Technos Acxel was launched in 1987 in Quebec, Canada, and immediately attracted attention with its unusual concept. Pierre Guillaume was responsible for the development and Neil Parent – for the design. The concept was really amazing and progressive, and it was devised in the 80's! Interesting fact: The very word "Acxel" means "acoustic element" (like the way a pixel is a "picture element"). This instrument’s name is based on the concept of its creators, which is about the fact that each sound can be obtained from a finite number of individual oscillations.

Acxel uses the principles of resynthesis, as well as digital additive modeling of sound with the help of sine wave oscillators, for each of which a knob for pitch and amplitude of the wave is provided to form harmonic components of sound.

During operating Technos Acxel can cause associations with the sampler and it was even created to serve as an alternative which has a significant difference in the principle of converting the audio signal. And if the sampler initially uses an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to partition a continuous analog sound wave into discrete digital values, then the postulate of the "sound resynthesis" theory by Pierre Guillaume and the basic principle of the resynthesis is in the splitting of the sound wave into a finite number of sine waves by the method of fast Fourier transform, with the possibility of their subsequent individual modification. The component of the system that is responsible for this stage is called Acxelizer, and the total number of sine waves can achieve 1024. Thus, radical changes of sound occur which can be called a repeated synthesis (resynthesis, fr. Ré-synthèse).

However, in addition to working with existing sounds, Acxel also makes it possible to synthesize them from scratch. You can do it with the waveform oscillators capable of producing a sine wave with the possibility of its transformation on the fly into other types of waves. The instrument included a large palette of parameters and controls that not only create sounds from scratch, but also edit them in real time. The very principle of working with sound is fun already: you draw the music on the matrix LED display. You can draw both waveforms, and envelopes for the amplitude and frequency response of the wave. Besides, a digital multifilter (LPF/HPF/BPR/custom) called "Color" is also available to process the sound wave. And even more, you can use frequency modulation (FM) for envelopes.

Despite the fact that it was developed in the mid-80's, Technos Acxel has MIDI support enabling programmable curve controllers. Among the other functions, it is worth noting the timbre layering, the change in the length of the sound segment, as well as the presence of chorus.

Acxel has never been a commercial success due to its high cost and relative complexity of use. Today, this resynthesizer is indeed a very rare product, given that only 35 units were assembled and sold between 1987 and 1990.