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Leapwing Audio co-founder talks past, present and future

Leapwing Audio co-founder and director of R&D Jeroen Dreessen (pictured centre) catches up with Headliner to reflect on the importance of his day-to-day role, the company’s aims as a provider of professional plugin solutions, and its short yet compelling history.

Could you start by telling us about your background in audio?

I went to college to do electrical engineering, with a specialty in chip design. When the time came to do my dissertation, or thesis, I found out there was an internship going at Philips here in Belgium, in their sound and acoustics group. I did that for half a year, and from an engineering perspective got the chance to dive into some very cool and interesting topics like psychoacoustics.

In 2009 I was struggling to find work, so I went into teaching for a little while. Then I got a phone call from a former colleague at Philips, and I ended up working there for another year as a sound and acoustics engineer. Then another former colleague from Philips left for a startup called Auro Technologies, which was developing codec technology for 3D audio. I started working there doing a bit of everything; from algorithm design and prototyping to doing demos and pre-sales.

I learned a lot there for about seven years, and it was also there where I met Robin Reumers, because that startup was located in the Galaxy Studios building here in Belgium. So then as a research engineer I got to actually work in a music studio alongside mixing and post production engineers.

When did the idea to create Leapwing Audio first come up?

In the fall of 2015, Robin came to me with this idea and a concept he was working on for a multiband compressor. It was something we agreed would be useful, and that became the first real driver for us – making something new that we could benefit from ourselves. That idea was based on the hardware chain that Robin used while working with his mentor, Bob Katz.

I was up for a weekend project, and so we soon set about working together on DynOne. I basically did the development, and evaluated a bunch of filters and compatible algorithms. I then got in touch with a programmer friend of mine to develop the actual plugin, so that was the point when we started getting some other people on board. At the start of 2016 we actually started the company to have some form of legal protection, and so we could get the licenses we needed from Apple, Avid etc.

Tell us more about your role at the company.

We’re a small company, so I tend to be a bit all over the place. As director of R&D, I am responsible for the whole plugin design and development, and for delivering a product or a range of products that actually work correctly and are maintained correctly. I have the end responsibility that the products that get sent to our clients actually do what we promise, keep doing what we promise, and any bugs are fixed. So there’s a project management aspect to it as well, and then the algorithm design – coming up with new ideas, prototyping etc… I’m mixing a bit of everything. Robin on the other hand is the interface to our customer base, and is essentially the face of the company.

WE TRY TO MAP AND TUNE PARAMETERS IN A WAY THAT’S EASY AND INTUITIVE TO USE WITH A VERY LIMITED AMOUNT OF INTERACTION.

What is the company’s overall goal from a user perspective?

Our main goal is to make products that are easy to use and simple, with not too many controls, but under the hood contain some complex and innovative processing.

As an example, our StageOne plugin has a Width fader, which you would expect to make the sound image a lot wider than stereo when turned up to 100%. Under the hood however there’s a whole bunch of parameters that are being mapped to that one single slide. We try to map and tune those parameters in a way that’s easy and intuitive to use with a very limited amount of interaction.

How have your recent signature plugins been received by your customers, and how did these collaborations come about?

We hadn’t actually ever thought about doing a signature plugin before we decided to push on with it, but as soon as we got in touch with Al Schmitt, one thing led to another and before we knew it we were basically modeling his hardware. He really wanted to work with us at the time and it was an opportunity we couldn’t turn down.

Joe Chiccarelli

Joe Chiccarelli

Robin sat down with Al, as well as with Joe [Chiccarelli] multiple times, analyzing the way they work. They shared a lot of multitracks and discussed how their studios are set up for different projects and for different types of recordings.

When it comes to designing these plugins and their mechanics, my role should kind of be invisible to the user. And we’ve had some really nice feedback so far.

Who is your main audience, and what have you currently got in the pipeline?

Our audience for the products we have out now is mixing and mastering engineers; those who are using them for professional or semi-professional projects. However, there’s no distinction or difference anymore between an engineer working in a major studio and someone working in their bedroom. They use the same MacBooks or Mac Pros – it’s just the peripherals and outboard gear that varies. And while our price point I would say is above the average of most plugins, we do like to have a limited portfolio, with products that each fit specific uses with little overlap.

We’re always working on multiple things at a time, like new plugin concepts. I’m expecting to have more details to share by Q1 2023. The work itself is always interesting for me, and without our loyal customers we wouldn’t be able to do what we do every day.

Check out Headliner's recent review of the Leapwing Joe Chiccarelli Signature plugin, here.