The New Sequential Prophet-5 and Prophet-10

[jg666]

Glad I’m not the only one with a synth obsession:)

[LPF83]

Prophet 5 or Prophet 10?  That's the question many folks here will wonder.   With only an $800 difference for twice the voices, it's a bargain right?  Maybe.

What I would recommend to anyone is to try a soft synth with adjustable voice count, and do some extensive playing with the types of sounds you plan to work with.  I did this using Repro5 by U-He with pad sounds with long release times.

Without question, the right answer for me was "5 voices wins".   The issue is when I put it on 8 voices, one or two notes tend to hang around a little too long on chord changes, which leads to a slightly muddy off key sound.  This would be even worse on a true analog with looser tuning.   With 5 voices the note stealing actually improved the sound of the playing by making sure the least relevant note always fell out of the queue.  This is also the same limitation most vintage music made with a Prophet was subject to.

Your mileage may vary, but I highly recommend doing some experimentation before deciding.

Actually the 6 voices of the P6/OB-6 are ideal for my playing style, but it wouldn't be an authentic Prophet-5 with a sixth note!   More voices may be better for your particular needs, but sometimes less is more.  Now if someone tells me the P10 is going to have user-defined voice counts as a feature, then I'm all in on a P10.  Otherwise it will be a P5 for me.

[LoboLives]

Just showed my mom the Prophet 5 and she wept....cause my Dad had an original he used to record some of his tracks in the 80s. Ugh....now I feel an obligation...otherwise he might come back and haunt my ass.

[Shaw]

Just showed my mom the Prophet 5 and she wept....cause my Dad had an original he used to record some of his tracks in the 80s. Ugh....now I feel an obligation...otherwise he might come back and haunt my ass.

Woah... that could be the best reason I’ve ever heard to buy a piece of music gear.  Yeah... you’re obligated.  No doubt.

[jdt9517]

Prophet 5 or Prophet 10?  That's the question many folks here will wonder.   

Prophet 5 for me.  Why?  Becuase it has the Prophet-5 label.   

[kev]

What I would recommend to anyone is to try a soft synth with adjustable voice count, and do some extensive playing with the types of sounds you plan to work with.  I did this using Repro5 by U-He with pad sounds with long release times.

Thank you for the suggestion! I have been going back and forth on which one to order and did just this with repro-5. And for my playing style I think I prefer more voices. And yet, once I turned on the effects and tried to be creative to overcome the voice stealing, I almost preferred the outcome. As if I was being forced to be more creative.

I also read somewhere that there was discussion to be able to limit the voice count to 5 on the p10. I'm not sure if that means user definable voice count or just an option for 5 or 10 but that does seem like a possible option in the future.

I am also partial to the prophet~5 badging so that's something I'd have to get over    I have to admit though, it's the fear of missing out that's driving me most to the P10 over the 5. I know that's not a good reason tho.

So yeah, thank you for the suggestion but I'm nowhere closer to a decision haha. I went for the P10, then changed my order to a P5, and want to think really hard again before I bug my dealer to switch it back to a P10. If I could buy a prophet 5 and have the option to upgrade down the road to 10 voices, it would be a no brainer.

[Sacred Synthesis]

Just showed my mom the Prophet 5 and she wept....cause my Dad had an original he used to record some of his tracks in the 80s. Ugh....now I feel an obligation...otherwise he might come back and haunt my ass.

Yeah, you better get the Prophet 5 for his sake, because that would be a terrible place to haunt. 

[LoboLives]

Just showed my mom the Prophet 5 and she wept....cause my Dad had an original he used to record some of his tracks in the 80s. Ugh....now I feel an obligation...otherwise he might come back and haunt my ass.

Yeah, you better get the Prophet 5 for his sake, because that would be a terrible place to haunt. 

I would never be able to play sitting down again...it be reverse Robert Fripp Syndrome.

[Pym]

Unless you have a 'Prophet 5 mode' where you can just treat it like a Prophet 5. We're discussing how we could do this easily, so not for sure yet but it's being discussed

Prophet 5 or Prophet 10?  That's the question many folks here will wonder.   With only an $800 difference for twice the voices, it's a bargain right?  Maybe.

What I would recommend to anyone is to try a soft synth with adjustable voice count, and do some extensive playing with the types of sounds you plan to work with.  I did this using Repro5 by U-He with pad sounds with long release times.

Without question, the right answer for me was "5 voices wins".   The issue is when I put it on 8 voices, one or two notes tend to hang around a little too long on chord changes, which leads to a slightly muddy off key sound.  This would be even worse on a true analog with looser tuning.   With 5 voices the note stealing actually improved the sound of the playing by making sure the least relevant note always fell out of the queue.  This is also the same limitation most vintage music made with a Prophet was subject to.

