Ersatz Audio was founded in late 1995 by Adam Lee Miller and R. Saltz. It was created as a medium for what the duo called ultra-synthetic music, a characteristic they found lacking in much of modern electronic dance music. By ultra-synthetic music, Miller and Saltz meant to describe a kind of music that was so extremely synthetic that the "machine feel" might surpass the "human touch" (a task they felt impossible, yet a goal that they would always aspire to deliver with Ersatz Audio).