Repro-1 (out now)

[BR393]

BTW, something always bothered me with Diva envelopes but I thought that I imagined things, but RePro does resonant blips very good, so I'm back to theory that something is weird with Diva envs

I'm afraid I have to second that, I used to have a Juno-6 and the envelopes on it were a lot faster then Diva's. I would love to be able to make snappy stabs with Diva. Faster envelopes pretty please ?

You can just multiply the envelopes by themselves in Diva to make them much snappier.

[urosh]

I'm afraid I have to second that, I used to have a Juno-6 and the envelopes on it were a lot faster then Diva's. I would love to be able to make snappy stabs with Diva. Faster envelopes pretty please ?

Diva envelopes are fast enough, but for me they "feel" weird.

[Urs]

And OB6 is even better.

Hmmm, not so sure. I think I prefer the Prophet-6.

Maybe if they offer a replacement kit for the plastic caps. It's the same potentiometers, but the caps make it feel completely differently.

- U

[EvilDragon]

Sound-wise I'm totally digging OB6 more than P6. YMMV

[beely]

I prefer the sound character of the OB6, and the look of the P6... go figure!

[EvilDragon]

Oh yes P6 definitely looks better. The blue pinstripes looked cool in the 80s. These days, not so much anymore...

[V0RT3X]

[louderr]

BTW, something always bothered me with Diva envelopes but I thought that I imagined things, but RePro does resonant blips very good, so I'm back to theory that something is weird with Diva envs

I'm afraid I have to second that, I used to have a Juno-6 and the envelopes on it were a lot faster then Diva's. I would love to be able to make snappy stabs with Diva. Faster envelopes pretty please ?

snappy is the word. the slowish envelopes of many analogue modelers are a deal killer, even if the overall sound is good. either they just dont respond to MIDI fast enough or its the envelope attack not packing a punch, i dont know. but when the attack is instantaneous its thrilling.

as I mentioned earlier: I got to try this on a bigger workstation last night, a quad core Xeon at my studio instead of my i7 laptop which i thought would be adequate to handle it (it wasn't). Totally different story. I found it harder to make a choice this time.

#5 still left me with a weird "sick' feeling, although it behaved well over the range and sounded...uh, normal?

#4 was close to 3 but I couldn't make a strong yea or nay case for it

#3 sort of "tickled" in the heart region, not a metaphor but an actual, visceral feeling. There was a certain "ahh, makes me smile" sensation.

#2 handled the filter sweeps nicely and didnt sound as "thin" but still slightly lo-fi. it stayed pretty clean up high.

#1 had more artifacts on the filter sweeps (probably correctible) but an extra-sweet and yummy analogesque top end to the "ears" all the way from low to high cutoff.

On this, better sound system (also with subwoofer) I caught enough high-end nuances to think i was catching which ones seemed to be sampling faster. Maybe I imagined that, but i do have trained ears and thought i clocked the 'buzzes" way up there. 3 or 4 had fastest buzz or so it seemed.

Since 3 made my heart respond and 1 made my ears respond, I'm not sure whats best. Normally it would make sense to go with heart but I STILL think #1 is the most versatile and useful overall, it does more tricks than the others and has a nice sheen on top.

[louderr]

i demand a recount!!

haha whatever, but now that we have all chimed in, does anyone feel differently than before?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

haha whatever, but now that we have all chimed in, does anyone feel differently than before?

My impressions changed over time. I liked 1 at first, and still do at more "normal" settings, but that's because the output volume is higher and it's a little brighter than the others. The noise, and weird glitches are interesting, but I think it's the least analog of the bunch. I eventually voted 3. Based on some audio Urs posted of the HW filter with extreme filter modulation and high resonance, 3 and 4 were the only two that even got in the ballpark of that sound. 2 and 5 were too tame, and filter 1 completely exploded at those settings.

[Urs]

I used to have a Juno-6 and the envelopes on it were a lot faster then Diva's. I would love to be able to make snappy stabs with Diva. Faster envelopes pretty please ?

snappy is the word. the slowish envelopes of many analogue modelers are a deal killer, even if the overall sound is good. either they just dont respond to MIDI fast enough or its the envelope attack not packing a punch, i dont know. but when the attack is instantaneous its thrilling.

I think it's worn out potentiometers in vintage hardware synths. Their overall resistance changes, shifting the parameter range a fair bit. For anything pitch or pulsewidth you get a trim pot, but never for envelope times. So yes, they're fast and all of that, but the useful range in the center is often crippled.

You won't believe how distorted the "linear" pots in our Pro-One are. Their resistance is all over the place. It's slowly dawning on me that a major reason for different sound between two synths may be broken pots, maybe because they killed them with contact spray whatsoever.

That said, I'd be interested to see if a Juno-6 envelope is any different from a Juno-60. I think we completely nailed the Juno-60/Jupiter-8 envelopes in Diva's "Analog" setting. The reason Diva's Minimoogish env doesn't go shorter is based on the opinion of a famous user (won't disclose the name, it wasn't HZ) who suggested that "this setting hits the spot". Well. We might add an alternative option.

