Dave Smith Instruments (DSI) is a California-based company which manufactures excellent electronic musical instruments.

Dave Smith is an engineer and musician and was responsible for designing the very first commercial polyphonic and microprocessor-controlled synthesizer (Prophet 5).

The Prophet-5 is the first polyphonic synthesizer that’s fully-programmable in the world.

Also, it’s the first instrument with an ingrained microprocessor. 

In my opinion, that’s quite an accomplishment!

Grammy-winner Dave Smith founded the company in 2002.

Smith is also the founder of Sequential Circuits. Additionally, he was the lead designer of the Prophet 5 synthesizer.

Dave was also known for his work on MIDI (in fact, he created the acronym).

That’s how he acquired the nickname “father of MIDI”.

Smith was named a Fellow of AES in 1987,  thanks to his work concerning music synthesis.

For a while, Dave was President of DSD, a sector of Yamaha.

While there, he worked on software synthesizer ideas, as well as on physical modeling synthesis.

In 1994 he became President at Seer Systems.

There he developed the first soft synth for Intel.

Then, in 1997, Dave created the first fully professional soft synth called “Reality”.

In the meantime, Smith started the company Dave Smith Instruments after realizing the limitations of the software.

As a result, in 2002 he released the Evolver hybrid analog/digital synthesizer.

Dave Smith Instruments aims to improve quality products.

All things considered, Dave is a legend who wishes to improve the music industry by all means necessary.

Music production in the 21st-century centers around technology.

It’s much easier to create music nowadays than it was twenty years ago.

Today, compositions that would have taken months and months to create are easily produced using laptops and the corresponding software.

That’s why Ableton stays up-to-date with all the new music and technology trends.

What sets the company apart from the others is that Ableton holds music production seminars to help us understand the product.

Smith used many of his former concepts with new ideas.

In fact, Prophet 08 and Prophet 12 have the same names as some of the best synthesizers of Sequential Circuits.

I always say it’s best to improve on quality products, and Smith has done just that.

Ultimately, just by looking at Dave Smith’s accomplishments you can tell what a serious company DSI is.