GForce Sequential Prophet-5

[Seluvis]

And GForce did acknowledge my effects lock not working issue and they're working on it.

Exactly, GeForce have a reputation to uphold and will hopefully dial out the bugs.

[enduser282]

You may not be happy with the results, but I don't think what actually happened would be called marketing lingo.

Brand endorsement has only one purpose: marketing.

About the final product you must consider that any hw brand will worry about sw equivalent hacking their sales , not good about quality of the latter. Previous real world examples have shown exactly that. When UAD switched to endorsed ssl plugins , because ssl had the Duende dsp card at the time (and later Duende native) which was competitive to UAD ofc, UAD removed from their shop their 4K plugins which were better and replaced them with lower quality in order to have ssl written on the gui. The bus comp in particular was almost certainly ported from duende and thus it sounded exactly the same , unlike UAD's own 4K bus comp.

Funny thing is i've never heard anyone talking positively about these plugins back then , and certainly i've never seen anyone using them.

What's more, as i think of it , if GF made (hopefully) a Prophet VS offering the best they can do , it would probably be a badass vsti.
If sequential plan to make a Prophet VS themselves then there's conflict of interest , if everyone finds the sw just fine then why spend more on the HW?

[beely]

When UAD switched to endorsed ssl plugins , *edit for brevity* UAD removed from their shop their 4K plugins which were better and replaced them with lower quality in order to have ssl written on the gui. The bus comp in particular was almost certainly ported from duende and thus it sounded exactly the same , unlike UAD's own 4K bus comp.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. I can tell you exactly what happened (I was there at the time, and owned the plugins) but your "almost certainly ported from duende" is just plain wrong.

In order to get the SSL licensing deal and brand endorsement, SSL analysed both UA's 4K plugins. They determined that (from what I recall) it was mostly to spec except there was one aspect of one band eq curve that was slightly incorrect, and UA tweaked that to SSL's spec. The UI faceplate changed, and the SSL logo was added. The buss comp got *no DSP changes at all*, just the UI change, and the SSL logo.

And for those changes, UA wanted $50 each to "upgrade" to the versions with the SSL logo - the most expensive minor UI tweak I've seen to date. There was some outrage at the time (including from me) by this, where UA were basically changing end users to cover the cost of the SSL licensing deal to essentially have SSL branding on the plugins they already had.

The 4K were removed from *sale*, but remained on the platform for people that owned them, and the SSL versions became the official product (all they were were essentially the same plugins UA had modelled, with that one tweak, with graphic updates).

In no way were the UA 4K, or "upgraded" SSL plugins, the same plugins as the Duende plugin. SSL's own native ChannelStrip plugin comes from the Duende line, and is quite different from UA's 4K/SSL channel strips.

In no way were the UA plugins "replaced by lower quality versions".

Funny thing is i've never heard anyone talking positively about these plugins back then , and certainly i've never seen anyone using them.

?? Well I, and many others, were buying and using them, but because of UAD processing power limitations, few people could run a whole mix through individual channel strips, so we had to use them sparingly. Lots of UAD users really liked them, but then for a long time there was also quite a lot of fanboying in that community, partly because using those plugins was exclusive, you had to own the hardware to use them, but also partly because in those days, UA were really the only game in town when it came to analog modelling classic studio hardware - it took other companies some years to catch on, and catch up.

End of digression.

[Korg Supporter]

I compared the Multi/Poly with the GForce plugin today. I find that for the most part, the Multi/Poly (starting with the Pro(n) template) can be very close (Yes, even the filter FM) and uses slightly less CPU. You need to set the filter cutoff to 121 and remove the filter frequency drift to match the harmonics with the Prophet plugin. The only thing that sounds significantly different is combining the xmod with oscillator sync (which is cleaner than the Prophet's but close enough). I find the combination to be musically and sonically more interesting at times in M/P than Prophet-5. The way the filter resonance responds to sync/PWM is a bit different in M/P. Compared to the GForce plugin, the multi/poly's Pro filter has its resonance vibrating more intensely with oscillator sync sweeps, but not as much for PWM. And if you want the self-oscillation to match the oscillator levels in M/P, bring the filter resonance knob to around 70.

[enduser282]

When UAD switched to endorsed ssl plugins , *edit for brevity* UAD removed from their shop their 4K plugins which were better and replaced them with lower quality in order to have ssl written on the gui. The bus comp in particular was almost certainly ported from duende and thus it sounded exactly the same , unlike UAD's own 4K bus comp.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. I can tell you exactly what happened (I was there at the time, and owned the plugins) but your "almost certainly ported from duende" is just plain wrong.