[Ingonator]

haha whatever, but now that we have all chimed in, does anyone feel differently than before?

My impressions changed over time. I liked 1 at first, and still do at more "normal" settings, but that's because the output volume is higher and it's a little brighter than the others. The noise, and weird glitches are interesting, but I think it's the least analog of the bunch. I eventually voted 3. Based on some audio Urs posted of the HW filter with extreme filter modulation and high resonance, 3 and 4 were the only two that even got in the ballpark of that sound. 2 and 5 were too tame, and filter 1 completely exploded at those settings.

Like in my vote and my first post here I would still choose #3 now while i also like #4.

I really do not get why so many voted for #1. Too much noise and/or digital artifacts especially at higher Reonnance which in that way should not happen with real analogs or proper/good emulations with zero delay feedback filters (including e.g. Diva, Monark and the Xils Lab synths).

[slackhead]

I'm very late to comment but have now had a couple of good sessions listening and both times came to pretty much the same conclusion which is at odds to many of the others here.

As a precursor - I have had some experience of analog synths over the years including using (but never owning) three, maybe four, different Pro-Ones and it's always been a bit of a favourite mono synth. However, auditory memory is very very short and I struggle to reliably recall sonic differences from ten minutes ago, never mind the few years since I played a Pro-One. And it's also very easy to trick oneself in to believing something is better when it's in fact only louder(even by a dB or so). After all louder is always better!

To my ears listening on fairly transparent headphones (AKG K701):

Filter 1 - very digital with obvious artifacts.
Filters 3 & 4 - didn't hear much in the way of difference - sound pretty good but still have a sense (rather than obviously audible) digital-ness about them. Hard to quantify but neither did'nt quite feel right to me. Still a very usable filter and for most part wouldn't notice when in a mix.
Filter 5 - lovely and sweet - but perhaps a bit to syrupy as if it's been processed to sound that way.
Filter 2 - spent a bit of time swapping between this and 5 to confirm my feeling, but this wins the poll for me - again hard to quantify why, it just seemed to feel more the way I'd expect from an analog filter.

Really looking forward to the final version of this....

[urosh]

... should not happen with ... proper/good emulations with zero delay feedback filters (including e.g. Diva, Monark and the Xils Lab synths).

None of those had to cope with emulating filter quite like one in Pro One. Pro One VCF has twice as much loop gain compared to pretty much any 4 pole VCF. Only comparable stress test for emulation is MS20mk2 (also way more loop gain than necessary) in Diva. However, resonant filter with positive bandpass loop (that is, MS20mk2) is most forgiving for digital emulation, while 4 pole with negative loop (as in Pro One) is least forgiving. Wider audience literately never before encountered analog simulation taken to very limits (there is reason all of filter options in RePro work at 8x oversampling, which is max optional o.s. in Diva AFAIK).
Further more, somebody at SCI screwed up properly few decades ago, and let nice big strictly positive going waveforms from 3340 go into the filter uninterrupted with any dc blocking cap, so when mixer levels are maxed, DC bias in filter core is f**ked up (and depends critically to one bias current in 3320 which is all over the place as far as tolerance is concerned). Only comparable thing is Pro5, but it is very toned down in every regard. So, anyone without Pro One (or considerable experience with it) judging how RePro should behave is shooting in the dark, and even those with Pro One can't tell for sure if their specimen is similar to the one Urs modeled.

[fmr]

None of those had to cope with emulating filter quite like one in Pro One. Pro One VCF has twice as much loop gain compared to pretty much any 4 pole VCF. Only comparable stress test for emulation is MS20mk2 (also way more loop gain than necessary) in Diva. However, resonant filter with positive bandpass loop (that is, MS20mk2) is most forgiving for digital emulation, while 4 pole with negative loop (as in Pro One) is least forgiving. Wider audience literately never before encountered analog simulation taken to very limits (there is reason all of filter options in RePro work at 8x oversampling, which is max optional o.s. in Diva AFAIK).
Further more, somebody at SCI screwed up properly few decades ago, and let nice big strictly positive going waveforms from 3340 go into the filter uninterrupted with any dc blocking cap, so when mixer levels are maxed, DC bias in filter core is f**ked up (and depends critically to one bias current in 3320 which is all over the place as far as tolerance is concerned). Only comparable thing is Pro5, but it is very toned down in every regard. So, anyone without Pro One (or considerable experience with it) judging how RePro should behave is shooting in the dark, and even those with Pro One can't tell for sure if their specimen is similar to the one Urs modeled.

UNtil someone records the output of a Pro-One distorting in high resonance the way filter 1, 3 and 4 do, I am not convinced these are working properly in what concerns analogue modeling (and if the Pro-One also distorts like these, then... well, let's say I would never buy a synth that would do that). If they are not, for me they're out, no matter what character they have, or how lovely are the basses they produce.