All versions of the song use the same MIDI files, so the parts are identical. Only the solos are performed live, per track. A bit of EQ, and a touch of delay sometimes, but these recordings are meant to show the synth off in the wild.
https://soundcloud.com/user-183191566/sets
Curious as the composer/performer/producer, what's your take on the differences on the Prophet 5 vs the Prophet 6?
My P6 lives in Berlin, and the P5 belongs to my girlfriend in California, so the two synths are never in the same room. I'd love to have them side by side someday, instead of two months and two airplanes apart.
Anyway, to answer... the P5 is always immediate and easy for me, and gorgeous. If I know the sort of sound I'm needing - something basic like bass or a chordal pad, maybe - I can get close to it within a minute. And it has such a loose, living quality. Way back when I first had a P5, I always felt I could hear the wood and metal. I'm absolutely a fan of subjective experience when it comes to synths. The P5 is magic for me. It gives me a very certain feeling that transcends any interest in filter chips I might barely have. It sounds and feels vibrant in a track, it simply has Thang.
The P6 is much fussier - much cleaner. I went through a period of doing what I could to make it as much a P5 as I could... running it in mono into an analog chorus. I mean, that sounded amazing, but trying to make it be what it wasn't got old. I've picked up many tips from this forum and elsewhere and have gone back to the P6 with renewed interest and love. I do wish the oscillators could be blurred, this always strikes me, but the P6 is capable of beautiful sounds. Truly. "Different" than the P5. Sounds from a new future, perhaps.
I do a bit of reverse-engineering once in a while, using the P6 to recreate P5 patches or playing "match the patch" with my Pro One, which lives only feet apart from the P6. I can usually get a very close result, sometimes nailing it, minus that wavery blur in the oscs.
In the examples I posted on SC, the P5 and the Juno were the synths that captured the feel of the song with the least amount of fuss. Maybe because the song is itself from the 80s? Now that I'm back in Berlin, I want to go back to the track and re-do it with the P6, aiming for a blurrier sound. We'll see!