I'm curious what you guys and girls think about why there are so few P12 owners/players out there? (at least relative to other expensive polys). It might not be accurate, but I get that feeling based on number of articles, forum posts, for sale listings, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love my P12 and find it easy to use, but it does seem underrepresented in the synth community...
I think the reason is twofold:
#1 hobbyists are afraid of its digital sound generation and so the 'public image' of it is rather negative, not to mention there isn't a whole lot of content or emphasis on the amazing its (unique to modern) synthesizers that the silent majority know about
#2 the people who know what this synthesizer is capable of are generally silent (myself included, until now), but realize how insanely powerful it is and have an EXTREMELY positive outlook on it
In my opinion, one reason is the large number of Prophet 12 videos that terribly misrepresent its character. There are so many YouTube demos that dwell exclusively on its caustic digital side, to the exclusion of its other abilities. I fell for this misrepresentation myself, until I was finally able to borrow one. The fact is, the P12 has a wonderful warmth to it, and it's not at all hard to find it, but it's not what seems to fascinate many owners. It's a shame, because I found the instrument to be very strong in the domain of traditional analog sound, in addition to all the rest.
The very first moment that the Prophet 12 was demonstrated I was awestruck. Dave Smith literally built a modern synthesizer based around all of the principles I've come to know and understand after playing around with a host of synthesizers over the years. This is how I figured out it wasn't an "overpriced turd" as some have called it.
#1 Analog filters: they are more important than analog oscillators, especially considering I've not heard a good resonance from any software or digital hardware. This is a rather 'touchy' subject for most but it's true.
The uniqueness of analog oscillators is practically discarded with most 80's and modern analog synths--this would be: a) impure waveforms due to primitive circuitry (i.e. an imperfect square that more resembles a hacked sawtooth), b) pitch variance across the oscillators, which DCOs negate! Any subtle aurally microscopic differences won't be discernible by 99% of those who claim they can hear a difference.
#2 Voice cycling: a synthesizer needs to cycle its (independent) voices to take advantage of a non-global portamento and pitch variance. Few (if any!) modern synthesizers capitalize on this...
#3 Independent portamento: I became obsessed with the Roland Jupiter-4's independent portamento (where each last voice will respond differently to the last note), and was sorely disappointed when virtually nothing does this as a 'feature'. It's far more interesting to listen to.
#4 Analog slop: you want each voice (or at least the option!) to detune one voice from another, otherwise with a perfectly tuned synthesizer or DCOs you lose quite a lot of dynamic.
#5 Flexible LFOs: it's really to have an LFO which can be extremely fast or slow, especially if you want to play with crude FM synthesis--there's no reason to limit it to being very slow
I suppose in lieu of all of that, this is (to me) this is practically a spiritual successor to the Roland Jupiter-4. I can set a random arpeggio with voice cycling and independent portamento and it's quite surreal how it feels almost the same. And then with four LFOs, I can punch in parameters to get a very convincing Vox Humana like from my Polymoog--and then take it a step further with the fourth LFO and stack feature.
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