20 Years of Innovation: The History of Source Audio (Part 3: 2016 to 2025)
GO BACK AND READ "20 YEARS OF INNOVATION: THE HISTORY OF SOURCE AUDIO (PART 2: 2011 to 2015)"
2016
Released in 2016: Nemesis Delay, L.A. Lady Overdrive, Kingmaker Fuzz, AfterShock Bass Distortion, Neuro Editor For Desktop
2016 ushered in a new chapter in Source Audio history. The One Series line of pedals and their integration with the Neuro Editor resonated with a lot of musicians. This was the year when the company truly started to achieve "mainstream success."
There still remained one MAJOR effect category without a Source Audio offering: delay. This situation was resoundingly addressed with the release of the One Series Nemesis Delay. Bob called upon his highly discerning ear and ability to recognize every sonic subtlety and idiosyncrasy of the world's most sought after delay units and replicate them in the DSP. He also maintained that pioneering spirit that compelled him to dive into his own creative mind and produce what we like to call "sounds yet unheard."
The Nemesis Delay was an instant hit! Guitarist of all styles recognized its sonic superiorities and appreciated the intuitive and stage-friendly control set.
2016 also saw the arrival of the Neuro Effects Editing software for all platforms: iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows. The updated (and entirely FREE) versions also gave Neuro Community members the ability to publish and share presets via the cloud. At this point, the entire Neuro Community started its mission to build the largest guitar and bass effects preset library on the planet. To date the Neuro Community is over 150,000 strong and there are upwards of 12,000 published presets available.
2017
Released in 2017: Ventris Dual Reverb
The new year brought with it the release of the game-changing Ventris Dual Reverb and the concept of dual processing. Armed with two Sigma SA601 processors, the Ventris gave musicians the ability to simultaneously run two different reverb effects in series, parallel, or split stereo. It also made it possible to have "infinite spillover" when switching from one preset to another. Guitarists, bassists, and keyboardists quickly discovered the creative potential of running two reverb effects simultaneously. At the time, this was something not commonly done in effects pedals, but the idea caught fire and was later adopted by numerous manufacturers.
2018
Released in 2018: True Spring Reverb
Without a doubt, one of the standout sounds on 2017's Ventris Dual Reverb was the True Spring engine. An actual spring reverb is quite a simple technology: just send an audio signal into a set of physical springs (yes, we are talking about coiled metal strands) and amplify the resulting reverberations that occur as the signal passes back and forth through the springs. The Hammond Organ company developed this approach in the 1930s, but it became ubiquitous when Leo Fender started including reverb in his guitar amplifiers. Funny thing though, this fairly basic technology–due to its extremely complex reverberations–is very difficult to replicate in the digital realm. But Bob Chidlaw cracked the code and the soon established Source Audio as the leader in spring reverb modeling in effects pedals.
In 2018 Bob revisited the True Spring engine from the Ventris and explored it in even more detail, eventually developing the algorithms that would occupy the True Spring Reverb–Source Audio's combination spring reverb and tremolo pedal. One of the areas of vast improvement was in the True Spring's Tank engine. Based on the unique sound of the tube driven outboard spring tank in the Fender 6G15. The 6G15 is known for its "drip," an unmistakable quality in the initial attack of the reverb that sounds similar to a drop of water falling into a tin bucket. It's the sound every surf guitar player needs and prior to the True Spring Reverb's Tank engine it was not conveniently available.
2019
Released: C4 Synth, Spectrum Intelligent Filter, Collider Delay+Reverb
This is a BIG year in the history of Source Audio - Huge! Not one, but two of our perennial best sellers came out in 2019.
The Collider Delay+Reverb was basically a greatest hits pedal, featuring of some of the most popular delay and reverb effects from the Nemesis Delay and Ventris Dual Reverb. It was also a blessing to working musicians of all styles. Believe it or not, combination delay and reverb pedals were not very common back in 2019, much less combination delay and reverb pedals with this level of sonic complexity. The Collider used the dual processing structure of the Ventris Dual Reverb and gave users what was essentially two separate pedals–a delay and a reverb–each with its own bypass/engage switch. Taking it one step further, the Collider also has the ability to change the order of the reverb and delay effects or run two delay effects simultaneously or two reverb effects simultaneously. It is the perfect pedal for countless musicians of all levels.
2019 also saw the release of the C4 Synth, a pedal that became standard issue for modern bassists with the impulse to create anything from vintage Minimoog sounds to massive modern dance tones. The C4 also opened the flood gates when it came to the Neuro Effect Editing software and published presets. The C4's Neuro editor gave users 4 different voices to work with. Each voice could be loaded with any of the pedal's three synth oscillators (sine, square, and saw tooth) and then run through any of its 28 filters, pitch shifters, harmonizers, sequencers, distortion, and more. To date there are upwards of 3,000 published C4 preset available in Neuro. It is not without good reason that we refer to the C4 as a "modular synth in a box."
