An instrument's provenance is its history of hands.

A 1911 Steinway Model A arrived as a gift. The previous owners had two pianos and wanted to make sure this one went to a good home. It did.

The piano is cared for by a son who knows this instrument. He keeps it in tune and plays it for inspiration. His father is a software engineer. Between them: the musical ear and the technical foundation — but a sampler engine, a DSP chain, a full plugin UI — that was a larger undertaking than either could take on alone. This plugin was built with Claude. It would not exist without it.

Provenance Audio exists to document instruments like this one. Not to recreate what they once were — but to record what they are now, in the room they currently occupy, at this specific point in their long lives. The 1911 Model A has been played and settled over more than a century. Its hammers are worn. Its body has resonated in rooms we will never know. We can document only this chapter.

That is what we do.