Consulting

We offer consulting services in a variety of areas. Our engineers and technical writers have experience with many different development systems, computer languages, and computer platforms. Below is a summary of our Consulting Services, some of our Previous Projects, the Tools and Computer Systems that we use, a partial List of Clients, and brief notes about our Senior Consulting Staff. Please approach us with your consulting needs, and we will be happy to give you an estimate. 

Muscle Fish Consulting Services

    Systems Architecture Design
  • Object-Oriented Systems Design 
  • Distributed Object Systems 
  • Real-time Issues and Optimization 
  • Synchronized Time-based Media 
  • User Interface Design 
    Design Reviews and Technology Surveys
  • Technical Reviews of Software 
  • Cost and Time Estimates 
  • Reviews of Current Technologies 
  • Brainstorming Sessions 
    Software Implementation
  • C and C++ Programming 
  • Java Programming 
  • X/Motif Programming 
  • Audio DSP Programming 
    Technical Documentation
  • Programmers' manuals and API documentation 
  • User manuals 
    Patent Research and Evaluation
  • Existing Patent Searches 
  • Infringement Evaluations 
  • Expert Witnesses 
    Licensing Our Proprietary Software
  • Audio Classification, Search and Retrieval 
  • Audio DSP Modules 
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Some of our Previous Projects

    DSP, Audio, Music:
  • Speech/Music Discrimination. 
  • Audio databases and retrieval systems. 
  • Audio-to-MIDI conversion. 
  • Radio commercial auditing. 
  • Audio disk recorders. 
  • High-quality time compression/expansion and pitch shifting for audio. 
  • MIDI processing and synchronization. 
  • Text-to-speech synthesis. 
  • Voice-mail and telephony processing. 
    Multimedia and User Interfaces:
  • Interactive multimedia database systems. 
  • UI builders and visual programming. 
  • New musical instrument controllers. 
  • 2D and 3D graphics algorithms. 
  • Videodisc and CD-ROM programming. 
    Systems Architecture and Tools:
  • Audio subsystem architecture and API. 
  • Network-independent object connections and protocols. 
  • Real-time schedulers for multimedia events. 
  • C++ class library for MIDI representation. 
  • Document revision control system with a Motif GUI. 
    Papers, Patents and Publications:
  • Awarded multiple patents for new musical instrument designs. 
  • Papers have appeared in 
    • IEEE MultiMedia 
    • ACM SIGGRAPH 
    • ACM Transactions on Graphics 
    • Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing 
    • Computer Music Journal 
    • IEEE Computer 
    • Video Computing 
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Tools of the Trade

    Operating Systems:
  • MS-DOS/Windows/95/NT 
  • UNIX (many flavors) 
  • Apple Macintosh 
  • NeXT 
  • OS-9 
  • Coherent 
    Window Systems:
  • Microsoft Windows 
  • X Windows 
  • Motif 
  • SunView 
  • OpenWindows 
  • NeXTSTEP 
  • Taligent 
    Computer Languages:
  • C, C++ 
  • Java 
  • Objective-C 
  • Lisp 
  • FORTRAN 
  • DSP-56000 
  • MC680x0 Assembler 
  • HTML programming and Web page design. 
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A Partial List of Our Clients:

  • Apple Computer, Inc. 
  • Banff Centre for the Arts 
  • Broderbund Software, Inc. 
  • GeoWorks, Inc. 
  • HyperMedia Group, Inc. 
  • Informix 
  • Leonardo Journal of Arts and Technologies 
  • Mixman Technologies, Inc. 
  • NeXT Software, Inc. 
  • Opcode Systems, Inc. 
  • Otari Japan Corp. 
  • Palm Computing 
  • Professional Software Corp. 
  • Sonic Solutions, Inc. 
  • Sony Corp. of America 
  • Sun Microsystems, Inc. 
  • Taligent, Inc. 
  • Virage, Inc. 
  • Visual Design 
  • VMX, Inc. 
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Senior Consulting Staff

Muscle Fish was founded in 1992 by Thom Blum, Doug Keislar, Jim Wheaton and Erling Wold. These four engineers comprise our senior consulting staff. 
  • Thom Blum studied music composition at CalArts and has a B.A. in Computer Applications to Music Synthesis from Ohio State. He is a co-founder of the International Computer Music Association. 
  • Doug Keislar received a Ph.D. in Music from Stanford University, where he studied computer music and psychoacoustics at CCRMA. He is an experienced researcher, programmer, and technical writer, and his articles have been published in several journals. He is the editor of the Computer Music Journal. 
  • Jim Wheaton has a B.S. in Philosophy from M.I.T.  His experience includes interactive videodiscs, scientific instrumentation, computer graphics, musical instrument design and managing a post-production recording studio. Jim is the author of StudioPal, and BuddhaBell, which are produced by Harmonic Systems, Inc. 
  • Erling Wold has a Ph.D. in E.E.C.S. from UC Berkeley, specializing in signal processing, optimization and control, computer architecture, and computer music. He has been published in many major technical journals and is an award-winning composer. 
In addition to these founding members, Muscle Fish regularly provides our clients with other experienced engineers, technical writers, and consultants. To supplement our regular staff, we have established a network of specialists in the computer industry who help to fill in any gaps in our knowledge so that we can get the results you need in a timely fashion. 

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