The Technos Acxel is a resynthesizer, launched by the Quebec-based Technos corporation in 1987.The Technos Acxel may look similar in operation to a sampler, although its workings were very different and the sound structure is accessible. Where samplers used an A/D converter to convert a continuously-variable analogue signal into digital data, the Axcel worked on the premise that any sound, no matter how harmonically complex, could be broken down into a finite number of sine waves, and that these sine waves could be individually altered to fundamentally change the sound, producing what Technos founder Nil Parent termed re-synth se.