2020
Released in 2020: EQ2 Programmable Equalizer
By 2020 the original Source Audio Programmable EQ had been a top seller for a long time. Still, we knew there were some obvious areas for improvement: it only had 4 presets, it only had 8 frequency bands, it was mono. Jesse spent much of 2019 working on ways to improve Source Audio EQ offering and in 2020 it was ready. The EQ2 Programable Equalizer set a new standard for EQ pedals. With the updates it was now a 10-band parametric stereo equalizer with128 presets and full MIDI capabilities. It also came in a beautiful, compact enclosure that was easily integrated into anybody's pedalboard or rack system. It occupies the rigs of countless pro musicians including Billy Strings, My Chemical Romance, The Deftones, the Noah Kahan band and many more.
2021
Released in 2021: Ultrawave (For Guitar), Ultrawave (For Bass)
You all remember 2021, right? COVID had most Source Audio employees working from home, but that didn't stop us from releasing new pedals. In 2021 we released both guitar and bass versions of the Ultrawave Distortion. This pedal was a re-imagined version of our Multiwave Distortion, a distortion pedal that is, without exaggeration, like no other distortion pedal on the market. These pedals have all the wildly unique sounds of the orginal Multiwave Distortions (multi-band, octave, and foldback distortions), they also include a multi-band tremolo, which creates a sequencer-like effect in a category by itself.
2022
Released in 2022: ZIO Analog Front End + Boost, Atlas Compressor
The year 2022 saw Source Audio's first foray into analog pedals, as well as our first collaboration pedal. Shoe Pedals owner, Christopher Venter is a brilliant pedal designer from nearby Meriden, Connecticut. In the past he had helped us in the sound design of some great Source Audio pedals including the Ventris Dual Reverb and Atlas Compressor, but this was the first time we did a joint release with Shoe Pedals. The ZIO Analog Front End + Boost is a boost pedal with +20dB of boost above unity gain and 4 distinct preamp circuits, each with its own distinct character. Nobody who has put this pedal on their board has ever taken it off. Simply put, it makes everything sound better.
2023
Released in 2024: Nemesis Delay ADT, Limited Edition: Mission of Burma Vertigo Tremolo
One often heard criticism of the original Nemesis Delay is that it didn't have analog dry through. Analog dry through means that when you engage the pedal, the dry signal remains completely pure and unprocessed by the effect. It was a hardware feature that we included in the Ventris Dual Reverb and Collider Delay+Reverb, but the Nemesis required major hardware changes which eventually lead to the release of the Nemesis Delay ADT.
2023 also marked our first limited edition, artist collaboration pedal. Source Audio is located just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, a town with an incredibly rich history of great rock bands. One of the most influential Boston bands is Mission of Burma, the early 80s post-punk icons who recorded classics like "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" and "Acadamy Fight Song." Guitarist Roger Miller was introduced to us by our local distributor John Beaudette. Back in the day, tremolo played a crucial role in many of Mission of Burma's greatest songs. Prior to tapping into the editing capabilities of the Vertigo Tremolo, Miller was not able to replicate those sounds with any pedal other than a custom build tremolo pedal that he did not want to use on stage. The following video tells the entire story.
2024
Released in 2024: Artifakt Lo-Fi Elements, ZIO Analog Bass Preamp + DI, Neuro 3 Effect Editor
Major changes happened in 2024. After many years with the old version of Neuro, we gave our effects editing software a complete overhaul. Neuro 3 sported a brand new look as well as some fun and highly useful new features like improved preset management, drag and drop preset loading, detailed user profiles, and greater opportunities for social connection among Neuro Community members.
We also introduced the Artifakt Lo-Fi Elements a comprehensive tool-box equipped with all the sounds that define the term "lo-fi" - that includes vintage vinyl simulations, tape saturation and flutter, bit crushing, sample rate reduction, glitch effects, dirty reverb, and a ladder filter. The Artifakt also introduced a brand-new housing with an easy-to-use control surface perfect for pedalboard obsessives.
2025
Released in 2025: Encounter Ambient Delay + Reverb, SoundCheck in Neuro 3
Atmospheric soundscapes have long been an area interest for the Source Audio marketing and engineering teams, as well as many Source Audio pedal owners. In 2025 we decided to temporarily curb our efforts to recapture the sound of vintage gear and turn our attention upward. The Encounter Ambient Delay+Reverb is a sound experimentalist's dream. With this pedal we gave ourselves license to dream, and focus on creating beautiful and expansive reverb and delay effects that conjure images of vast celestial plains.
The Encounter features the debut appearance of Bob Chidlaw's Hypersphere Reverb, an effect that dares to imagine the reverberations of a room with no walls, ceiling, or floor–a surrealist domain where reverberations circle back to your ear from all directions free of any direct reflections.
We also continued to update the Neuro 3 Editing Software in 2025, most notable with a new feature called SoundCheck™. SoundCheck is basically a bit-perfect replication of every One Series pedal that lives inside the Neuro App. It includes a collection of dry, unaffected guitar, bass, and keyboard clips that can be played in a loop through any pedal's Sound Editor. That means without plugging in a guitar or even owning a Source Audio pedal you can play a clip through any one of our pedals, move parameters, and hear the changes in real-time–preset creation using only your phone! SoundCheck also allows anybody (you don't even need to create an account thanks to Guest Mode) hear any of the over 11,000 presets currently published to Neuro.
2026
Released in 2026: ????
What does the future hold? We're not ready to share this information yet, but we can promise you this: we will continue our Tradition of Innovation straight through 2026 and well into the years and decades that follow. Please, join us on the journey. 🚀
