Alex Ball's Blind Test - Rev 4 vs Rev 3

[LPF83]

I'm posting my guesses here, mostly just so I can find them easily once the answers emerge.  I only listened on smallish Klpisch PC speakers and at low volume, but 4A and B just didn't differentiate themselves enough for me to form an opinion.  I'm probably wrong on a lot of these, because the difference that my ears attribute to the vintage model could just as easily be due to slight level differences.  Also keep in mind each Prophet owner used different audio interfaces, and that can completely account for any difference in sound.  There is a world of difference in my preamps depending on whether I hit the "air" button or not.

1A-Rev3
1B-Rev4
2A-Rev4
2B-Rev3
3A-Rev4
3B-Rev3
4A-??? no opinion
4B-??? no opinion
5A-Rev4
5B-Rev3
6A-Rev4
6B-Rev3
7A-Rev3
7B-Rev4
8A-Rev3
8B-Rev4
9A-Rev4
9B-Rev3

[Infa Red]

Thanks for posting this ! Pretty cool and appreciative on the work.

IMO, the comparison between the new and the rev.3 is kinda moot.
Where I feel the new is slightly more off mark *in certain aspects* is when comparing to a vintage .rev2.

That said, my asterisks were due to - *when matching certain patches to patches, sure the new can mimic identically cause that's where a lot of the testing and building came to try to achieve. Where it fails is when comparing to some more homemade patch with a bunch more user custom characteristics and usage of the filter and envelope amount to create that "droopy" drippy aspect. In other words, less of a run of the mill popular type P5 sound and more of a unique unidentifiable sound. This is where the differences are larger. But still, this rev4 is awesome.

My point is, I am not even really interested in rev3 vs rev4 comparisons. They are moot. The real test is vintage .rev2 vs rev4 in rev2 modes and most importantly, unique sounds.

[Infa Red]

I'm probably wrong on a lot of these, because the difference that my ears attribute to the vintage model could just as easily be due to slight level differences.  Also keep in mind each Prophet owner used different audio interfaces, and that can completely account for any difference in sound.  There is a world of difference in my preamps depending on whether I hit the "air" button or not.

The other issue is exactly as you pointed out, what is the rev.3 suppose to sound like to then say which is which. Thats not the point, so imo this guy is missing the points. The point is, and real only question to ask is: is there any difference at all, and if so, which do you like better ? Not whether or not you can spot this one or that one. Know what I mean ?

Secondly though, I am impressed how close they sound when all they did was physically match the knobs. Thats crazy and points to the new builds being great replicas (to a point). I am truly impressed. The issue here that I see though is he never stated if he took the P10 out of 10voice mode and put it into 5voice mode. Cause if not, then the test is severely skewed. And I am guessing he did not ? I mean dude, you can't compare 5 voices to 10, lol wtf ?

[LPF83]

I'm probably wrong on a lot of these, because the difference that my ears attribute to the vintage model could just as easily be due to slight level differences.  Also keep in mind each Prophet owner used different audio interfaces, and that can completely account for any difference in sound.  There is a world of difference in my preamps depending on whether I hit the "air" button or not.

The other issue is exactly as you pointed out, what is the rev.3 suppose to sound like to then say which is which. Thats not the point, so imo this guy is missing the points. The point is, and real only question to ask is: is there any difference at all, and if so, which do you like better ? Not whether or not you can spot this one or that one. Know what I mean ?

Secondly though, I am impressed how close they sound when all they did was physically match the knobs. Thats crazy and points to the new builds being great replicas (to a point). I am truly impressed. The issue here that I see though is he never stated if he took the P10 out of 10voice mode and put it into 5voice mode. Cause if not, then the test is severely skewed. And I am guessing he did not ? I mean dude, you can't compare 5 voices to 10, lol wtf ?

To me, the real value of a blind test like this is observing all the potential answers (you can see lots of variation in the responses already in the YT comments).   If the odds that someone can correctly guess the vintage one is a coin toss, then it's all moot because it means that whatever someone thinks they are perceiving as sounding better is truly a figment of their imagination.

I personally do hear differences there -- one is not better than the other, just differences.  I tend to attribute a slightly stronger/hotter sound to modern gear, so my guesses reflect that.   Until the results are posted I don't know how well I did at consistently choosing the one that had a vintage sound.  I suspect I wasn't consistent at all, based on looking and the guesses from others, which are all over the map.  And when guesses are all over the map it only proves the theory that one cannot be conclusively attributed as sounding one way or another over the second one.

[dizzy]

Yes I love these but I feel like I am comparing two peoples approach to sound design vs any inherent quality of one synth vs the other.

I did make a note of A and B, just to see if I had any consistency in begin able to pick between the two. I am expecting to be correct 50% of the time.

I also have a view of which one I liked more, but again that seems more a sound design thing more than synth capability.

[LPF83]

So Alex posted the answers and I got 5 out of 9 (55%) right, which might not sound too bad at first, but to me it is random enough to only illustrate that (at least to my ears) one does not sound more vintage than the other, and even different audio interfaces wasn't enough to differentiate them.

I also just read, after initially posting this, that 55% was the overal average of all respondents..  Interesting indeed.