably expanded users’ audio connectivity. The device was designed for demonstration purposes, and so only a handful of prototype devices were ever made.
2008: The First Consumer zplane Product
Until this point, all of zplane’s software products were SDK and DSP tools that were licensed to third parties for use in their consumer products. That all changed with the arrival of Vielklang, which was originally known as Meloscaline during development. The now-discontinued plugin was an intelligent harmonizer and arrangement plugin that could turn single recordings into rich harmonies of up to four parts.
In 2009, the first plugin version of ELASTIQUE was released in the form of ELASTIQUE PITCH V1, and came in a box containing a physical CD. This put zplane’s renowned pitch-shifting algorithm within reach of all kinds of music producers and sound engineers, no matter which DAW they used.
2009 also saw zplane acquire the rights to the development of PPMulator, an advanced audio metering plugin. PPMulator was originally developed by Jules Storer, the creator of the popular JUCE audio application development framework. The following year, zplane hired their first employee.
2015 to Today: An Era of Expansion
Over the following decade, zplane continued to offer advanced audio software licensing solutions while expanding into the consumer market.
Between 2015 and 2025, zplane released nine further consumer products, cementing their name within the consumer audio software market. Core products released in this period include:
- ELASTIQUE PITCH V2 – The latest iteration of zplane’s famed pitch-shifting tool
- PEEL STEMS – Real-time stem separation, right within your DAW
- DECODA – An intelligent song analysis and music theory application
- RETUNE – A transparent pitch correction plugin for monophonic and polyphonic sound sources
More Distribution Partners
In order to connect these products to their users, zplane partnered with some of the audio industry’s premier distributors during this period, including Sweetwater and Plugin Boutique.
zplane also took on a number of employees in order to meet the new business demands. Today, zplane employs a total of 10 full time employees across research, development and marketing departments.
Over the coming months and years, zplane will continue to develop its existing technology in a range of consumer products, including some unique new tools that can’t be disclosed just yet. We are also exploring artificial intelligence’s ability to improve zplane products, and therefore users’ music creation process.
Other goals include enhancing the user experience so that zplane products can be integrated into existing creative workflows more easily. A new zplane product license manager will make it even more straightforward to buy, register and install zplane products.
zplane will also be publishing more blog and video content in order to showcase the range of consumer products and their many uses and applications. While each zplane product has a primary use case, there are plenty of other creative uses that we are excited to share with new and existing users. You can stay up to date with what we’re up to by following us on our socials:
Want to Win a Copy of ELASTIQUE PITCH V2?
We want to celebrate this huge milestone by giving something back to our customers. For that reason, we’re giving away 25 copies of ELASTIQUE PITCH V2! Click the link below to find out how to enter…
