GForce Sequential Prophet-5

[slaambo]

I will redraw my tuning complain on the other page
At first i was like wtf. since i am used to stiff/perfect tuning with vst's and my digital Hardware but the more i play it the more i like the quirky analog tuning it has and it gives it it's own character/personality.

So i went from meh. to well done Gforce

Good to know, my experience too.

The RePro's sound vaguely sterile after a few hours with this blinding GForce Prophet.

Rate this emulation even higher than Xils Labs The Eighty.

[Lbdunequest]

I always thought RePro is a top of the mountain, but this actually sounds better. Not by much, actually in a mix probably couldnt hear the difference, but the sound feels more alive, like it has more depth.

[Korg Supporter]

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.

Dune and Modwave are great for those kinds of sounds. Modwave can do some of my favorite sounds from the Quantum, as well.

So does Icarus. You can keytrack the resampling filter at 3k-9k Hz and get PPG-like artifacts. The Multi/Poly sounds great but lacks aliasing or a PPG vibe

[Vortifex]

I'm not sure why some people dont 'like the GUI, I think it's quite good.

For me it's because parts of it are hard to read, and the main interface has an unpleasant contrast.

[Deisss]

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.

The question is, can you have more or less the experience of the hardware with it. I still haven't tried the GForce one, but the Acustica Expanse 5 was, to my knowledge, the only one being close enough to the actual hardware. I've sold a rev3.3 many years ago, bought again a Prophet 10 rev4 which I like, but I felt the Acustica was already very much in the right direction to sell the hardware.

The GForce might be enough to complement the Acustica and never look back again on the hardware.

It's hard to describe sound differences (meaningfully).
The hardware sounds a little more lively.
The software sounds (for lack of a better word) more static or flat.
Kind of like seeing a 2D picture... and then seeing a 3D version.
Whether that difference is worth $4400... that's a difficult question.

That feeling you're describing is basically imperfection, unwanted de tuning and so on. The Prophet 5/10 (all rev) got a tendency to drift very easily and even couple of minutes of the hardware running will change it's sound/behavior.
Then you also have a upper boundary to this, at some point, it sounds off tune and unpleasant.

Lots of very classic synths are like this, they basically are quite tolerant to imperfection, and people remember them as such.

Funnily enough, that was for example one of the main point against the Moog One: people were calling it uninspiring and sterile. Then they found out the mod matrix was completely insane, and could make this synth NOT be in tune, going back to what most people believe an hardware synth is about. And so now a Moog One is very well regarded as an amazing synth, it was imperfection all along

I always thought RePro is a top of the mountain, but this actually sounds better. Not by much, actually in a mix probably couldnt hear the difference, but the sound feels more alive, like it has more depth.

While it's not a bad VST, it never was the top of the mountain versus about any "top" hardware...

I also never understood the concept of "in a mix", when I do music, most of time I need a starting point that I enjoy and want to build upon, that's usually where something like a Prophet/OB will come into play.

[Tj Shredder]

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

Add to the $150 the price of a keyboard and the controllers designed to tweak the sound in real...
And take into consideration that there is no controller fitting perfectly unless you put time into assigning/programming one for your own needs...
The difference will still be huge, but not that huge...

I am almost completely in the box, but I know that hardware has a different inspiration factor than software. The difference in sound between hard and software is much less important than the other differences.

[beely]

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.

Are you sure about this? It's possible in many patches there is a lot of note modulation which varies a lot by voice - sounds a bit over the top and like the poly is in need of calibration (but cool), and even going through and finding modulations and taming things, there can still be a lot of per-voice whacky tuning going on.

But I think that might just be part of the setup of the patch, not an inherent unchangeable quality of the synth, because if you Init a new patch, all the modulations go away, and so does the per-note tuning, and it's much more a static sound you'd expect (it's not totally digital-synth static, it's more what you would expect from an analog synth in good calibration), and the vintage knob does detune between that and quite out of tune, but in a range you'd expect.

So it's entirely possible the "drunk" voicing is intentional set up in the patches you were using.

Try starting from an Init patch and seeing if you still think the whole synth is always way out of tune.

[banal65]

Program change is not working here neither in vst2 (Cubase, Reaper) or in standalone mode. Other gforce plugins using the same system are working fine with program changes. Did anyone get this feature to work?

[Korg Supporter]

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.

Are you sure about this? It's possible in many patches there is a lot of note modulation which varies a lot by voice - sounds a bit over the top and like the poly is in need of calibration (but cool), and even going through and finding modulations and taming things, there can still be a lot of per-voice whacky tuning going on.

But I think that might just be part of the setup of the patch, not an inherent unchangeable quality of the synth, because if you Init a new patch, all the modulations go away, and so does the per-note tuning, and it's much more a static sound you'd expect (it's not totally digital-synth static, it's more what you would expect from an analog synth in good calibration), and the vintage knob does detune between that and quite out of tune, but in a range you'd expect.

So it's entirely possible the "drunk" voicing is intentional set up in the patches you were using.

Try starting from an Init patch and seeing if you still think the whole synth is always way out of tune.

