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At first, Myrberg, Dalton, and Rosen sold their software as a licensed product to Digidesign, which, in turn, packaged OSC's software with its Sound Tools and Pro Tools sound editing systems.
"We did this deal where they distributed it, and we kept ownership of it. That's when we decided to have a company," Myrberg recalls. "In a short amount of time -- I think it was about six months -- we finished the product and shipped it. I think that was July of 1990. We manufactured the product in Josh's apartment, and delivered it down there in the back of his car. We just gave them a bunch of boxes once in a while when they needed them. We'd stay up late one night and lick envelopes, or whatever."
As fortuitous as it initially seemed, the relationship with Digidesign was not to last. Because Digidesign sold several, differently priced systems of digital audio editing hardware, the firm's management insisted that OSC dumb down its software for cheaper Digidesign editing systems, and that it tweak its multitrack recording and editing software so that it would work best with the company's more expensive, top-of-the-line equipment.
The Deck founders felt their software was being used to lure musicians into buying expensive Digidesign hardware they didn't necessarily need. And as the OSC boys saw it, the two companies were operating according to completely different philosophies.
"That was probably the least fun time in the whole OSC era," Myrberg recalls. "They were growing, they had formal investors and venture capital. Their in-tent was to take [Digidesign] public. We were just three guys trying to put something together."
Pressure to go public and professional programming jealousy led Digidesign to begin fashioning its next generation of sound software entirely in-house. The OSC boys saw what was going on and started developing a stand-alone version of Deck that didn't require Digidesign hardware. This "native" sound processing -- which relies only on a computer's native capability without outside hardware -- was the final step in bringing digital recording to Everyman.
The technological leaps made by Myrberg et al. were enormous. By the mid-1990s, any dabbler with a cheap computer could produce the crisp, seamless recordings that previously came only from big studios. OSC's Deck software was an instant hit.
"It was a pretty big success in that it was the first cheap thing -- relatively cheap, anyway -- that you could produce a professional recording on. At the time, our software was $399, and you had to buy a big hard drive -- so you had to shell out a couple of thousand total," says Myrberg.
Besides being cheap, the software also extended the reach of individual musicians by allowing them to have absolute control over their published work.
"A guy in Chris Isaak's band would bring stuff into the studio that he'd done at home using our software, and it was actually good enough quality that he could dump the stuff right into the record they were producing. There were a couple of other bands that were doing it, too," Myrberg says. "They would do a demo on it at home with their Deck software, then they would go into the studio, and end up using the demo."
Rosen, Dalton, and Myrberg hired salesmen, additional programmers, an office manager -- nine employees in all. They took out advertisements in software catalogs, and they began setting up independent booths at trade shows.
They were a company.
But they wouldn't be just any company.
Rather than maximizing profits, they would maximize the capabilities of garage-band musicians. True to their company motto -- "Consume the Minimum, Produce the Maximum" -- the OSC boys would eschew the high-end musical software market Digidesign sought. Rather than equipment costing thousands of dollars, they would produce tools for the common man.
They would produce computer music's hammer and sickle.
OSC's software would sell for the lowest price the owners could charge and still keep the company afloat. Where Digidesign rigs cost thousands, OSC began selling its Deck sound editing package for less than $400. OSC's designers would maintain constant Internet dialogue with users, adding modifications to Deck as users suggested them. Through this incessant dialogue, the OSC owners broke the veil of secrecy that surrounds much of Silicon Valley software development. Deck's developers were able to glean hundreds of engineering ideas from users, maintain a passionately loyal group of customers, and have a lot of fun.
The office would be much more than a "progressive workplace." Employees would have to be shooed home because they so loved their jobs. As much emphasis would be placed on the musical and artistic projects of the owners and employees as on the selling of software.
It would be the anti-corporate corporation that proved to the world that talent, ideals, brains, and balls were worth at least as much as business degrees and tassel loafers.
"I wish I had the hindsight to realize what a good place it really was when it was happening," says Kathy Tafel, OSC's former office manager and now an editor at MacAddict magazine. "They were a very unique company. I think part of it was that they really did operate on ideals. Mats, the engineer, really could have made three times as much money working for other companies. He took a huge pay cut working for OSC. People don't do that unless they really believe in something."
So they hired Ron MacLeod, remembered as the "soul" of OSC, who handled the practical side of the business and helped create a library of electronic musical sounds that became part of the OSC product line. There was Todd Souvignier, the Portland musician-cum-freelance writer-cum-professional soft-ware peddler, who wrote much of the socialist-ethic propaganda in the Audio Anarchist fliers.
They hired Jeff Moore, the gregarious hockey-player type who also happened to be a student of music and electrical engineering. Moore became the brain behind many of the upgrades in later versions of Deck. There was Tommy King, the rock musician and composer who became OSC's director of sales and its chief court jester.