Your mileage may vary, but I highly recommend doing some experimentation before deciding.

Actually the 6 voices of the P6/OB-6 are ideal for my playing style, but it wouldn't be an authentic Prophet-5 with a sixth note!   More voices may be better for your particular needs, but sometimes less is more.  Now if someone tells me the P10 is going to have user-defined voice counts as a feature, then I'm all in on a P10.  Otherwise it will be a P5 for me.

[Quatschmacher]

Unless you have a 'Prophet 5 mode' where you can just treat it like a Prophet 5. We're discussing how we could do this easily, so not for sure yet but it's being discussed

Prophet 5 or Prophet 10?  That's the question many folks here will wonder.   With only an $800 difference for twice the voices, it's a bargain right?  Maybe.

What I would recommend to anyone is to try a soft synth with adjustable voice count, and do some extensive playing with the types of sounds you plan to work with.  I did this using Repro5 by U-He with pad sounds with long release times.

Without question, the right answer for me was "5 voices wins".   The issue is when I put it on 8 voices, one or two notes tend to hang around a little too long on chord changes, which leads to a slightly muddy off key sound.  This would be even worse on a true analog with looser tuning.   With 5 voices the note stealing actually improved the sound of the playing by making sure the least relevant note always fell out of the queue.  This is also the same limitation most vintage music made with a Prophet was subject to.

Your mileage may vary, but I highly recommend doing some experimentation before deciding.

Actually the 6 voices of the P6/OB-6 are ideal for my playing style, but it wouldn't be an authentic Prophet-5 with a sixth note!   More voices may be better for your particular needs, but sometimes less is more.  Now if someone tells me the P10 is going to have user-defined voice counts as a feature, then I'm all in on a P10.  Otherwise it will be a P5 for me.

It would be really cool if the voice count were user definable, even if only between 5 and 10 (so 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10) as opposed to simply a binary choice of 5 or 10. Would be really cool if it were possible for it to be a per-patch option as opposed to global too. Obviously you’ll know better than me what is actually possible within the structure of the code.

 

[LPF83]

Unless you have a 'Prophet 5 mode' where you can just treat it like a Prophet 5. We're discussing how we could do this easily, so not for sure yet but it's being discussed

Prophet 5 or Prophet 10?  That's the question many folks here will wonder.   With only an $800 difference for twice the voices, it's a bargain right?  Maybe.

What I would recommend to anyone is to try a soft synth with adjustable voice count, and do some extensive playing with the types of sounds you plan to work with.  I did this using Repro5 by U-He with pad sounds with long release times.

Without question, the right answer for me was "5 voices wins".   The issue is when I put it on 8 voices, one or two notes tend to hang around a little too long on chord changes, which leads to a slightly muddy off key sound.  This would be even worse on a true analog with looser tuning.   With 5 voices the note stealing actually improved the sound of the playing by making sure the least relevant note always fell out of the queue.  This is also the same limitation most vintage music made with a Prophet was subject to.

Your mileage may vary, but I highly recommend doing some experimentation before deciding.

Actually the 6 voices of the P6/OB-6 are ideal for my playing style, but it wouldn't be an authentic Prophet-5 with a sixth note!   More voices may be better for your particular needs, but sometimes less is more.  Now if someone tells me the P10 is going to have user-defined voice counts as a feature, then I'm all in on a P10.  Otherwise it will be a P5 for me.

This is what I meant by "user-defined voice count" on the P10 (I was thinking more of being able to set the voice count similar to setting unison voices than just switch between 5 and 10, but even just a toggle between P5/P10 mode would be lovely).  I hope this particular feature is given early consideration, because knowing whether it will be there or not could have a big impact on which unit a buyer decides to purchase. 

[LPF83]

Unless you have a 'Prophet 5 mode' where you can just treat it like a Prophet 5. We're discussing how we could do this easily, so not for sure yet but it's being discussed

Prophet 5 or Prophet 10?  That's the question many folks here will wonder.   With only an $800 difference for twice the voices, it's a bargain right?  Maybe.

What I would recommend to anyone is to try a soft synth with adjustable voice count, and do some extensive playing with the types of sounds you plan to work with.  I did this using Repro5 by U-He with pad sounds with long release times.

