P5/10 Rev 4 VS Prophet 6

[MrSmith]

Im sure this is somewhere in this forum but im intrested in people who have/had both find the differences

I own a Prophet 6 and have a P10 on order but i spent all day yesterday with the P6 it sounds so good to me are the differences so big?

I find youtube comparisons pretty useless for judging sounds

Is it worth owning both or are they too similar?

Thanks in advance

[LPF83]

Im sure this is somewhere in this forum but im intrested in people who have/had both find the differences

I own a Prophet 6 and have a P10 on order but i spent all day yesterday with the P6 it sounds so good to me are the differences so big?

I find youtube comparisons pretty useless for judging sounds

Is it worth owning both or are they too similar?

Thanks in advance

I have both a P10 and a P6.  They are different instruments with a different sound and feature set, thus I'm keeping both.
If a fire or flood wiped out all my gear and I were starting from a clean slate with a insurance check in hand, I'd get a P10 first and a P6 second.

[MrSmith]

Thankyou for reply

I love cem vco synths, ive had the p10 on order for a few weeks but i had an unexpected day to myself yesterday playing with the p6 its such a beautiful sounding synth i couldnt part with it so i started having second thoughts

       

[A Thousand Eyes]

I've owned both, but not at the same time to compare them side-by-side. Off the top of my head, the P10 is more mid-rangy and the P6 is rounder. Although with the HPF on the P6, you can take out some bottom end if necessary, which is really the only reason I used the HPF. I like both LPFs in the P5/10 a bit more, but the P6 SSM-based LPF is great and doesn't lose bottom end with the resonance brought in.

For me, the two have too much overlap. I'd say the P5/10 have the edge in raw sound, but with the vintage knob finding its way over to the P6 and everything else it can do, I'd prefer the P6 out of any synth currently on the market if I only had a single synth in my possession.

[narkosys]

Both Starsky Carr and LooPop have made in depth videos comparing the two. 

[LPF83]

Both Starsky Carr and LooPop have made in depth videos comparing the two.

One comment about the Loopop video -- he only used sound clips that J3P0 created that were intentionally designed as sound alike patches.  Not a good comparison for understanding what's different.  Starsky's comments about the challenge of making them sound exactly alike is closer to my personal experience.. not that I've spent a lot of time trying to make them sound alike, but even microscopic changes in knob position can make a world of difference to a sound on either.

[SynthWolf]

When you play them, you’ll instantly feel and hear that they are so different. When you hear the p10 you might even start to think thats what the p6 wants to sound like.
But honestly the featureset of the p6 makes the p6 it’s own unique sound, it can competently imitate p5/p10 sound , but its strong suit and what sets it apart is being better at doing its own p6 thing with the features it has.

[Manbird]

I wasn't sure which thread to post to, but I just received my P5. All fingers and toes accounted for, and the wood grain is quite pretty. First thing I did after plugging it in was erase all the user patches for a clean slate. Anyway, as I expected, after a minute messing about with it, the P5 was sounding as gorgeous as ever. I had a rev 2 P5 years back and my girlfriend currently has a rev 3, so it's a very familiar instrument. A Prophet 5 is a Prophet 5, new or not so new.The Vintage knob and the filter options are lovely additions. Not wild or startling, but subtle and musical.

Anyway, I decided to post in this particular thread because the P5 makes me miss my Prophet 6! Or, it makes me really appreciate it. I bought the 6, like so many people, hoping it would be an almost-Prophet 5 but fell in love with it as a thang in its own right. When the pandemic hit, I left Berlin and a room full of synths behind. I ended up buying a second Prophet 6 here in California, but sold it to raise cash towards the P5. I'm as thrilled as I expected I'd be with the new Prophet 5, but yeah, the 6 is a special creature. Some day I'll return to Berlin and will add the Vintage update to my 6. Looking forward to that, for many reasons at once.

[SynthHead]

Well I sold my Prophet 6 as the tone underwhelmed me constantly (The OB-6 was far nicer) and now have a Prophet 10 on the way and already know IT has the sound I wished the P6 would have had (but didn't). I couldn't care less about FX, stereo, seq, arp etc in a synth that does little for me sound wise. I can dress up the base tone of the Prophet 5/10 with in-daw or outboard FX, modulate the midi if I want more 'features' etc. What I really want is a great instrument, 5 octaves, stunning sound, great layout... Prophet 10 ticks those boxes. P6 didn't *for me*.

