Following more than three years of technical development, Townsend Labs was founded in 2015 by thirteen-year Avid alum and DSP architect Chris Townsend, together with Erik Papp, previously CEO of Summit Audio Inc. Townsend Labs Inc. is a professional audio company in the San Francisco Bay Area region of California. In July 2016, Townsend Labs announced their world-class patented microphone modeling technology, Sphere. Sphere's analog hardware directly captures spatial and distance information in the sound field, allowing for unprecedented control and multi-dimensional modeling of sought-after microphones from within the Sphere plug-in. Following the addition of nine models in 2018, Townsend Labs has recently released the Sphere 1.4 update adding ten new virtual mics.

The technology has gained critical acclaim and has won the Sound On Sound Editors' Choice award. It has also won the 35th TEC Award in the "Technical Achievement/Microphones - Recording" category in 2020.