Cheetah Marketing was a

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

-based company that produced

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...

-related hardware products and software for home computer systems during the 1980s. They later changed their name to Cheetah International Ltd. Based in Cardiff, Cheetah was run by two brothers, Howard and Michael Jacobson, but owned by Cannon Street Investments. The company was closed in 1993 when the UK recession badly hit the share price of its owners. After this Chris Wright and Nick Owen bought the music products division and formed Soundscape Digital Technology Ltd. The joysticks and other computer peripheral products division went to another company in the Cannon Street group.

Products

The company originally produced joysticks like the infrared R.A.T. for the Commodore 64 and

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

computers and later branched out into music peripherals and stand-alone musical equipment for price conscious home users. Among their offerings were the SpecDrum (a sample-based drum machine), a Cheetah Sound Sampler, a Cheetah Midi Interface, and in the later, 8-bit/16-bit drum machines, music sequencer, and a range of music keyboards (including polyphonic

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...

/ digital synthesizers and rack mount modules). Joysticks and peripherals included the Cheetah 125, Cheetah 125 Plus, Mach 1, and an infrared joypad. Cheetah's range of music products expanded quickly during the 1980s when they began to work with external designers. Among these were Chris Wright, who later founded Soundscape Digital Technology, Ian Jannaway, who later founded

Novation Digital Music Systems Novation Digital Music Systems Ltd. is a British musical equipment manufacturer, founded in 1992 by Ian Jannaway and Mark Thompson as Novation Electronic Music Systems. Today the company specializes in MIDI controllers with and without keyboard ...

and Mike Lynch, who later founded

Autonomy Corporation HP Autonomy, previously Autonomy Corporation PLC, was an enterprise software company which was merged with Micro Focus in 2017. It was founded in Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1996. Autonomy was acquired by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in October 201 ...

. Cheetah also distributed the

Gamate The ''Gamate'', known as (pinyin: ''chāojí xiǎozi'', literally "Super Boy") in Taiwan and (pinyin: ''chāojí shéntóng'', literally "Super Child Prodigy") in China, is a handheld game console manufactured by Bit Corporation in the early 1 ...

handheld console in the UK.

Music products

*Cheetah SpecDrum - drum machine add-on for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum *Cheetah MQ8 - performance sequencer. *Cheetah MD8 - 8 bit MIDI drum machine. *Cheetah MD16 - 16 bit MIDI drum machine (also with the rack mount variants MD16R, MD16RP) - designed by Chris Wright and Nick Robbins. *Cheetah MK5/7VA - 5 or 7 octave MIDI keyboard controllers - designed by Speedwell Software *Cheetah Master Series 5/7/7P - MIDI keyboard controller, 5 or 7 octaves with

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

weighted keyboard action - designed by Chris Wright and Nick Robbins. *Cheetah Master Series 7000/8000 - MIDI keyboard controllers with advanced features, 5 or 7 octaves and piano weighted keyboard action (shown at the

NAMM show The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

in 1993 but never manufactured due to demise of Cheetah - 6 prototypes are known to exist) - designed by Chris Wright and Nick Robbins. *Cheetah MS800 - Digital wave synthesizer - designed by Lynett Systems ( Mike Lynch). *Cheetah SX16 - 16 bit sampler - designed by Lynett Systems (Mike Lynch). *Cheetah MS6 - 6 voice polyphonic

analogue synthesizer An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of ...

- designed by Ian Jannaway

Products

Music products

References

Further reading