GForce Sequential Prophet-5

[zvenx]

Even I, who loves most of their emulations can't defend their Gui's.
It's not like they don't know.
I am sure many others have gave them feedback on it, but its 'their way'.

rsp

[Echoes in the Attic]

Even I, who loves most of their emulations can't defend their Gui's.
It's not like they don't know.
I am sure many others have gave them feedback on it, but its 'their way'.

rsp

Better than cherry audio GUIs!

[Neon Breath]

Gforce VS Repro VS Hardware from Mr. Stürtzer

[zerocrossing]

In a mix, none of you could tell the difference.

That is simplistic to the point of being meaningless. What's the mix? If it features a few instruments and one is a raw Prophet 5, then you could most definitely hear a difference. If there's a lot going on and the synth is buried in the mix with a lot of reverb or chorus on it, sure, none of us could tell. The actual question we should ask is, would anyone miss it without anything to compare it to. I'd say if you're a person who has a Prophet 5, you'd miss it. If you're a random person happening upon it, probably not.

What I'd like to know, and maybe Carr goes over this later in his demo, is how it fares with Poly Mod stuff. This is where Prophet 5 emulations can display the most difference to the hardware. Repro does a good job. Model 80 does a bit better job. Arturia's does a decent job, though much better than the previous version. If you're playing low stuff, they're all good. It's the higher notes that show who's spending the most CPU cycles oversampling. The same holds true for doing FM stuff. Minimonsta is better than the last version, but it's not the best. The upside is, it does a lot more, if you're into such things. I am.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Gave the demo a spin and glad that I did. I was almost going to buy without even trying it as I've been really into GForce lately and enjoying their xmod system, especially the OB-X.

But when I tried it, a few things stood out. What on earth is the Q-Comp doing? 7 levels of what exactly? I thought it was going to be a bass/volume compensation for the resonance, like the minmonsta (which admittedly is subtle), but I'm not hearing much of anything from this one. I remember people reporting that the minimonsta one was broken and not doing anything when it came out and there people were never really sure if it was or not for a while.

Also, I gotta say, although I like the xmod system, the MPE modulation is really weir dand separate. I don't see why. Unlike the xmod modulators which indicate modulated targets with the ring, mpe modulations are not indicated, and they are in a list where you can only see one mpe modulation amount at a time. And there's no way to know if it's being used as the target shows nothing and you have to pull up in the list to see. I don't see why it wouldn't be a tab in the XMod area. You often use either mpe modulation or an envelope, so that could toggle. Or just the whole thing. switch from XLFO and XEnvelope view to mpe view for a given parameter. Or at least change the target in the modulation section like it changes the xmod area depending on the selected parameter. And put the rings around the knobs when it's being modulated.

Weird choices.

Overall I like the UI, but nothing beats Repro in terms of UI, and not sure there's much reason to have a different prophet beyond repro. Maybe I'll wait and see. GForce plugins spend most of the year at half price so even though there's an intro price, it'll be only 60 in a couple months.

[wagtunes]

In a mix, none of you could tell the difference.

That is simplistic to the point of being meaningless. What's the mix? If it features a few instruments and one is a raw Prophet 5, then you could most definitely hear a difference. If there's a lot going on and the synth is buried in the mix with a lot of reverb or chorus on it, sure, none of us could tell. The actual question we should ask is, would anyone miss it without anything to compare it to. I'd say if you're a person who has a Prophet 5, you'd miss it. If you're a random person happening upon it, probably not.

What I'd like to know, and maybe Carr goes over this later in his demo, is how it fares with Poly Mod stuff. This is where Prophet 5 emulations can display the most difference to the hardware. Repro does a good job. Model 80 does a bit better job. Arturia's does a decent job, though much better than the previous version. If you're playing low stuff, they're all good. It's the higher notes that show who's spending the most CPU cycles oversampling. The same holds true for doing FM stuff. Minimonsta is better than the last version, but it's not the best. The upside is, it does a lot more, if you're into such things. I am.

The thing is, and I get everybody is different and has different needs, I don't buy a synth because of some nostalgia. I don't salivate over X synth hoping it sounds exactly like the hardware because I had a hardware unit and nothing else will do. I buy a synth if it sounds good and I can use it to make music. Yes, there are exceptions such as the Korg Wavestation because nothing sounds like it. I know because I owned one. So if I really wanted that Wavestation sound (and Korg nailed the VST version) then nothing else will do. In this case, I literally have a Korg Wavestation in my computer. And yes, buried in a mix IF you are an experienced Wavestation user, you can pick its sound out in a second.

