Dave Smith (engineer)

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Dave Smith is generally known as the driving force behind the generation of the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) specification. In fact, in 1981 he coined the acronym. Dave presented the idea of a USI (Universal Synthesizer Interface) after meetings with Tom Oberheim and Roland's Ikutaro Kakehashi. The plan was to create a common communications protocol between electronic instruments from different manufacturers around the world. The result was MIDI. MIDI was first publicly demonstrated at the Winter NAMM show in 1983, when a Prophet-600 was succesfully connected to a Roland JP-6.

1 History
2 Sequential Circuits Products
3 MIDI Sound Examples
4 Awards
5 External links
6 References

[edit] History

Dave has Masters degrees in both Computer Science and Electronic Engineering from UC Berkeley. Dave founded Sequential Circuits, the premier manufacturer of professional music synthesizers, in the mid-70s. In 1977, he designed the Prophet 5, the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument. This revolutionary product was the world's first polyphonic and programmable synth, and set the standard for all synth designs that have followed. The Prophet instruments played a major part in the recordings of all popular music styles, and are still prized by musicians today. In 1981 Smith started developing the idea of MIDI. In 1987 he was named a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) for his continuing work in the area of music synthesis.

After Sequential, Dave was President of DSD, Inc, a Research and Development Division of Yamaha, where he worked on physical modeling synthesis and software synthesizer concepts. In May of 1989 he started the Korg R&D group in California, which went on to produce the professional musician favorite Wavestation products and other technology. He then took over as President at Seer Systems and developed the world's first software based synthesizer running on a PC. This synth, commissioned by Intel, was demonstrated by Andy Grove in a Comdex keynote speech in 1994. Over 10 million of his second-generation software synth have been sold, which was licensed to Creative Labs in 1996, and is responsible for 32 of the 64 voices in the AWE 64 line of Sound Cards.

The third generation is the world's first fully professional software synthesizer, Reality, released in 1997. Dave was both the lead engineer on the Reality professional software synthesizer, and wrote all the low-level optimized floating point synthesis code. Not only did the full-featured synthesizer received a 1998 Editors' Choice Award, but Reality has earned the highest rating for a synthesizer or software application in the history of Electronic Musician Magazine's five-point rating system.

Currently Dave's designing hardware instruments again with the Evolver and Poly Evolver synths from his new company, Dave Smith Instruments.

[edit] Sequential Circuits Products

Prophet 5

The Prophet 5 was Dave Smith's first commercialized product and was first introduced by Sequential Circuits in 1978. The Prophet 5 was an analog synthesizer, and groundbreaking in that it was one of the first analog synthesizers to implement patch memory, a feature which scanned the settings of every parameter on the synthesizer and stored it into internal memory.

Prophet 10

Sequential Circuits Prophet-10 Introduced in 1980, the Prophet-10 was essentially 2 Prophet-5s in one big (and heavy!) enclosure. There were two 5-octave keyboards, allowing the musician to play two different sounds at one time. It also included a polyphonic sequencer module, with its own tape backup module, and up to 10,000 note storage. With the sequencer option, it sold for $9,000, and less than 1,000 were made.

Sequential Circuits Products

Pro One - 1980
Pro FX - 1982
Prophet 600 - 1982
Prophet T-8 - 1983
Six Trak - 1984
Drumtraks - 1984
Prophet 2000 - 1985
Phrophet VS - 1986
Studio 440 - 1986
Prophet 3000 - 1987 (Final Sequential Circuits product)

[edit] MIDI Sound Examples

Doogie Houser MD Theme Song

Super Mario Brothers

[edit] Awards

Dave Smith

Induction into the TECnology Hall of Fame at the AES show by Mix Magazine in September 2005.

Received (AES) Fellowship Award in 1987, which is given to a member who had rendered conspicuous service or is recognized to have made a valuable contribution to the advancement in or dissemination of knowledge of audio engineering or in the promotion of its application in practice.

Evolver Keyboard

Key Buy Award (Keyboard Magazine, August 2006)

WIHO Award (Musicplayers.com, 2006)

Poly Evolver Keyboard

Future Music 2006 Ace Award

TEC Award nomination (Mix Magazine, 2006) Technical Excellence & Creativity in the category of Outstanding Technical Achievement, Musical Instrument Technology.