GForce Sequential Prophet-5

[BBFG#]

I wonder if they will do what they did with Oberheim and fly through a bunch of their different (but similar) models.

Tempest, Prophet-12, REV2, Pro-One, Prophet VS, Six-Trak, Poly Evolver, Pro 3, Prophet X...

T-8

[Uncle E]

Out of all of those, I'm certain Poly Evolver would be the best seller, even above the Prophet-5.

[zerocrossing]

That is simplistic to the point of being meaningless.

Maybe not? The Martin Stürtzer video backs up what zvenx was saying, that most people wouldn't be able to pick them apart even outside of a mix.

I personally heard it clearly, though the Stürtzer video was too casual to take seriously. I need someone who's precisely tuning filters, like I know Carr does. Even tiny differences in settings can make one sound better than the other. I once watched an AB of one of the Oberheim emulations and it was clear that the emulation wasn't doing voice panning and the hardware was, which make the emulation sound flat in comparison. (not pitch flat, but less spacious) I think Carr does a very good job, though I don't have the 5 to do a comparison myself, but I'll put it up against the 6 anyway, as in some ways they can be very similar.

[Deisss]

So due to the vintage knob this is actually based on rev 4, which no one has emulated yet if I'm not wrong?

Interesting, I got a rev 4 here, will see if it's time to sell

I've owned the Prophet 10 twice.
Sold only because it's not practical for using live.

Listened to Starsky Carr's comparison with the hardware Rev4.
I do think the Gforce plugin sounds good... but (to my ears) it's not as good sounding as the hardware. The hardware just has a little something more (more 3D or lively sounding).

Well the hardware is mono so the 3D of it...

It does have clearly a bit more low end at the beginning of the video; the filter clearly let also pass a tiny bit more top end compare to the plugin (just checked the video you're talking about), but it's not that far away.

Still the acustica is also extremely close... Will test when i got some time, but very likely time to sell the hardware...

how did Expanse-5 compare to a rev 4 P5?

Very close.

Sound quality speaking only (without considering workflow or features or any bells & whistles), I wonder if there is a huge sonic gap with u-He Repro's? I don't have much appetite for another Prophet synth since Repro is top notch already, unless this one is totaly mindblowing. (gonna demo it of course when I have some free time, but I was wondering since alot of you already did)

I never clicked with Repro 1 or Repro 5. Repro 1 was closer than Repro 5 to the related hardware. The main problem I got with those 2 VSTs is "imperfection", actual hardware are a mess, in a very good way, they do happy mistake absolutely all the time, those 2 VSTs are super clinical in comparaison and lost most of the mojo due to likely modeling an absolutely perfectly in tune hardware.

Problem: when you buy a hardware synth, you don't start by spending several hours to days to recalibrating it, you plug it, enjoy the imperfection.

[D-Fusion]

I bought it but i have one issue with it.
It sounds a little bit drunk when i play a single note between the different notes and octaves on my keyboard Even when the Vintage knob is set to 0.
This is what i hate with real analog synths and when they go that much out of tune i hit the Auto tune knob to fix it but it is not possible to fix it in the plugin.

So i hope that it will be fixed so the tuning is more stable when the Vintage knob is set on 0.

[Vortifex]

Yeah I thought the baked in detuning was a bit much. Maybe it's accurate, I've never played a P5. Arturia does it really well with its dispersion controls, allowing you to fine tune the pitch variance and other parameters independently.

[slaambo]

Majestic recreation, I love Repro 5 but this sounds way special, Sequential's name is there for a reason

[felis]

Out of all of those, I'm certain Poly Evolver would be the best seller, even above the Prophet-5.

That would be another insta-buy for me. Hope they're reading this.

[DiodeLadder]

Off topic, but if anyone feels u-he Repro-5 doesn't sound juicy enough, go to the Tweak panel and change the filter model to Crispy or Rounded. I belive those are Pro-One filter models, and they sound much more interesting to me.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I think the thing with RePro, is it's very stable. The Rev 4 Prophet at least, is quite sloppy even at its best and gets really sloppy as you increase the vintage knob. Filter cutoff, envelope times, pitch. Sometimes you end up fighting it a bit, like, "damn this sounds cool but this one voice is decaying a little too quickly, or is too out of tune". If you embrace the slop, it's really fun. But thank God I don't have perfect pitch. I imagine the few that do would find the Rev 4 unusable.

I think the poster above who says RePro-5 sounds too well maintained is on to something. I've long been requesting more trimmers in the Tweak panel to increase the filter and envelope slop. Maybe Urs and co are just talking too good care of their synths, creating emulations of museum pieces versus player grade instruments. I still really like Repro though, it's my go-to ITB because the UI is brilliant, it's got FX, and a few extra mod slots to add a bit of interest. Overall, if I could only have one, it wins for those reasons. But it's not like the sloppy Rev 4. This and Expanse-5 get more into the sound.