Also, for me, 6 voices is annoying after a while (why I also sold my OB-6), and the rev 2 I had (prophet 08) sounded insipid... so far the Korg Prologue 16 has been the best VCO analog for me, with 16 voices too.. beautiful interface and build and the 4 octave sequentials and the thin sounding Rev 2 couldn't compete with it (ok the OB-6 sounds gorgeous but... 4 octaves and still thinner than Prophet 5/10). So... Prophet Rev 4 will now be the king of the heap in my musical den. Prologue will be kept for the japanese (jupiter-esque) sound.

[Manbird]

Well I sold my Prophet 6 as the tone underwhelmed me constantly (The OB-6 was far nicer) and now have a Prophet 10 on the way and already know IT has the sound I wished the P6 would have had (but didn't). I couldn't care less about FX, stereo, seq, arp etc in a synth that does little for me sound wise. I can dress up the base tone of the Prophet 5/10 with in-daw or outboard FX, modulate the midi if I want more 'features' etc. What I really want is a great instrument, 5 octaves, stunning sound, great layout... Prophet 10 ticks those boxes. P6 didn't *for me*.

Also, for me, 6 voices is annoying after a while (why I also sold my OB-6), and the rev 2 I had (prophet 08) sounded insipid... so far the Korg Prologue 16 has been the best VCO analog for me, with 16 voices too.. beautiful interface and build and the 4 octave sequentials and the thin sounding Rev 2 couldn't compete with it (ok the OB-6 sounds gorgeous but... 4 octaves and still thinner than Prophet 5/10). So... Prophet Rev 4 will now be the king of the heap in my musical den. Prologue will be kept for the japanese (jupiter-esque) sound.

Well, the Prophet 5 (and 10, obv) certainly has *that* sound. I never quite knew what to do with the P6 in stereo, and the effects were never my thing, but it does have a sound all its own, one I'd indeed call "modern," but more importantly, I'd describe it as beautiful. The 5 does all the thing it's meant to, with fuss.

I have a Prologue and love the sound of that one, too. I'm more partial to the effects on it, as well. They seem very much part of the overall tone, rather than something added on top.

I'm not a "must have more notes" dude. I started on piano and my hands were happy to roam around, but as soon as I got my first P5, I adjusted to the 5 notes available to me.

But yeah - it's the sound of the Prophet 5 that does the work. It fills the space in an evocative, mysterious and sometimes plain old practical way.

[Manbird]

It's been almost a week now with my new P5. As a current owner of a rev 3 and previous owner of a rev 2, I'm so pleased to have the rev 4 in my life. I spent a bit of geek time this week with the two Prophets next to each other and I compared sawtooths and sync tones and made this bass patch sound like that bass patch. After a while, with the two synths together taking up a LOT of room, I moved the P5 into my gf's cat-proof office, which we're turning into a small studio.

Thrilled as I am (and greedy as this sounds), I miss my Prophet 6. It's got a beautiful sound in its own right. Ain't it ironic that I now find myself trying to get the 5 to sound like the 6?

One thing I miss with the 6 is the Octave button. Does anybody know a way to extend the pitch range beneath C1 in the P5's MIDI output? I'm not a deep MIDI dude, but am finding it frustrating that I can't access, say, the lower octave of a piano plug in in Logic.

[LPF83]

It's been almost a week now with my new P5. As a current owner of a rev 3 and previous owner of a rev 2, I'm so pleased to have the rev 4 in my life. I spent a bit of geek time this week with the two Prophets next to each other and I compared sawtooths and sync tones and made this bass patch sound like that bass patch. After a while, with the two synths together taking up a LOT of room, I moved the P5 into my gf's cat-proof office, which we're turning into a small studio.

Thrilled as I am (and greedy as this sounds), I miss my Prophet 6. It's got a beautiful sound in its own right. Ain't it ironic that I now find myself trying to get the 5 to sound like the 6?

One thing I miss with the 6 is the Octave button. Does anybody know a way to extend the pitch range beneath C1 in the P5's MIDI output? I'm not a deep MIDI dude, but am finding it frustrating that I can't access, say, the lower octave of a piano plug in in Logic.

I assume you already know you can transpose it an octave 12 keys at a time right?  No good for real-time transpose but its there (and yes I miss having octave down/up button on it).

