Dirk Ulrich

Dirk Ulrich was born in Cologne Germany in 1971. He is the Founder of Brainworx (Germany) and Plugin Alliance (California).

After finishing school in 1990, and a 1-year civilian service, he studied business and law. While still studying, fostering and focusing his lifelong love of music, Dirk worked part-time in a professional music store and opened his first semi-professional recording studio where he recorded local metal and punk bands on 2" tape machines and analog consoles.

His studio business started picking up bigger acts and clients when he was offered a co-publishing deal with Warner Chappell and the opportunity to establish his own rock music label in the mid 1990s. Which meant he stopped studying law to focus on his music career full time.

Brainworx Germany was founded in 2000 as a music production and multi-media company. Throughout the years Dirk worked as a music producer and mixing and mastering engineer for his own label as well as more established labels like Roadrunner, Sony, EMI, Warner. He worked with artists, bands and members of bands including Dream Theater, Toto, Michael Jackson, Joe Cocker, Pro Pain, Jennifer Batten, and many European rock acts.

Dirk produced everything from local demos, CD and vinyl albums, live concert DVDs in Stereo and 5.1, to radio commercials and music to be used by the very successful soccer team of Dirk's German hometown, Bayer Leverkusen.
(Aspirin, anyone?)

Dirk also wrote original music and played guitars in various rock bands he founded, which recorded albums and toured Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2005, Dirk’s direct experience in audio production and mastering (which is and was his favorite part of the production process) led to the idea for what would become Brainworx’s first audio plugin product, the bx_digital plugin.

While attending a mastering session for one of his projects, he was fascinated by what the mastering engineer was able to achieve with Mid/Side processing. Instantly seeing the power of M/S processing, Dirk dreamed up what he’d want in an M/S EQ and the end result was the first commercially available M/S (Mid/Side) Mastering EQ plugin - and the birth of Brainworx as a premier professional audio plugin developer.

Throughout the tremendous growth of Brainworx Germany and the additional founding of the Plugin Alliance in teh US in 2011, Dirk has continued to work on productions in his Neve VXS 72 equipped studio in Leverkusen, Germany. He enjoys sharing his vast experience, as well as great products, with Brainworx and Plugin Alliance clients around the world.

Since 2016 Dirk lives in California, where he runs a great sounding small studio for testing and product development, as well as the occasional mastering job.

Dirk is married to his lovely wife Marina since 2012, and together they have a son, über-cute little rocker Tim, who was born in 2014.