[zerocrossing]

It does have clearly a bit more low end at the beginning of the video; the filter clearly let also pass a tiny bit more top end compare to the plugin (just checked the video you're talking about), but it's not that far away.

How far away something is from what it's imitating is subjective, at least in terms of importance. I've got a bunch of hardware synths... 9, to be exact. They're not all expensive, but some of them are, at least in my opinion, but I put ever synth, hardware and software, though a pretty rigorous analysis before I decide to buy or keep it. It has to offer either a noticeable increase in sound quality, over what I have. I don't mean subjective opinion, I mean, how well the software does around the edges. If your filter FM starts falling apart as you go up in frequency, I'm going to pass, unless your instrument also offers something interesting that makes up for it.

This isn't always a "hardware wins/software loses" battle. The $3,500 3rd Wave module I purchased didn't make the grade. Software beat it out on every metric. Inversely, the Melbourne Instruments Nina has a prominent spot on my desk, because even though it failed on audio rate modulation tasks, it has a character and feature set that I've not been able to match in software or hardware. Can I get somethings to sound "like" it? Sure, but to me, not enough like it to knock it out of its spot. Some software, like UAD's Opal, have excellent sound quality and character, but are missing some features that make it less useful to me.

I say all that with full knowledge that I am privileged enough to have the funds to make those kinds of decisions. Some part of me thinks that my circumstances could change and I'd have to sell all my hardware and move to a smaller space, and I'm OK with that, but for now, I will enjoy myself.

Problem: when you buy a hardware synth, you don't start by spending several hours to days to recalibrating it, you plug it, enjoy the imperfection.

I generally always run a synths calibration routine, if it has one, if I notice things have gone wonky to a degree that isn't pleasant.

[trusampler]

Here's my question to Sequential/Gforce regarding patches from our hardware Prophet 5/10 Rev 4.

Q: Be great if we could convert our Prophet HW patches into this ,can you say if Gforce / Sequential could make it happen , being we actually have Sequential working with Gforce now, technically this should be possible right ?

A: That would be good! We'd like to be able to include that in the future. The reason we didn't go for it yet is that we've handled certain things a bit differently to the hardware, for what we believe to be a better software experience. In particular Chord mode, and the way mod depths calculate for our variable depths, as well as simple things like splitting hold and release into two separate things. So we'd either need quite a complex layer of translations that may make untrue assumptions, or some acceptance/expectation from customers that they may need to manually adjust such things, such as reselecting chords, to get the exact sound. Both possible, but we'll see.

Kind regards,
Support Manager

Make you're voices heard guys & gals this sounds like they can definitely do it with a bit of work.

[Korg Supporter]

This isn't always a "hardware wins/software loses" battle. The $3,500 3rd Wave module I purchased didn't make the grade. Software beat it out on every metric.

Which softsynths "beat it"?

[Neon Breath]

This isn't always a "hardware wins/software loses" battle. The $3,500 3rd Wave module I purchased didn't make the grade. Software beat it out on every metric.

Yep, it happens sometimes. But it's something the hardware gate-keepers don't want to admit, especially after spending $4,000 on a synth that is matched on par by a $150 software, The pill can be hard to swallow

[zerocrossing]

This isn't always a "hardware wins/software loses" battle. The $3,500 3rd Wave module I purchased didn't make the grade. Software beat it out on every metric.

Which softsynths "beat it"?

Being that there's no 3rd Wave emulation, it ends up being a variety of software, but the one that comes to mind that I use a lot in this type of thing is Dune 3. If memory serves, I also used Korg's ModWave... maybe Opal.

My main issue with the 3rd Wave was that it's doing that digital oscillator thing, where each waveform is using a fixed amount of partials. So, on mid-range and high notes, the upper harmonics are way up, or out of the range of hearing, that you don't notice this, but if you play lower notes, you can hear the notes sounding duller than a broad spectrum oscillator. The Prophet 12 that I own does this as well, though it has other tricks and features that make it valuable to me. The 3rd Wave was also sadly bad at audio rate modulation, except for its fixed path FM. Dune can oversample the mod matrix at a high enough rate to make pretty clean audio rate modulation, but the 3rd Wave didn't have the processing to do it well.

Of course, I'll also add that the 3rd Wave is a beautiful sounding synthesizer. My issue is, I have a lot of beautiful sounding synthesizers. What ended up occupying that slot in my studio was the Polyvera, which while not as capable in some respects, sounded better to me and had really fantastic drive and dirt options and does fantastic filter FM.