E-mu Systems was founded in 1971 by Dave Rossum and associates including Scott Wedge, Steve Gabriel, and Jim Ketcham, initially as students at institutions like UC Santa Cruz and Caltech, inspired by early Moog modular synthesizers. The company began producing high-quality modular synthesizers and pioneered digital keyboard scanning technology, licensing it to Oberheim and Sequential Circuits for polyphonic instruments like the Four Voice and Prophet-5. Their breakthrough came with the Emulator series of samplers in the 1980s, which revolutionized music production, alongside module-based instruments like the Proteus series; E-mu was later acquired by Creative Labs in the 1990s.