In order to get the SSL licensing deal and brand endorsement, SSL analysed both UA's 4K plugins. They determined that (from what I recall) it was mostly to spec except there was one aspect of one band eq curve that was slightly incorrect, and UA tweaked that to SSL's spec. The UI faceplate changed, and the SSL logo was added. The buss comp got *no DSP changes at all*, just the UI change, and the SSL logo.

And for those changes, UA wanted $50 each to "upgrade" to the versions with the SSL logo - the most expensive minor UI tweak I've seen to date. There was some outrage at the time (including from me) by this, where UA were basically changing end users to cover the cost of the SSL licensing deal to essentially have SSL branding on the plugins they already had.

The 4K were removed from *sale*, but remained on the platform for people that owned them, and the SSL versions became the official product (all they were were essentially the same plugins UA had modelled, with that one tweak, with graphic updates).

In no way were the UA 4K, or "upgraded" SSL plugins, the same plugins as the Duende plugin. SSL's own native ChannelStrip plugin comes from the Duende line, and is quite different from UA's 4K/SSL channel strips.

In no way were the UA plugins "replaced by lower quality versions".

Not nonsense at all and shows that marketing is above quality , both plugins were different plugins from the previous 4K while UAD ofc never admitted that , they said they were the same which is to be expected. However if you can't hear the difference you should probably let others mix your music , and yes new uad bus comp was identical to the Duende one , purely a coincidence i'm sure.

Also they were not heavy on dsp usage , get your facts straight if you want to be taken seriously , like the 1st 88rs channel strip you could have a lot of instances (60 or more in a quad), 1st heavy cs plugin was the API vision console with the preamp section which was newly introduced feature in cs plugins.

You think big brands give their logo which is their precious trademark & selling point like that you're naive, likewise when Roland launched their own sw they cancelled their partnership with uad , brand name comes first and foremost.

[nusound mind]

I'd be curious to see a comparison vid b/t GForce, U-he, Acustica, Softube & Arturia just to settle the differences b/t all the prophet softsynths once and for all.

I have none of them myself but I am hopeful to see if GForce pumps out a bunch of sequentials like they did with Oberheim. Or a V-Station since they did a Bass station.

My criteria with emulations has always been do I like the sound, not how meticulously accurate is it to the original. In that sense I like how GForce expands the sonic possibilities of what their emulations can do beyond the originals in a tasteful way.

[zvenx]

I'd be curious to see a comparison vid b/t GForce, U-he, Acustica, Softube & Arturia just to settle the differences b/t all the prophet softsynths once and for all.

....

For me this is meaningless unless an actual hardware Prophet 5 is thrown in the mix..
Gforce went for the most accurate, not the best sounding per se.
rsp

[Uncle E]

You think big brands give their logo which is their precious trademark & selling point like that you're naive

It seems like Sequential gave GForce some inside information on the inner workings. I don't think that was the case with UA, SSL, and Roland, but that's OT, anyway.

[nusound mind]

Of course have the hardware in there too, I should've specified I guess, but thought that'd be taken for granted.

That said, I wouldn't be listening for which one is the most accurate to the hardware I'd be listening for which emu I personally like the sound of best.

I suppose people have different goals but pers. sp. I don't overly care if an emulation sounds like the original, to me it's more how much do I like it to use in tracks. Softube for example is highly regarded as accurate by many apparently but I have a few of them and they've never made the cut when I audition them.

GForce synths sound great to me, so i don't exclude that accuracy *and* best sound can both be the case.

[Uncle E]

I'd be curious to see a comparison vid b/t GForce, U-he, Acustica, Softube & Arturia just to settle the differences b/t all the prophet softsynths once and for all.

You can't do 1:1 comparisons because the Model 80 is calibrated differently. The tester would need to match them by analysis and/or ear.

[IvyBirds]

I'd be curious to see a comparison vid b/t GForce, U-he, Acustica, Softube & Arturia just to settle the differences b/t all the prophet softsynths once and for all.

....

For me this is meaningless unless an actual hardware Prophet 5 is thrown in the mix..
Gforce went for the most accurate, not the best sounding per se.
rsp

It would be even more meaningless with a single Prophet 5 as even in hardware they vary in sound from unit to unit, not to mention there are 4 different revisions of the hardware

Beyond that of course you are now talking about 45+ year old electronics. Dave Smith himself said many times that these units were never designed or expected to last for 40 or 50 years. All of them that you could make such demos with have been repaired at some point and have had components swapped out. Meaning it would be impossible to compare how any plugin sounds like any given hardware example when it rolled off the line at the factory in the late 1970s or early 1980s