U-He Repro 5 Vs Softube Model 80 - Blind Test Comparisons + Settings to Match Them

[vurt]

theres an old joke, "how do you have sex with a gorilla?"

"however the gorilla says"

[hurricaneaudiolab]

Kind of curious how the Arturia Prophet stacks up.

[midi_transmission]

I like M80 a lot soundwise. But I would buy Repro again. The uhe ecosystem qualities around Repro far outweigh my very slight sonic preference for M80. And it's not that I prefer M80 in all cases or that I could say M80 is objectively better. Might just prefer the modelled hardware slightly.

The real question is how does it compare to hive2?

[Produkt_Audio]

I think it can be possible upon playing with the two to develop a sort of bias for the Model 80... one of the reasons for this is it feels like the knobs on the model 80 are in a sort of "Sweet spot" which makes it feel like its more calibrated somehow, whereas the knobs on the repro feel "looser" in a way.. like the ranges are kind of broader or something.. or just different feeling. This can give the impression of more immediately dialing in better sounds with the softube model 80 as it seems like almost no matter where you go its a "Sweet spot" but i think this is falsely relevant because what matters in the end is the final sound not the sweet spot knob ranges.

Like yes you can get the filter a bit more open on the Repro, and it starts off open, as on the Model 80 it starts off partially closed and only opens more and to a lesser extent if you add envelope.. this gives the impression of a rounder tone, but Imo you can adjust the filters on Repro to sound identically bright-warm.. the whole bright-warm thing is one of those things where i found there isnt actually any difference between the two outside of knob ranges which can give a sort of false impression.

[bmanic]

Kind of curious how the Arturia Prophet stacks up.

Not well. But in their defense, apparently it's a different revision that is modeled.

[Urs]

[edit] Oversampling! Yay! I’m so excited. Will make one of my favorite plugins even better.

Just to make sure I wasn't talking bs, I spent a few hours yesterday and today on some math and figured out how to (hopefully) best antialias the three distortion algos in Hive and Repro-5. They were already oversampled quite a bit, but a neat DSP trick does a little wonder here

[suthnear]

Kind of curious how the Arturia Prophet stacks up.

Not well. But in their defense, apparently it's a different revision that is modeled.

Rev 2, isn't it? Ironically that's supposed to be the best sounding prophet 5...

[vitocorleone123]

Kind of curious how the Arturia Prophet stacks up.

Not well. But in their defense, apparently it's a different revision that is modeled.

Arturia emulations are a step down from u-he and Softube. No other way around that one. But, there sure as hell have a lot of them! And they always have some interesting features.

[chk071]

Kind of curious how the Arturia Prophet stacks up.

Not well. But in their defense, apparently it's a different revision that is modeled.

Rev 2, isn't it?

As far as I read, yes.

Edit: Oh, they even state it on their site: https://www.arturia.com/products/softwa ... v/overview

With state-of-the-art analog modeling technology, Prophet-5 V puts the power of a keyboard icon - the treasured Rev 2 - at your disposal.

[bmanic]

Kind of curious how the Arturia Prophet stacks up.

Not well. But in their defense, apparently it's a different revision that is modeled.

And they always have some interesting features.

This is the main benefit of the Arturia emulations, for sure. I also feel like they do all the digital emulations extremely well. I absolutely love their CMI, Synclavier, SQ-80 and DX7. Very nice to explore and use.

[mi-os]

@Urs

How about offering different revisions and/or exemplars in Repro? And maybe throw in some exaggerated caricature versions too which sound even more old/noisy/overdriven/detuned than a real old one. Show more or less worn GUIs reflecting the chosen mode.

[Urs]

@Urs

How about offering different revisions and/or exemplars in Repro? And maybe throw in some exaggerated caricature versions too which sound even more old/noisy/overdriven/detuned than a real old one. Show more or less worn GUIs reflecting the chosen mode.

Well, with Repro we're already doing that, to some extent. We had two Pro Ones, one P5 and various circuits (piano mode envelopes) that we added as choices wherever we saw notable differences.

There hasn't been any crazy difference between other specimen and ours that would make us go "oh shit, we should do this one as well"*, but then, we have kept our distance from a Rev 2. We potentially have access to two of these though, and I guess one day we'll check them out.

Regarding the Rev 2, we have an in-house Eurorack module of two 2040 filter chips with numerous patch points for me. One vintage one (through hole), one modern one (surface mount). We can directly compare the several 2040s we have with their modern 2140 counterparts, and it's kind of crazy. They don't seem to do the same thing.

We might do the same for the 3320, of which we have dozens in various synths.

I don't know where I'm going with this post. Nevermind. Friday night.

- U

[mi-os]

Thanks for elaborating Urs. I'd totally love a rev1/2 SSM filter mode at least.

[midi_transmission]

By the way. I've not tested it again recently, but in the past I perceived repro running at 96khz in a few cases noticeable better than in 44.1khz. viewtopic.php?p=8126067#p8126067

I ask myself if a difference might be that M80 is using even higher oversampling than repro? When I read my old post some of the things reminds me what I hear at some patches of the M80. Afaik M80 is reported to have a higher cpu load. Could have 100 reasons why, but higher sampling rate is one of them.

[briefcasemanx]

Repro desperately needs more slop.