[Manbird]

It's been almost a week now with my new P5. As a current owner of a rev 3 and previous owner of a rev 2, I'm so pleased to have the rev 4 in my life. I spent a bit of geek time this week with the two Prophets next to each other and I compared sawtooths and sync tones and made this bass patch sound like that bass patch. After a while, with the two synths together taking up a LOT of room, I moved the P5 into my gf's cat-proof office, which we're turning into a small studio.

Thrilled as I am (and greedy as this sounds), I miss my Prophet 6. It's got a beautiful sound in its own right. Ain't it ironic that I now find myself trying to get the 5 to sound like the 6?

One thing I miss with the 6 is the Octave button. Does anybody know a way to extend the pitch range beneath C1 in the P5's MIDI output? I'm not a deep MIDI dude, but am finding it frustrating that I can't access, say, the lower octave of a piano plug in in Logic.

I assume you already know you can transpose it an octave 12 keys at a time right?  No good for real-time transpose but its there (and yes I miss having octave down/up button on it).

You're talking about using the Transpose function in Globals? This doesn't seem to have any effect on the MIDI output, though, far as I can tell. I think the lowest note on the P5 is C1... I'd like to be able to play C0 on an external MIDI instrument in real time, rather than recording an octave above then transposing it via DAW after the fact. Any hints?

[jok3r]

You could just transpose the target instrument... be it hardware of software.

[Manbird]

You could just transpose the target instrument... be it hardware of software.

Quite right! I was thrown off in Logic and found myself trying to tweak the pitch of the piano samples themselves, which created some rather dreary results! But of course, I can tweak the MIDI channel in Logic. I was hoping there was a simple solution - thanks!

[LPF83]

It's been almost a week now with my new P5. As a current owner of a rev 3 and previous owner of a rev 2, I'm so pleased to have the rev 4 in my life. I spent a bit of geek time this week with the two Prophets next to each other and I compared sawtooths and sync tones and made this bass patch sound like that bass patch. After a while, with the two synths together taking up a LOT of room, I moved the P5 into my gf's cat-proof office, which we're turning into a small studio.

Thrilled as I am (and greedy as this sounds), I miss my Prophet 6. It's got a beautiful sound in its own right. Ain't it ironic that I now find myself trying to get the 5 to sound like the 6?

One thing I miss with the 6 is the Octave button. Does anybody know a way to extend the pitch range beneath C1 in the P5's MIDI output? I'm not a deep MIDI dude, but am finding it frustrating that I can't access, say, the lower octave of a piano plug in in Logic.

I assume you already know you can transpose it an octave 12 keys at a time right?  No good for real-time transpose but its there (and yes I miss having octave down/up button on it).

You're talking about using the Transpose function in Globals? This doesn't seem to have any effect on the MIDI output, though, far as I can tell. I think the lowest note on the P5 is C1... I'd like to be able to play C0 on an external MIDI instrument in real time, rather than recording an octave above then transposing it via DAW after the fact. Any hints?

I see what you mean now, once I monitor the notes -- yeah it only seems to go to C1.  I hadn't noticed because I use another MIDI controller to control plugins or modules that has a greater range (down to C-2).

[jok3r]

You could just transpose the target instrument... be it hardware of software.

Quite right! I was thrown off in Logic and found myself trying to tweak the pitch of the piano samples themselves, which created some rather dreary results! But of course, I can tweak the MIDI channel in Logic. I was hoping there was a simple solution - thanks!

I'm a big fan of simple solutions und fortunately for most things there is one  . I used my DAW to arrange whole layer/split configurations this way. I'm an Ableton Live user rather than a Logic guy, but it would shock me if Logic was not able to do such things.

[Manbird]

You could just transpose the target instrument... be it hardware of software.

Quite right! I was thrown off in Logic and found myself trying to tweak the pitch of the piano samples themselves, which created some rather dreary results! But of course, I can tweak the MIDI channel in Logic. I was hoping there was a simple solution - thanks!

I'm a big fan of simple solutions und fortunately for most things there is one  . I used my DAW to arrange whole layer/split configurations this way. I'm an Ableton Live user rather than a Logic guy, but it would shock me if Logic was not able to do such things.