Here is what GForce said in response to my concerns about the filter and tuning:

Ah! I really like the Fourm. Such a powerful little box at a great price. I've not got one myself, but I had a little play around with one on loan for a while.

The vintage knob and detuning is designed to match the knob of the Rev4. The vintage knob especially should be 1:1 exact response to the hardware. So unlike the vintage knobs on most of our stuff, we can't claim ownership of that design. You're right in saying even at minimum, 4, it's not "off".

I'm afraid that I can't speak to the differences in the Fourm filter and our modelled rev 1/2 filter. I enjoyed the Fourm, but can't recall such details now. It's certainly true that our Prophet filters, both of them, are some of the most complex we've ever modelled due to saturations and harmonics. We're certain that they are extremely accurate to the Rev4 hardware we modelled them on.

[D-Fusion]

Try starting from an Init patch and seeing if you still think the whole synth is always way out of tune.

I used the init patch when i discovered it and i did change my view from my first impression as you can see in the first. Post on this page.

[exmatproton]

I will redraw my tuning complain on the other page
At first i was like wtf. since i am used to stiff/perfect tuning with vst's and my digital Hardware but the more i play it the more i like the quirky analog tuning it has and it gives it it's own character/personality.

So i went from meh. to well done Gforce

Good to know, my experience too.

The RePro's sound vaguely sterile after a few hours with this blinding GForce Prophet.

Rate this emulation even higher than Xils Labs The Eighty.

i think REPRO was modelled after stable models, or perhaps not and they stabilized it. When playing with the pots one can get into way more unstable, deep and playful (less sterile) sound. The more stable "default" isn't something that can be easily done with other emu's in my experience. (YMMV...)

Apart from that; i think the REPRO UI's are among the best out there. So clean.

[beely]

I used the init patch when i discovered it and i did change my view from my first impression as you can see in the first. Post on this page.

Yes, I read you changed your mind about the tuning, but you didn't give a reason or mention you'd tried an init patch in that post, leading me to think you just accepted and started to like the inherent "drunk tuning" behaviour - not that you'd found the behaviour was just down to how patches were programmed, and the synth doesn't inherently have that "drunk tuning" behaviour you initially described and it wasn't possible to change.

So it was good to clarify, in case other people think that this synth can't be in tune, and G-Force say "it behaves like the hardware" and people are all "My hardware isn't drunk" etc, which we're seeing a bit of in various posts.

[Korg Supporter]

When I did an init patch and compared it to Repro and the Arturia one, the notes were static in the other two compared to GForce. The amount of beating between single osc sawtooth notes is as follows:
Arturia < Repro < GForce.

When I looked at the spectrogram, the detuning between notes affected select harmonics in Repro and all of the harmonics in GForce. It's not an inherently bad thing, but it doesn't make the GForce Prophet 5 plugin ideal for modern VA sounds.

[beely]

Repro is pretty stable by default, but can be made less so. It's the main reason I believe that the people after "vintage-ness" often prefer the Softube by default, because they tune most of their old analog synth emulations to be pretty wonky (certainly the Prophet 80 is more wonky that Repro by default, and their Minimoog I found to be the wonkiest of all the Minimoog emulations, and is why I don't like it.)

Even worse on the Softube synths - you have no control over that wonkiness, so if you *prefer* them to be a little less wonky, there is nothing you can do. This is generally why I tend to prefer emulations that by default are ore stable, but can be made as wonky as you like as per your tastes (eg Repro 5 for Prophet 5, Synapse Legend for Minimoog, etc).

I think some people don't get past the tyranny of the defaults on some of those instruments, so they feel their out of the box stability is just an inherent characteristic of the instrument, rather than something that can be tweaked.

Anyway, it's all good, people respond to the instruments they respond to, and not everyone cares about reading the manuals etc...

[D-Fusion]

I used the init patch when i discovered it and i did change my view from my first impression as you can see in the first. Post on this page.

Yes, I read you changed your mind about the tuning, but you didn't give a reason or mention you'd tried an init patch in that post, leading me to think you just accepted and started to like the inherent "drunk tuning" behaviour - not that you'd found the behaviour was just down to how patches were programmed, and the synth doesn't inherently have that "drunk tuning" behaviour you initially described and it wasn't possible to change.

So it was good to clarify, in case other people think that this synth can't be in tune, and G-Force say "it behaves like the hardware" and people are all "My hardware isn't drunk" etc, which we're seeing a bit of in various posts.

It is not perfectly in tune.
I can hear the moving pitch clearly on a init patch with a single saw when i play different single notes or between octaves or when i play 4 note chords where 1 note is played on the lower octave and a 3 finger chord is playing on the higher octaves.

So it has not a stable tuning like most digital synth and behaves more like a analog synth where the pitch is constantly moving in and out of phase.

And that is what caught me off guard the first time i played it and the best way i could describe it was drunk tuning because of the phasing

But i started to like that behavior once i got used to it and that is why i changed my mind since it makes it more unique and makes it stand out from all the other vst plugins i have.