Seer Systems Applies Technology to Streaming Music

Seer Systems, developer of Reality, the professional synthesizer software, has announced a solution for delivering high quality, streaming music via the Internet. This technology, dubbed SeerMusic, made its debut at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention in Los Angeles.

Current Internet music delivery systems suffer from two major drawbacks. Those that offer streaming capability (the ability to initiate playback while the file is still downloading) have compromised audio quality due to the limited bandwidth of current dialup technology. The less-than-stellar performance of many Internet Service Providers often results in low data rates that can undermine even a relatively good connection. Those solutions that offer better-sounding audio don't stream and require significantly longer download times.

Seer's proprietary technology allows SeerMusic to achieve excellent sound quality while streaming, even with connection speeds below 28.8 kbps. "Listeners who are accustomed to the current crop of streaming music solutions are literally startled when they hear SeerMusic; the difference is that drastic," said Fred Malouf, Product Manager for SeerMusic. "In addition, we are poised to deliver a professional-quality authoring tool so that virtually anyone will be able to make his or her music available on the Internet."

Stanley Jungleib, Seer Systems' CEO and SeerMusic inventor, says, "The scenario we offer gives any musician total control over the quality and interactivity of the clients' audio system. The prospect of a million new music broadcasters coming on line is nothing short of revolutionary." The ability to author SeerMusic files will eventually be incorporated into Reality, giving musicians an extremely powerful, unified set of tools they can use to publish their music.

Seer Systems, Inc., located in Los Altos, California, is the world's leading developer of software synthesizers. Seer developed the world's first General MIDI software wavetable synthesizer for Intel Corp. in 1993.