Dit is van de verantwoordelijke God zelf (Dave Rossum):
JL: You were involved in the design of the first electronic music chips (SSM). To what extent were you involved in this?
DR: The story goes something like this. Back in 1975, Ron Dow dropped by E-mu and had this idea for a VCA design on a custom chip. He wanted us to kick in the $1000 or so it took to integrate it, because he didn't have the money. It sounded interesting, but then he said the power supplies couldn't be any higher than +12V. Since the E-mu system was based on +15 and I didn't want to change the whole system standards for one IC, the idea no longer made sense to me. So we turned Ron down and he then got connected with SSM, and they were the ones to integrate and start selling the SSM2000.
About a year later I ran into Ron again, and he mentioned an improved VCA they were working on with+15V supplies. With my major objection gone, I became interested again. I contributed some ideas to the SSM2010 (low distortion VCA), then Ron started frequenting E-mu and used our lab to develop the chips - first the 2020 voltage controlled amplifier, then the 2030 voltage controlled oscillator (which was a very hard project and took about a year), the 2040 voltage controlled filter which went pretty quickly as did the 2050 transient generator, and we've kept up the collaboration since then. My involvement varies from chip to chip; with the 2020 I helped Ron design the control stage, while he did the VGA cell entirely by himself. The oscillator was definitely a joint -effort, while the 2040 and 2050 were largely my designs. (hij is de propheet!) All of the SSM chips vary like that. We've pretty well decided that we're codesigners on what we do, because you just can't separate where an idea came from. Ron might suggest something to me for a filter design, but I'll end up using the idea with something like a transient generator instead.
JL: Your influence in the design of both the Prophet 5 and the equipment of Oberheim Electronics have been grossly overlooked. Would you care to comment on what you've done for both companies?
DR: Let me talk first about Tom Oberheim, whom I met at an AES convention in the spring of 1974. We both liked each other immediately and started talking about ideas. He was talking about his phase shifter, and said something to the effect that he knew it could be done with a 3080 transconductance amp, but didn't know exactly how to do it. So I scribbled out a circuit and said here's how you do it. He said "I bet thatÕs patentable", and I said "I'm sure it is". He asked how would I feel about patenting it and sharing the rights under the patent? I thought it was a great Idea, and that was the beginning of our association. Incidentally, I don't think he ever used that design in anything he built. Towards the fall of that same year he visited E-mu to see our prototype polyphonic keyboard, and decided that he liked that design too .He felt that it too was patentable, and wanted to use it in a product. So we worked out an arrangement whereby he'd pay us royalties, and could use the circuit, and we would share in them benefits of the patent. The arrangement worked well in the sense that it was profitable for E-mu, we were essentially putting an investment into Tom's company with our work, and the payments (in the form of royalties) came later. I know Tom was happy with the arrangement too.
The involvement with the Prophet 5 was very similar. Dave Smith had come to us for design help with other projects, when he decided to get into a synthesizer, he came over and basically started picking our brains from the beginning, which was an intelligent thing to do. We did some specific circuit designs for the Prophet 5,reviewed virtually everything in it, and gave him access to lots of E-mu documentation. Again, we had a royalty arrangement, the product went over well, and we made a lot of money...but of course had the Prophet not gone over, we wouldn't have gotten anything for our time so essentially, we again invested in the company. Still, royalties are not a trouble-free way to conduct business. One reason why we have a bit of trouble right now in our relationship with Oberheim and Sequential Circuit* - I can't say I'm close friends with, or see a lot of, either company - is because of this arrangement where they're still paying us royalties for things we did a long time ago. Sometimes, people forget how much they appreciated you a long time ago. So we've learned that royalties aren't always best, not so much because they're not financially lucrative, but because they destroy friendships - and as far I'm concerned, friendships are probably more important than the money itself.
De P5 is zoals je kan lezen een Emu R&D (De goden van enkele van de beste analoge chips ooit)
Wat niet duidelijk is,maar wat logisch lijkt,is dat wanner emu stop heeft gezegd aan SCI om het verder te fabrikeren van DE p5 ,om financieele reden,is dave heel de boel moeten herdesignen voor de rev3 die volledig met curtis werkt,en verder werd verkocht als prophet,MAW ,sinds der rev3 is de P5 geen P5 meer,enkel het omhulsel lijkt er op...