Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

kaz uno wrote:that's what i meant, maybe that makes a little more sense to the punk

Let's hope you're right. I'd love to see more analog synths hitting the market in this price range!

JSRockit wrote:

supermel74 wrote:

StepLogik wrote:I wonder if the guys at Roland are going "damn, we need to make an analog polysynth now!"

I doubt it. I'm sure $2000 workstations are still outselling $2000 analog polys 10 to 1

and are probably cheaper to manufactuer as well.

No doubt. I've said it before, the big 3 probably couldn't make a real analog if they wanted. Its an art, and a bunch of DSP firmware programmers are going to have a mighty damn hard time with RC networks, ground planes, and finicky control voltages.

well, I think we can more plausibly hope for something paralell from moog. Realistically I'd expect a much higher price, though

jko wrote:well, I think we can more plausibly hope for something paralell from moog. Realistically I'd expect a much higher price, though

for sure! a 6 or 8 voice polyphonic moog would probably cruise well past the $3k range. pure speculation, but based on the pricing of the LP and Voyager, $3k seems almost cheap for a moog poly.

Yes, any new Moog polysynth is going to push the $5K mark, even a 4-voice poly. Moog does things a certain way and uses pricey components. I don't see them doing the synth-on-a-chip solution - more of a semi-discreete approach like in the Sunsyn so that means a lot more $$$ when you add a keyboard, controllers and the typical Moog accruetraments.

A new Prophet for $2K is a miracle of sorts. Consider all the the new features and low price a compensator for the slight loss in sonic HUGEness and aesthetic Sexy (compared to original P5) and i say that's a pretty good trade-off.
In 1978 dollars, if adjusted for inflation a new Prophet-5 would easily be over $7K in todays change.

Compared to the PEK: twice as many voices, cheaper, and all analog. I love it.
The analog side of the Evolver is what I use most in my desktop version.

I also like the fact that the P08 is smaller than the PEK, and the knobs are spaced further apart:

shaft9000 wrote:...for the slight loss in sonic HUGEness and aesthetic Sexy (compared to original P5)...

The aesthetics are purely a matter of personal opinions, of course. However, I'm not sure anyone can say that the P'08 lacks anything sound-wise compared to the P5. Inarguably, there are a lot of things the P'08 can do that the P5 can't. That said, I don't believe the *quality* of the raw sound (osc & filters) of the P'08 has yet been compared to any of the various vintage revs of P5.

I don't own a P5, and didn't have access to one while I had the P'08 proto. I DO own a very cherry rev 5 OB8, however, and played the two machines side by side quite a bit. The bottom line is that as much as I love my OB8 (you'd have to pry it from my cold dead fingers, or offer an insane amount of money), if you put me on a desert island (WITH power!), and told me I could have only one of the two, I'd choose the P'08 without hesitation.

Why? Sound quality-wise, my personal evaluation is that the two are essentially identical. In blind listening tests my son and I did, you literally could not tell the difference between the two (no joke) with a basic identical patch on both machines. I was honestly shocked how close they were. Now, as you start to turn up the Filter Resonance in a patch, the sound of the two machines starts to differ significantly. The OB8 has great, wet, self-oscillating resonance on its 2 pole filter, while the res on its 4 pole filter is rather anemic. On the P'08, the situation is reversed. Features-wise, the P'08 generally has it all over the OB8, though there are some cool (albeit esoteric) features on the OB8 "Page 2" functions that aren't found on the P'08.

Just my opinion, but the sound of the P'08 isn't just a "well, it's OK for a modern synth" kind of thing. It bats with the big boys from years gone by. Plus it's feature set is generally much better, and boy, does it ever stay in tune better than my OB8! To be clear, while I did a lot of sound programming for the presets of the P'08, I'm not a DSI employee, and I don't make a penny if you buy a P'08. Those are my honest opinions.

shaft9000 wrote:if adjusted for inflation a new Prophet-5 would easily be over $7K in todays change.

I'd say significantly higher than that. If you just rough it out at $5k inflated at an average of 3% per year for 30 years, you get over $12k.

shaft9000 wrote:Consider all the the new features and low price a compensator for the slight loss in sonic HUGEness and aesthetic Sexy (compared to original P5) and i say that's a pretty good trade-off.

Actually Dave Smith is quoted as saying that the 08 has a 'bigger' sound than the 5. I'm inclined to trust him on this one.

I do agree that the P5 is damn sexy though!

Ski wrote:That said, I don't believe the *quality* of the raw sound (osc & filters) of the P'08 has yet been compared to any of the various vintage revs of P5.

I'll back you up a little bit here, Ski, because as I have mentioned elsewhere on this forum and KSS (perhaps on the AH list, too) that I DID compare the Evolver voice to a very nice condition Pro One voice. Now, keeping in mind that this is an Evolver with all of its digital overhead, I thought once a sound was dialed in they sounded nearly identical. Actually, I also compared the mythical CEM3340/CEM3320 voice and filter combo with a CEM3396 and those sounded identical, too - once the sound was dialed in.

You have to account for the architectures, the way the circuitry interacts with itself, the parameter ranges and such while creating a patch. I don't think it's reasonable to expect one architecture to match precisely the nuances of another.

Anyway, trying to make a long story short - no one could tell when I put the tests up for comparison. If anything, the pure analog path of the P'08 can only enhance what I experienced making this test and I would bet a finger that once a patch is dialed in, NO ONE will tell a CEM Prophet from a P'08.

I fully expect Clusterchord to come in here and argue that the SSM Prophets are a different story altogether, which on paper sounds reasonable. However recently I've read from some folk who claimed to have compared the two that the differences are subtle at best - and DS claimed the same thing recently. I have to find that to recall what he said, but I seem to recall DS said he preferred the sound of the CEM versions over the SSM versions, too.

All very good points, and quite interesting to hear how the Evo and Pro One compared. The differences in many (but not all) of these machine's raw sound is subtle. There are also, of course, subtle or not-so-subtle differences in the way they react when played. Analog synth lovers are getting worse than guitar lovers about these differences!

has anyone bought one yet?

amni wrote:has anyone bought one yet?

slinkyjr..carbon111...others?

sizzlemeister wrote:I fully expect Clusterchord to come in here and argue that the SSM Prophets are a different story altogether, which on paper sounds reasonable. However recently I've read from some folk who claimed to have compared the two that the differences are subtle at best - and DS claimed the same thing recently. I have to find that to recall what he said, but I seem to recall DS said he preferred the sound of the CEM versions over the SSM versions, too.

They weren't subtle to me. They're entirely different chip sets. I'd be suprised if people -couldn't- tell the difference between simple detuned saws with slow, wide filter sweeps.

I would enjoy owning another P5 Rev 2 but never another 3+.

Just to say how things are going, the Oberheim SEM is larger-sounding than the Pro One. Poly SEMs were the shiznit.

Anyhoo, more power to Dave for doing the nearly unimaginable!

there was a spot of talk last week about "charged-cap" components helping the new synth sound quite a bit more as if it had vco's. Could anyone with better electronics knowledge than myself possibly help explain the physics of how this comes about ? :hippy2: :sad4:

crystalmsc wrote:

amni wrote:has anyone bought one yet?

slinkyjr..carbon111...others?

so where are the YouTubes