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It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our friend and partner Bernie Torelli, founder of Nomad Factory, after a courageous 3 year battle with cancer. Bernie passed away peacefully at home with his family at his side on January 18th 2016, at the age of 60.
We all knew Bernie as an exceptional musician, producer, and audio plug-in developer who inspired the entire audio community with his work. He was a pioneer in his field, creating his first plug-in over 20 years ago when DAWs really started to replace hardware recording gear in professional recording studios. At the time, Bernie was recording major artists in France, Canada and the USA, while also working as a respected sound engineer with renowned musicians such as Stanley Clark. Bunny Brunel, Tony MacAlpine and Brian Auger just to name a few.
Bernie was also an amazing guitarist who recorded and toured with renown artists including legendary French singer/songwriter Michel Polnareff.
Nomad Factory plug-ins have been used on numerous Grammy Award albums over the years due particularly to the warmth and richness in sound they provide and their realistic analog feel. Nomad Factory plug-ins include “Liquid Bundle”, Essential Series”, “Analog Signature” and the famous “BlueTubes” series that received incredible success in the late 90’s, and still are today amongst their best selling software.
Emulating hardware products was never an option for our partner who felt such software offers very little comparison with the original products. When asked about emulating famous audio hardware, Bernie used to say laughing, “It’s ONLY marketing BS! The designs look like the original, but that’s it!”
Nevertheless, our friend was incredible at emulating the physical sound characteristics offered by tubes, transistors and other physical components delivered by analog gear. He totally mastered the art of fine tuning his software so that they met/meet the highest levels of sound quality required by the most demanding artists and sound engineers of the industry. Some of Nomad Factory’s products do refer to legendary audio hardware that he owned and loved using, but he always refused to emulate these for marketing purposes.
In early 2010, Nomad Factory launched it’s incredibly successful “Magnetics Bundle” which is a fantastic collection that includes 3 innovative sub products (Magnetic, Echoes and Cosmos), acclaimed by all audio professionals. Magma is also an incredible product that contains no less than 65 credible plug-ins, but it was perhaps launched ahead of time as it didn’t meet the expected success.
Our friend Bernie also largely contributed in the development of our Plug and Mix brand which received incredible success with the “V.I.P. Bundle” and more recently the “Pro Series” plug-ins reflecting his vision of modern software.
Over the past few years, new and talented developers joined Nomad Factory to assist Bernie in the development of new products planned by him while he was under heavy treatments fighting his cancer. Up until his last few days, our friend and partner remained a present figure to support the team and fine tune the latest Nomad innovations.
As part of his legacy, Bernie left tons of ideas and concepts for the future of the Nomad Factory company. He made sure the developers are well trained to keep-up with the brand’s development; assuring the continuing quality and integrity of upcoming products. We are proud to announce that our partner has left us with many new Nomad products that are almost ready to launch!
It is with great sadness that we at Plugivery join Bernie’s family in mourning the loss of a great musician and a pioneer in the audio plug-in world. May they be blessed, with our condolences, and find peace in these difficult times.
Rest in peace Bernie !
