 The Oberheim company first produced the OB-X in 1979, the OBXA in 1980-81, and the OB8 in 1983, as well as the Matrix 12, Matrix 6 and Matrix 1000 from the mid-1980s.In June 1981, Roland's Ikutaro Kakehashi approached Oberheim with the idea of standardizing a communication protocol between electronic music instruments.Oberheim discussed the idea with Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits, and in November, Smith formally presented the idea to the Audio Engineering Society.