The Official Sequential/Oberheim Forum
SEQUENTIAL/DSI => OB-6 => Topic started by: LPF83 on June 22, 2020, 03:56:51 PM
-
With the release of Synapse's OB-Xa clone today, I figured it wouldn't be long until the topic came up here, and comparisons to hardware synths drawn. Arturia's recent offering (OB-Xa V) has gotten tepid reviews which pretty much reflect my thoughts on it.
I figured the best way to assess it was to compare it side-by-side with my OB-6. Overall for $100 I'd say it's well worth it, and almost surely the best vintage poly plug-in I have in my collection. I will say that in order for it to truly be in the same ball-park with the OB-6 side-by-side sonically, I have to put Kazrog True Iron (transformer saturation plugin) on it to add the warm and fullness, but when I do the sound is surprisingly competitive with hardware.
That said, not only will I be keeping my OB-6 keyboard, but may add a second desktop at some point (if I can ever decide between a second OB-6 and a Prophet 6 that is).
But yeah, for $100 plus a little external warmth added? Definitely recommended, and a great supplement to any Sequential DSI synths you may already own. Plus, it could be considered sort of a simulation of what it would be like if I could click a button to toggle between 8 and 16 voices on my OB-6 :)
One nice thing is that they didn't go nuts with features and add a bunch of things that you'd never find on a vintage Oberheim that dramatically diminish the character of the instrument. Interface is spartan, and much more tweakable IMO than OPX-II (which I also regard highly).
-
Despite the name and looks, the OB-6 uses the SEM based SVF & the OBs used the CEM3320. Arturia's SEM V would be a more kin comparison to the OB-6.
-
Despite the name and looks, the OB-6 uses the SEM based SVF & the OBs used the CEM3320. Arturia's SEM V would be a more kin comparison to the OB-6.
I might have clarified the criteria for comparison :)... I didn't expect that Obsession would emulate precisely characteristics of an OB-6 (it is not designed to), I was really looking at it from the perspective of "how well does the latest vintage Oberheim-inspired softsynth hold up against the latest Oberheim-inspired hardware synth".
From that perspective, to my ears, it sounds more like the OB-6 than Arturia's SEM V does (assuming one doesn't mind to enhance the sound slightly with a saturation plug-in).
-
The raw osc saw and square shapes on Obsession and the OB-6 can sound very very similar. Things diverge pretty quickly from there, as you'd expect, given software, hardware, SEM vs CEM, osc shapes etc etc etc. But, that was really encouraging to me and yet didn't surprise me given what I'd heard of Obsession.
There's a small amount of overlap between them. Honestly, they make good companions. There's more overlap in other ways with bx_oberhausen on the filter.
A $100 synth won't replace the OB-6. At least not yet! I'm very curious to know how it'll stack up to the B. OB-Xa when that hardware finally gets released. Will it be 90%+ of the way to the hardware?