A synth manufacturer specializing in advanced sampler-based systems. The company was founded by inventor and polymath Ray Kurzweil in 1982, based on a challenge from Stevie Wonder to create a synth that could realistically produce the timbre of a grand piano. WIth a slate of well-known engineers from the industry including both Bob Moog and Al Pearlman on board, and Wonder serving as the company's music director, Kurzweil created the K250 sampler / sample playback synth. This was widely judged to be the first synth capable of accurately reproducing acoustic instruments that had proven difficult to imitate with the subtractive synthesis used by most synths of the day. It employed a combination of multisampling, velocity switching, and some filtering of the samples to produce its realistic s