Business Profile
You may never have heard the name Seer Systems, but their products can be music to your ears.
The Los Altos-based company comprises a group of talented individuals, including veterans of many years’ experience in hardware and software design for music and computers. The 18 employees have been brought together by chairman and chief executive officer Stanley Jungleib to satisfy the demand for a hardware independent software synthesis for the personal computer. Seer employees opened their Los Altos headquarters, located on San Antonio Road, in May.
Seer Systems has created a polyphonic software synth that provides clear sound to the ear. To use it, you need a personal computer and a sound card.
The beauty of the software synthesis is that it is open-ended. Different synthesis techniques are all available and can be used to create sounds that haven’t been heard before and many that have been heard for ages.
Jungleib, a Los Altos resident, started working in the music field in 1979. Playing the keyboard for 35 years has prepared him to write the book, “General MIDI.” He founded Seer Systems in 1993 to develop the first software-based General MIDI synthesizer for Intel Corporation.
“MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the language that allows the synthesizer and the computer to talk to each other,” Jungleib said. “Its something like Postscript for music.”
Seer Systems President, Dave Smith, invented the fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer. He is responsible for several pre-eminent synthesizer designs of the past 20 years.
Jungleib approached Intel to work on a digital signal processor (DSP) in 1991. At the time, they wanted to amplify the IBM 386 systems for the personal computer. Computer technology went so fast that the 486 series became marketable and then the Pentium chip came along. Despite accelerating computer technology, Intel kept DSP alive.
“The reason we are not a household word, even though we have built more synthesizers than anyone else in the world is, they were marketed by Intel and Creative Labs,” Jungleib said.
Seer’s continued cooperation with Intel led to an interest from Creative Labs, resulting in a exclusive distribution and technology licensing agreement between Creative Labs and Seer Systems.
Through a license agreement between Seer and Stanford University, Seer is distributing Stanford’s Sondius™ synthesis technology (waveguide) through Creative Labs. Seer has developed the first software-only host-based synthesizer to incorporate Sondius™ synthesis technology. The Stanford technology provides a new genre of musically expressive instruments for the consumer.
“Seer has incorporated multiple synthesis types and other ground-breaking technologies, creating the potential for a truly musical computing experience.” Jungleib said. “Game developers and content creators have access to a musically expressive tool that goes far beyond the audio and synthesis limitations of software and hardware technologies available today.”
One of the products Seer offers is “Reality,” A software synthesizer which enables professional musicians and music-savvy consumers to create and play professional quality music synthesis on Pentium processor-based PCs.
Most of the Seer employees have strong backgrounds in electronic musical instruments and play an instrument. Only one employee has left the organization since it was founded.
“You can’t design instruments without knowing what musicality to search for,” Jungleib said. “We want to enable musicians to publish their music on the Internet without going though a record company.”
Seer Systems is located at 301 South Antonio Road in Los Altos. For more information, call 947-1915 or fax 947-1925.
