Dave Smith 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. Dave is also generally known as the driving force behind the generation of the MIDI specification in 1981—in fact, he coined the acronym. Now he\'s designing hardware instruments again with the Evolver, Poly Evolver, and Prophet \'08 synths.