I've been using Pro Tools for 15 years, but am new to Logic. I'm liking it so much that I seem to have drifted over to doing 90% of any new work in Logic. Overall, it's pretty - uh - logical! Still, there are a few things that drive me crazy, but that's life overall. The instruments and sampler included are fab and have changed the music I make. Having an instant "drummer" always ready to go makes demos sound like songs from the start.

But back to the Prophet 5...

[LPF83]

You could just transpose the target instrument... be it hardware of software.

Quite right! I was thrown off in Logic and found myself trying to tweak the pitch of the piano samples themselves, which created some rather dreary results! But of course, I can tweak the MIDI channel in Logic. I was hoping there was a simple solution - thanks!

I'm a big fan of simple solutions und fortunately for most things there is one  . I used my DAW to arrange whole layer/split configurations this way. I'm an Ableton Live user rather than a Logic guy, but it would shock me if Logic was not able to do such things.

I've been using Pro Tools for 15 years, but am new to Logic. I'm liking it so much that I seem to have drifted over to doing 90% of any new work in Logic. Overall, it's pretty - uh - logical! Still, there are a few things that drive me crazy, but that's life overall. The instruments and sampler included are fab and have changed the music I make. Having an instant "drummer" always ready to go makes demos sound like songs from the start.

But back to the Prophet 5...

Since you may be one of the few active posters here that has both a P5 Rev4 and vintage Rev3 side by side, I'm curious on your thoughts on the "authenticity" of the Rev4?  Would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

I personally have not been disappointed in comparisons between my P10 and the vintage units I hear on YT, but that's not really a fair benchmark.  Duplicating patches based on visually matching knob dial settings has convinced me that it's a faithful recreation, although I have found that knob position can be very deceiving on some patches... very slight nudges in one direction or the other can make a big difference on these knobs.  I think very slight pot positioning differences are a big factor in why conventional wisdom says no two analog synths of the same model sound exactly alike.

[Manbird]

You could just transpose the target instrument... be it hardware of software.

Quite right! I was thrown off in Logic and found myself trying to tweak the pitch of the piano samples themselves, which created some rather dreary results! But of course, I can tweak the MIDI channel in Logic. I was hoping there was a simple solution - thanks!

I'm a big fan of simple solutions und fortunately for most things there is one  . I used my DAW to arrange whole layer/split configurations this way. I'm an Ableton Live user rather than a Logic guy, but it would shock me if Logic was not able to do such things.

I've been using Pro Tools for 15 years, but am new to Logic. I'm liking it so much that I seem to have drifted over to doing 90% of any new work in Logic. Overall, it's pretty - uh - logical! Still, there are a few things that drive me crazy, but that's life overall. The instruments and sampler included are fab and have changed the music I make. Having an instant "drummer" always ready to go makes demos sound like songs from the start.

But back to the Prophet 5...

Since you may be one of the few active posters here that has both a P5 Rev4 and vintage Rev3 side by side, I'm curious on your thoughts on the "authenticity" of the Rev4?  Would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

I personally have not been disappointed in comparisons between my P10 and the vintage units I hear on YT, but that's not really a fair benchmark.  Duplicating patches based on visually matching knob dial settings has convinced me that it's a faithful recreation, although I have found that knob position can be very deceiving on some patches... very slight nudges in one direction or the other can make a big difference on these knobs.  I think very slight pot positioning differences are a big factor in why conventional wisdom says no two analog synths of the same model sound exactly alike.

Easiest thing I can say is that it's a Prophet 5! When I had the rev 3 and rev 4 next to each other a few days back, I got a bit bored matching up tones... sort of like I'd assured myself and now I was just being redundant. I'm never too scientific or engineer-ish in anything I do, but with a subtractive polysynth that I've been playing for years, I could hear that the rev 4 could nail certain patches while others were different by *this* much. Now that I have the new P5 in a room away from the other, I haven't had any moments of "But the other one sounds more...". A funny footnote to this is that I was amused how perfectly I could match the Prologue's sawtooth to the P5's w the rev 2 filter. Not that that's any great test, but the tones were exact to my ear.

With all this said, I'm simply thrilled to have a slick new Prophet 5 with everything working and sounding as it should. The rev 3 we have has been intended for repair for about 3 or 4 years now. The keys are so clanky that they're louder than the audio output and Osc A has no sense of decency, tuning-wise. Etc. That's the other half of the joy of vintage gear. I've watched my synth collection grow in recent years to include more and more bits of new gear and I'm quite happy to be au courant for once in my life!