But how many synths are like that? The Prophet is certainly not one of them. And even if it was, with so many emulations, you'd need a microscope to tell the difference between them all, let alone the difference between them and a hardware unit, which by the way, there are different hardware units. This just complicates the process even more.

99% of the synths I own I couldn't care less how faithful they are to the hardware. Do they sound good? If the answer is yes, I use them. If the answer is no, I don't.

But I get it. Some people like to nit pick over every little DAC or whatever.

I stopped playing that game long before I ever had the chance to start.

[zvenx]

Though I love Repro-1, Repro-5 never quite gelled with me.
Actually once I got Softube's Model 80 I stopped using it entirely, and a few months into beta testing this one, I even removed repro-5 from my primetime vst list in cubendo.
rsp

[zerocrossing]

The thing is, and I get everybody is different and has different needs, I don't buy a synth because of some nostalgia. I don't salivate over X synth hoping it sounds exactly like the hardware because I had a hardware unit and nothing else will do.

I don't either.

I buy a synth if it sounds good and I can use it to make music.

Me too.

Yes, there are exceptions such as the Korg Wavestation because nothing sounds like it. I know because I owned one. So if I really wanted that Wavestation sound (and Korg nailed the VST version) then nothing else will do. In this case, I literally have a Korg Wavestation in my computer. And yes, buried in a mix IF you are an experienced Wavestation user, you can pick its sound out in a second.

This is a bit of a weird pull, as we're talking about a fully digital synth, and actually, Korg didn't "nail" the hardware Wavestation, because I too owned one, and I sold it because the software actually sounds better due to the fact that they used the full 16 bit PCM wave files, where the hardware was using 12 bit PCM, and sounds noticeably better... or worse, if you are hoping for the original lower resolution model.

But how many synths are like that? The Prophet is certainly not one of them. And even if it was, with so many emulations, you'd need a microscope to tell the difference between them all, let alone the difference between them and a hardware unit, which by the way, there are different hardware units. This just complicates the process even more.

Are you kidding me? The Prophet 5 is one of the most iconic analog polyphonic synthesizers of all time. Only to have competition of the Jupiter 8 and OB-X. If there's a reason those synths seem generic to you, it's because they're the target of a million copycats. Even the Nord Lead 2 is said to mimic the Prophet 5's filter. But let's imagine those synths never existed, and a company just invented the Prophet 10 in its rev4 version and concurrently released this software version. I clearly heard the hardware sounding noticeably better. Not different. Better. The software has a bit of a constrained sound. In a blind test, I'm sure I'd pick the hardware most of the time. It sounded better. Not just different, but I'd say objectively better.

99% of the synths I own I couldn't care less how faithful they are to the hardware. Do they sound good? If the answer is yes, I use them. If the answer is no, I don't.

But I get it. Some people like to nit pick over every little DAC or whatever.

I stopped playing that game long before I ever had the chance to start.

I'm no nit picker, but I can hear. I also am fully prepared to make concessions on sonic quality in exchange for more synthesis options than the original hardware was capable of. That's why I never traded in my Prophet 6 for a new Prophet 5, even though people will swear it sounds "better." I actually prefer the 6 for many types of sounds, and find its extra features to be a better fit for my music.

I'm not saying that things like this sound bad, though, and as we've said, in a mix with some reverb, hard to tell. When I was doing all the game stuff, I never used my hardware, because I was doing so many iterations and had to have things timed for specific events that using software was just a lot easier, and even made some things possible that would have been very difficult to do with hardware. There was a particular game that had a level that was sort of pier amusement park themed, so I went with a kind of Van Halenish kind of happy rock theme, and I believe I ended up using the Arturia OB-Xa V, which isn't even the best sounding Oberheim emulation that I have, but it had the feature set I was after and was easy and quick to get going. The rock theme comes out of an OB+eBow guitar ambient drone, so the Arturia's extra stuff made it the winner. With the processing, drums, and guitars going on, it sounds fantastic, especially considering the end result gets played on an Oculus headset.