Roli Acquires FXpansion

Roli, maker of Seaboard Rise, announced the purchased of fellow London-based plugin company FXpansion on September 1.

While Roli is still comparatively new to studios, FXpansion has 15 years of experience developing plugins, and the potential certainly exists for Roli to become an even more significant player in this particular field.

As Roli put it in the official company release: “Big news! We’ve acquired FXpansion, adding brilliant software instruments and brilliant thinkers to our fast-growing family of people and products. We’re very excited to develop the instruments of the future under one roof.

Although nothing will immediately change for the Seaboard RISE and Seaboard GRAND, you’ll feel the benefits of FXpansion in coming months and years. The FXpansion team has been at the forefront of audio software innovation for 15 years. They’ve developed tools like BFD, the world’s foremost collection of acoustic drum sounds, and Strobe2, the analogue-modeled software synthesizer beloved by professional musicians, that offer a vast array of sounds and effects for music-makers of all backgrounds. Their expertise is now part of ROLI, and they’ll help us accelerate our development of hardware-software instruments — including the Seaboard and instruments beyond it — that are redefining musical expression.

Photo: Roland Lamb, founder and CEO of ROLI (third from left), chats with Angus Hewlett, Skot McDonald, and Rhiannon Bankston-Thomas, the founders of FXpansion and new ROLI team members.