A quarter century ago, two former high school and LSU School of Engineering classmates were inspired to found a new company called PreSonus®, where they would design innovative audio products with professional sound quality and features without sacrificing affordability. Working in a borrowed garage space in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Berklee-trained guitarist, producer, and audio engineer Jim Odom and fellow engineer (currently Vice President of Manufacturing) Brian Smith started by creating the DCP-8, which was the first product to offer digital control over analog audio circuits—a design PreSonus patented in 1995.
“At the time we designed our DCP-8, other options were esoteric gear costing tens of thousands of dollars,” recalls Odom, now the company’s President and Chief Strategy Officer. “We were recording and wanted the same equipment as the big studios but we couldn’t afford it, so we built our own, starting PreSonus with three employees and an output of five or six units a week. Then and now, our philosophy has been to design products that people can afford.”