Without question, the right answer for me was "5 voices wins".   The issue is when I put it on 8 voices, one or two notes tend to hang around a little too long on chord changes, which leads to a slightly muddy off key sound.  This would be even worse on a true analog with looser tuning.   With 5 voices the note stealing actually improved the sound of the playing by making sure the least relevant note always fell out of the queue.  This is also the same limitation most vintage music made with a Prophet was subject to.

Your mileage may vary, but I highly recommend doing some experimentation before deciding.

Actually the 6 voices of the P6/OB-6 are ideal for my playing style, but it wouldn't be an authentic Prophet-5 with a sixth note!   More voices may be better for your particular needs, but sometimes less is more.  Now if someone tells me the P10 is going to have user-defined voice counts as a feature, then I'm all in on a P10.  Otherwise it will be a P5 for me.

It would be really cool if the voice count were user definable, even if only between 5 and 10 (so 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10) as opposed to simply a binary choice of 5 or 10. Would be really cool if it were possible for it to be a per-patch option as opposed to global too. Obviously you’ll know better than me what is actually possible within the structure of the code.

I for one would vote in favor of a global setting on the synth itself for this, because it completely changes workflow and puts the voice count setting in a "hard-to-know" place.  If I sit down and make a conscience effort to put the synth in 5 voice mode, I don't want changing a patch to put it in another mode.  Part of the allure of the P5 (and P6 and OB6) is not having too many parameters buried behind menus or guessing at what the params are.

[LPF83]

I'm curious, why only 200 user/200 factory patches on the P5/10?  Since memory space is pretty much a non issue, and the display has three digits like the P6/OB6, I'd rather have the same number of patch slots.  Even if only 200 factory patches are created, I wouldn't mind having the other 800 slots for user patches, since many sound designers publish their sets as banks of 100.  It allows easy swapping of banks without too much effort.

[creativespiral]

Nice to hear that a 5-voice mode for the P10 is being discussed!       

Carson confirmed on GS that the voice allocation method for the New P5/10 Rev4 is per-key type of allocation, just like the vintage classics... I was wondering about that - that's a nice attention to detail to nail the classic character!, as round robin has less repeatable performance when playing chords or melodies... it should be more noticeable as you crank up the Vintage Knob too...  a given chord progression will use the same voices-per-key each time you play it.   

When I was researching classic voice variance this is one of the things I tried to document on each synth....  But I never tested exactly how the voice-stealing / prioritization works with the "per key" method on P5.      For instance:  if say C4 and F4 are normally assigned to voice 1, and you play C4 and hold, then hit F4, how does it decide the voice that F4 will get?   Is that a sort of round robin choice, or does each key have a set primary, secondary, tertiary, etc.. voice priority?   And then after the keys are released, if you hit F4 alone, will it play with its originally assigned voice number, or will it have a new primary voice based on the previous voice stealing?   

My instinct is that probably every voice has a priority list of voices in order? (ie: C4: 1,2,3,4,5  C#4: 2,3,4,5,1), but I was wondering about that... if anyone can shed some light? 

[timbo74]

Will be great when the review from Nick batt appears and then it will be just a matter of trying one out in store and deciding between 5 or 10 voices if everything works out. 
Reading the manual it appears the LFO is true to the original and free running.
If that's the case, could the LFO frequency knob have an alternate job of a LFO clock divisions function when receiving midi clock set from the global settings with a firmware update? (No need to print anything extra on the panel, Just turn the frequency knob and listen for the clocked LFO)
Don't want to go down the rabbit hole of complexity as I guess that's the beauty of the Prophet 5/10 in it's original form.
At least the aesthetics of the synth would not be affected.
Just my 2 cents worth. 

[Christopher]

I for one would vote in favor of a global setting on the synth itself for this, because it completely changes workflow and puts the voice count setting in a "hard-to-know" place.  If I sit down and make a conscience effort to put the synth in 5 voice mode, I don't want changing a patch to put it in another mode.  Part of the allure of the P5 (and P6 and OB6) is not having too many parameters buried behind menus or guessing at what the params are.

I have a different take on this and would like to make the case for storing the voice limit on a per patch basis.
Different patches require different playing styles. In fact, when I create a patch, I usually have a certain way of playing in mind. Whether I would want the release phase of a note to blend into subsequent notes or not, depends entirely on the context of a patch and its function in a piece of music.
I think this is conceptually very similar to the Key Priority Modes (Unison), which I believe are stored on a per patch basis as well.

[LPF83]

I for one would vote in favor of a global setting on the synth itself for this, because it completely changes workflow and puts the voice count setting in a "hard-to-know" place.  If I sit down and make a conscience effort to put the synth in 5 voice mode, I don't want changing a patch to put it in another mode.  Part of the allure of the P5 (and P6 and OB6) is not having too many parameters buried behind menus or guessing at what the params are.

