PRISM evolves the practice of music production with a new methodology for editing music and mixing sound. It reimagines the process from the user’s perspective, and reinvents it from a technical one. Yet it fulfills as much as it replaces, retaining compatibility with existing tools and workflows, and preserving granular control. PRISM transitions DAWs to VAWs: Virtual Audio Workstations.
PRISM’s audio-to-midi gives users extraordinary new abilities. But it’s not a feature—it’s one of several underlying technologies used by PRISM to create the real magic.
Since 2015, PRISM has been used behind-the-scenes with dozens of iconic artists for whom performances are critical—ranging from Alice Cooper and Deep Purple, to Steve Vai and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Ten years later, PRISM is going public.
Evans performed his graduate work at Manchester Metropolitan University and Glasgow University. His PhD thesis established the methodology of Performance Restoration, a set of technologies and techniques to repair musical errors in recorded music, and restore performers’ original intentions. Based on his research, he has engineered tracks for dozens of iconic artists, including with his own band, Flying Colors.
— Bob Ezrin (2025)
PRISM translates a single audio recording into many forms. Users and VAWs can request specific representations of a recording, as either rendered data (e.g. audio or MIDI track) or the tools to create one (e.g. virtual instrument or ambience profile).
A problem manifests when raw audio is edited as MIDI. When notes are pulled apart, they expose theoretical audio—the parts of notes cut off by the next ones.
Note: The video’s “Next” button isn’t supported in Vimeo. Depending on server load, try the interactive version.
It is not enough to create believable audio here. Human audio perception is highly-tuned to the contextual summing of simultaneous sounds. And for skilled performers, longer notes are often played differently. So for each theoretical note, PRISM predicts the new performance, and synthesises a new audio note—factoring in acoustics, phase, and the other (simultaneous) instruments.
PRISM solves traditionally hard problems in audio processing, such as isolating instruments from mixes, separating articulations from performances, removing ambience and excising noise. It also makes possible entirely new processes, such as repairing performance errors, and imbuing existing performances with the personalities of specific musicians
Each instrument in an audio file is individually isolated. For example, cymbals are pulled out of overhead microphone tracks.
Each instrument’s performance can be separated according to articulation. For example, a snare track may divided into strikes, ghosts and rolls.
Noise and other non-programme audio is automatically removed.
The ambience on a recorded track can be isolated during editing, and restored during playback. Or, new ambience models can be applied.
Because PRISM models each note, dynamic range and detail can be significantly extended.
If PRISM identifies audio that isn’t noise, but doesn’t fit the profile of the track’s instrument, it will attempt to repair the note by remodelling it according to performance context.
PRISM divides acoustic recordings into performances and the sounds they made. Each can be edited independently using standard DAW tools (for processing MIDI and audio). Together, new classes of sound transformation are enabled to solve canonical problems with traditional music production.
In this video, PRISM translates an audio loop to MIDI. Using features of PRISM’s Performer and Transformer system, the performance, instrumental physics, ambience, and other elements are edited separately. The DAW’s native editing capabilities are complemented by PRISM’s own unique transformations.
In traditional DAW use, there isn’t necessarily a structure, theme or metaphor for workflows. It can be argued there is simply a conglomeration of tools, menus and options. To improve results and achieve new outcomes, you add more tools. Power and efficacy are correlated with complexity and entropy, and affordances are based on skeumorphisms without real-world counterparts.
While PRISM supports existing DAW processes, its Virtual Audio Workstation methodology builds workflows based on human experience. Users can import existing skills in other domains. One example is informed by the cognitive duality of how we perceive sound modification: changes in the physical world, and artificial (digital) constructs. Each approach brings with it a highly-developed set of abilities and affordances that can then be applied intuitively.
Traditional sound mixing can be characterised as changing how something sounds—after it already happened. It’s like putting a ship back into the bottle. This process is difficult and unintuitive, requiring significant skill and a range of audio tools.
PRISM’s Transformer lets users change the initial conditions of a recording—so it sounded right when it was recorded. These are physical phenomenon, already deeply embedded in human cognition.
PRISM can also create audio transformations that, while impossible in the real world, provide optimised solutions for sound engineering. In drum mixing, compressors and transient designers may increase a tom’s duration, and decrease its attack.
In this video, PRISM demonstrates superior solutions by stretched recorded toms directly as MIDI notes. And other PRISM features—such as an independent, per-note envelopes—are applied.
Steve Vai ▪ Steve Morse ▪ Mike Portnoy ▪ Neal Morse ▪ Alice Cooper ▪ Jay Graydon ▪ David Foster ▪ Van Romaine ▪ Albert Lee ▪ Sterling Ball ▪ Joe Bonomassa ▪ Angel Vivaldi ▪ Chad Wackerman ▪ John Ferraro ▪ Marco Minneman ▪ Jim Cox ▪ Steve Lukather ▪ Crosby, Stills & Nash ▪ Peter Frampton ▪ Elvis Cosstello ▪ Peter Collins ▪ Ken Scott ▪ Bob Ezrin ▪ Michael Brauer ▪ Mark Neeham ▪ Howie Weinberg ▪ John Petrucci ▪ Robert Zemekis ▪ Deep Purple
PRISM on all instruments and vocals. No overdubs, re-recording or sample-layering.
PRISM on guitars.
PRISM on all instruments.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on Morse's guitar.
PRISM on Alice Cooper vocals.
PRISM on all instruments.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on all instruments.
PRISM on all instruments and vocals.
PRISM on drums.