Bennett Sikes

Bennett Sikes is the current Director of Research and Development at MOTU. Bennett has held this position for 34 years and is responsible for the planning and development of hardware and software products lines. Bennett has also hired and coached engineering team members and built development infrastructure.

Sikes has long experience working with strategic partners on cooperative product development. Bennett was also responsible for the staffing, organization, and direction of driver and firmware development for a broad line of professional-grade audio interfaces. In addition, they participated in the overall design and feature selection for every product in the MOTU audio interface product line.

Sikes has also been involved in Digital Performer since 1992. Bennett has directed all development activity on this Digital Audio Workstation app since its inception. In addition to staffing, organizing, and directing the team and all releases, they created many of the internal technologies and implemented numerous user-visible features. For example, they created the GUI framework, the audio waveform display and editing system, and the crucial interface between the application at large and the audio processing subsystem. Bennett initiated and led the transitions from C to C++ and from PowerPC to Intel.

Sikes has also made important strategic decisions, pushing the team to implement industry-leading features such as track-based realtime pitch-editing of audio, successfully forcing our competitors into catch-up mode.

In addition to their work on Digital Performer, Sikes has also led the creation of the first suite of high-quality host-based realtime DSP effects in the industry. Since inception, they have continued adding to the collection, designing and developing new high-end effects and instruments. These effects have been ported to the embedded DSP in our audio interfaces, significantly upgrading that product line.

Sikes has also maintained and improved proprietary web-based CRM and eCommerce systems as well as the company's user-facing web site.

Bennett Sikes is a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Bennett is studying for a 6-3 degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.