I was fortunate enough be able to go to a shop that had P5, OB6, P6, Moog One, and I forgot what other analog poly… all in the same room.
My choice would be P5. That’s the one that kept calling me back, in that room of analog polys.
None of those analog polys sound terrible, by any means - Jexus’ harsh comments on the OB6 notwithstanding. They all sound great.
It’s just that the P5’s sound had an extra something else. It’s not “warmth” - they’re all freaking “warm” as analogs. Some extra secret sauce in the sound. Hard core sound designer types find it limited - not much modulation options and stuff compared to, say Pro 3. To me, that doesn’t matter.
I went for the p5 instead of the ob6 in the end simply because of availability because ob6 is not available…
But I’m thinking it may have been luck to force me to get the pt5…
First impressions are it does sound beefy, and love the simplicity of it
Sequential now has 5 voice expansion card for the P5, to essentially turn it into a P10. And they have added bi-timbral, stack and split capability with the new OS.
Sequential has announced two major enhancements for the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 Rev 4 synthesizers. The first is an easy-to-install voice expansion card for the Prophet-5 that expands its polyphony to 10 voices, enabling it to benefit from the second enhancement — a new OS that adds bi-timbral, stack and split capability to 10-voice Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 synths.
With a ten-voice instrument and the new 2.0 OS, players can stack two different programs together for more powerful, complex sounds. Each program is allocated 5 voices of polyphony, allowing 5-note bi-timbral operation. Alternatively, players can split the keyboard into two separate performance zones, each with a different program. This allows for bi-timbral performance of bass and leads, or bass and pads, for example.
To use the new stack/split feature, Prophet-10/expanded Prophet-5 owners will need to upgrade to version 2.0 of the operating system. The OS upgrade is provided free of charge to Prophet owners and is available on Sequential’s website. The Prophet-5 voice expansion card is available directly from Sequential and includes instructions for installation.
“We’re excited to bring stack and split capability to 10-voice Prophets,” said Sequential founder Dave Smith. “It gives even more musical versatility to an already awesome-sounding instrument. Musicians are going to love the sound design possibilities of bi-timbral stacks. And players will be able to make good use of splits in live performance.”
Sequential’s CEO, David Gibbons had this to say about the enhancements: “There’s nothing more satisfying than making a legendary instrument even better than its original incarnation. Turning the Prophet-10 or an expanded Prophet-5 into a bi-timbral synth takes it to new places as an expressive instrument. That’s always been Sequential’s first priority: Putting great-sounding, expressive musical tools into the hands of musicians.”
The Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 Rev 4 reintroduced the music world to Sequential’s most famous and beloved instrument: the Prophet-5. The instruments revisit a landmark era in American analog synthesizer design and are an authentic and authoritative return to roots for the company.
Faithful to the original, the instruments feature five voices with two multi-waveform analog oscillators, resonant analog low-pass filters and amplifiers, and a filter and amplifier envelope per voice. Modulation is provided by a multi-waveshape LFO and Poly Mod, a ground-breaking modulation scheme for its time that allowed the filter envelope and oscillator B to be routed to a variety of destinations including filter cutoff frequency, oscillator A frequency, and oscillator A pulse width.
The Prophet-5 voice expansion card has a US MAP of $899 and is available directly from Sequential. It is compatible with both keyboard and desktop models of the Prophet-5.
Thanks to the expansion card, Prophet 5 owners will also be able to play this Bach piece (though it might be interesting to analyze if he actually used more than 5 voices at once at any point in the piece).
but does it come with a nameplate that says “Prophet 10”…?
they make no mention of it on the details, sales or installation pages. would be awesome to see. regardless, really exciting! I’m not 100% sure I need it polyphony-wise, but it’d be really cool to have it for the bi-timbral option.
I feel like this is the normal route: you save more by buying it all up front. you pay more by expanding later, but it’s good to have the option. the Rev 2 8-voice is $1649, 16-voice is $2149. the 8 voice expansion is $599. so you’re losing $100 there by expanding later.
so, I guess in relation… given that this voice expansion is $300 more than the Rev2 expansion, it’s good they didn’t charge even more for it. in other words, that the “expand later penalty” isn’t $150 or $200.
Yeah, I’d rather pay for the 5-voice up front, with the option of buying the expansion card, than pay up front for the 10 voice and gradually realize I never use more than 5 voices.
right. or if it’s a question of having to put it on a credit card and pay for it over time to afford the 10 voice. versus if you can afford the 5 voice outright, expand later and give the extra $100 to Sequential instead of your bank!
The lack of this was the one reason I didn’t get it months ago; mainly Split. The shops open in 1 minute and I was ready to pounce on the first one available. BUT, it’s still mono out . I’m going to back off and spend the day considering if I’m okay with both sounds coming out mixed, specifically where I’d want each sound going through a different effect. Especially where you want a modulating effect on just one of the sounds First world problems.
weird that they don’t allow you to save patch B of the stack, and force you to first save patch B on it’s own and then reload that back up into the stack to be saved as a completed patch… unnecessarily annoying but I’m sure it’s something they can patch up pun intended.
When i had stack mode on my Rev 2 i never used it much as i didnt know what would work. Matt says its just trial and error and messing around till you get something that works.
I worried about this before I bought mine,
it doesn’t bother me one bit after owning it, just add some fx after if you want stereo a effect plus it sounds more vintage in mono anyhow!