I have a different take on this and would like to make the case for storing the voice limit on a per patch basis.
Different patches require different playing styles. In fact, when I create a patch, I usually have a certain way of playing in mind. Whether I would want the release phase of a note to blend into subsequent notes or not, depends entirely on the context of a patch and its function in a piece of music.
I think this is conceptually very similar to the Key Priority Modes (Unison), which I believe are stored on a per patch basis as well.

I can totally see things from that perspective as well, I've just never owned a hardware synth that works that way, so to me it would feel unnatural to have this stored with the patch (contrasting that with Unison voices which are universally stored with patch).  I have certainly seen the method you described on virtual instruments, but in those cases loading a different preset might mean utilizing an entirely different synthesis engine, in which case patch changes represent a very different workflow.   So, accurately or not, in my mind I would tend to categorize voice-count as global as the "vintage hardware-synth like" method, and voice-count as patch parameter as the "virtual instrument-like" method.

Another way of looking at it:   If a creator of a Prophet 5 Rev 4 can write a patch that, when loaded, is always limited to exactly three voices, then the Rev 4 experience is now dramatically different than the original synth on which it is designed to faithfully replicate.

[Pym]

Things like this are exactly why we won't commit to adding features. With a limited UI, hidden features are a huge tradeoff. You get to states where some users send emails to support going "Why the hell is it acting like this? Is it a bug?" and so we end up spending a non-trivial amount of time explaining to people what is going on. Have to be careful

I for one would vote in favor of a global setting on the synth itself for this, because it completely changes workflow and puts the voice count setting in a "hard-to-know" place.  If I sit down and make a conscience effort to put the synth in 5 voice mode, I don't want changing a patch to put it in another mode.  Part of the allure of the P5 (and P6 and OB6) is not having too many parameters buried behind menus or guessing at what the params are.

I have a different take on this and would like to make the case for storing the voice limit on a per patch basis.
Different patches require different playing styles. In fact, when I create a patch, I usually have a certain way of playing in mind. Whether I would want the release phase of a note to blend into subsequent notes or not, depends entirely on the context of a patch and its function in a piece of music.
I think this is conceptually very similar to the Key Priority Modes (Unison), which I believe are stored on a per patch basis as well.

I can totally see things from that perspective as well, I've just never owned a hardware synth that works that way, so to me it would feel unnatural to have this stored with the patch (contrasting that with Unison voices which are universally stored with patch).  I have certainly seen the method you described on virtual instruments, but in those cases loading a different preset might mean utilizing an entirely different synthesis engine, in which case patch changes represent a very different workflow.   So, accurately or not, in my mind I would tend to categorize voice-count as global as the "vintage hardware-synth like" method, and voice-count as patch parameter as the "virtual instrument-like" method.

Another way of looking at it:   If a creator of a Prophet 5 Rev 4 can write a patch that, when loaded, is always limited to exactly three voices, then the Rev 4 experience is now dramatically different than the original synth on which it is designed to faithfully replicate.

[LPF83]

Things like this are exactly why we won't commit to adding features. With a limited UI, hidden features are a huge tradeoff. You get to states where some users send emails to support going "Why the hell is it acting like this? Is it a bug?" and so we end up spending a non-trivial amount of time explaining to people what is going on. Have to be careful

Exactly....and this is coming from the perspective of someone who has been writing software since the early 80s, so for every feature I try to imagine I look at things from not only the end-user benefit, but what it means to the big picture including support, maintainability, etc. and all of the anti-benefits that inevitably follow every benefit.

Not only do I think that voice-count stored per patch would lead to support nightmares, it also creates a bigger problem for sound designers that are working with a Prophet-10.  They are either faced with making everything a 5 voice patch, or left guessing what a 8-voice P10 patch behaves like when played on a P5 and that just seems like an unnecessary nightmare for me.  Yes its true that a sound designer might write a patch on a P10 that doesn't play the same on a P5, but the inverse is true unless the P10 can be globally set to 5 voices for purposes of patch design.

... in terms of limited UI, an add-on programmer box would be an awesome way to add more features to the P5/P10 and another revenue opportunity for Sequential.

[Sacred Synthesis]

I'd be very interested to hear an audio comparison between the Prophet-6 and the new Prophet-5/10, with each of them exerting their old school analog best.

I bet Starsky Carr is setting up his lighting as we speak

Not Starsky Carr, but at least something of a comparison of functions between the Prophet-6 and the Prophet 5/10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYjxaZ3zctI