Avid Audio was founded as Digidrums in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. At the time, Gotcher and Brooks were playing in a band together, and decided to raise some capital by making EPROM (memory) chips for drum machines. The product the company would become known for, however, was Pro Tools.
The software that would become Pro Tools was created in 1984 as Sound Designer. It was designed to edit sounds on sampling synthesizers by transferring them to a computer where they could be manipulated before being transferred back to the synth. By 1989, Digidrums had become Digidesign, and Sound Designer had morphed into Sound Tools, the world's first digital audio workstation or DAW.
Pro Tools as we know it was launched in 1991, and has become the industry standard for recording studios all over the world. Such is the DAW's impact that Digidesign won a Grammy in 2001, and an Oscar for their contribution to audio post production for film. In 2011, the company officially became Avid Audio, a good fit for the brand that brought the recording process to the masses.