Dave Smith (US)

Instrument designer, AES Fellow, and Grammy-winner Dave Smith founded Sequential Circuits in the early 70s. In 1977, he designed the Prophet-5, the first polyphonic and fully programmable synthesizer, and the first musical instrument with a microprocessor. He was the driving force behind the MIDI specification —in fact, he coined the acronym. After Sequential he was President of DSD, an R&D division of Yamaha. He also started the Korg R&D group in California. He was then President at Seer Systems and developed the first software synth for Intel in 1994, followed by the first professional soft synth, Reality. He returned to hardware starting Dave Smith Instruments in 2002. The DSI lineup includes the Prophet 12, Prophet ’08, Pro 2, Mopho, and Tetra synths, and the Tempest drum machine, co-designed with legendary designer Roger Linn. The Sequential Prophet-6 analog synth was released in 2015, followed by the OB-6 designed in partnership with Tom Oberheim.