Press

Arie Ardiansyah and Grahadea Kusuf spend their teenage years in Bandung, where indie-bands and local independent clothing brands emerges to change Bandung youngsters’ mindset to proudly wear local brands and attend local indie gigs. They first met as highschool classmates. Dea joined Arie’s band, Bandung melodic punk band Disconnected, in 1999. In 2002, Dea decided to leave Disconnected, and several months later joined Bandung’s pioneering indie electronic band Homogenic. Thus, the two parted ways to complete their respective bachelor degrees, in 2006, Arie subsequently starting his audio freeware project under the handle “Aradaz” where he gained recognition from numerous music forums as a freeware developer which in terms of sound-quality, comparable with big companies’ products. At that time, Dea pursuing an IT career at Sun Microsystems’ branch in Jakarta, involving him within Indonesian software industry and developers. But he resigned after 2,5 years to pursue an MBA degree at SBM-ITB, Bandung, where the initial business strategy for Kuassa has made as Dea’s thesis at that time.

In 2008, the business was initially started out as an audio production studio along with a close friend: Adhitya Wibisana, but grew organically into audio plugin developers in 2009. At that time, they only have 50M IDR to expand their studio, where the ideal funding for a proper recording studio should close to 600M IDR, so the money was shifted to fund the audio software startup. The reasoning was that rather than buying expensive foreign equipments, they could instead produce their own custom plugins and gleefully making big money from it, although in reality, a reputation wasn’t built in one day.

Their first product, Amplifikation One was released at April 2010 after one-year R&D time. During these early years, Adhitya choose to focus more in the audio production studio, while Arie and Dea focusing themselves to proceed with more Kuassa products. At that time, Dea have had turned down many job opportunities, but their passion to music along with Arie’s personal motto: Win or die, convinced Dea to keep improving Amplifikation One and finally released another product in December 2010. This second product, Amplifikation Creme was gained a hype in many user forums, thus, raising sales of both Amplifikation One and Creme in the following year. Dea and Arie keep developing more products, until July 2012 they start expanding their team into 6 personnel, and began R&D to support more platform. In November, they won merit award Asia-Pacific ICT Award for New Media category, and subsequently got invited to join Digital Content Expo, at Miraikan, Tokyo, showcasing Kuassa products along with world’s cutting-edge multimedia technologies with other notable Japanese companies like Yamaha, and Panasonic. They released their third guitar amp: Amplifikation Vermilion there. Later, Amplifikation Vermilion is the first Kuassa product to released in August 2013 as the first 3^rd party Guitar Amp in a music creation platform; Propellerhead Reason, where they received rave reviews among Reason users.

• Performance Award and Value Award. Computer Music Magazine
• The Top Commercial Software Guitar Amps. Audiofanzine
• #1: The 11 best VST guitar amp/effect modelling plug-ins in the world today. Musicradar
• Merit Awards for New Media & Entertainment Category. Asia-Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA)
• “From freeware to commercial competitor, Kuassa gets off to a solid start with this custom amp sim” – Amplifikation One / Computer Music Magazine
• “Sonically lifelike, easy to use and incredibly good value, Amplifikation Vermilion is a real winner.” – Amplifikation Vermilion / Computer Music Magazine
• “Authentic emulations of originals. Each EQ has its own sound. Simple layout – easier than real Neves! Great price. Useful presets.” – EVE-AT Bundle / Computer Music Magazine
• “Add in a bit of tremolo for nostalgic vibe or rich atmosphere, and Amplifikation Vermilion becomes a heavy weight contender in the vast landscape of simulators claiming “true” vintage tone.” Amplifikation Vermilion / Live4Guitar
• “And how does it sound? Awesome! Crisp, airy and transparent, with just the right amount of throaty grit.” – Amplifikation Lite / Free Musicians Resouce
• “Seriously, this has to be the most underrated plugin out there, considering it’s low price. The sound, is absolutely phenomenal. I strongly suggest that you download the trial and test it.” – Amplifikation Vermilion / WWA1
• “However, we are discussing a boutique, speciality amp sim that truly NAILS authentic-sounding, vintage tube tone. Vermillion may not be feature-rich, but its features are “Rich”.” – Amplifikation Vermilion / Review Revival
• “It’s a simple looking effect, you don’t get lots of flashy graphics of cabinets and amp heads, but that doesn’t of course affect the sound in any way. Actually in the Rack where space tends to be at a premium, it’s actually quite helpful.” – Amplifikation Vermilion / AskAudioMag
• “Certainly a worthy rival to more expensive plug-ins” – Kratos Maximizer / Computer Music Magazine
• Amplifikation Vermilion RE video review by Musotalk (in German)

• Kuassa Amplifikation Vermillion is now available in rack extension format for full integration with Reason.
• Interview with Arie Ardiansyah of Kuassa about designing Guitar Amp Rack Extensions for Reason
• Kuassa Releases Amplifikation Vermilion Guitar Amp Plugin
• Guitar Amp Sim for Reason
• Kuassa PreMix CM – free VST/AU saturation and EQ plugin
• Kuassa BasiQ – Outstanding FREE EQ with Great Character
• Kuassa – Indonesia’s first music application
• Kapita Selekta 200913 – KUASSA (Indonesian)
• Hobi vs Keilmuan, atau, Hobi & keilmuan ?(Indonesian)
• KUASSA: Pengembang Software Musik Pertama di Indonesia (Indonesian)