Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?

Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« on: June 15, 2016, 02:59:50 PM »
Please?  :)

Sacred Synthesis

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2016, 03:35:12 PM »
Certainly you could MIDI control one with the other, but because they're of two different designs, they could not be poly chained.

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2016, 04:00:07 PM »
Certainly you could MIDI control one with the other, but because they're of two different designs, they could not be poly chained.

This is correct, thanks Sacred Synthesis. Poly Chaining is for extending polyphony by combining the voice count of two instruments with the same voice architecture. You can Poly Chain a Prophet 6 Keyboard to another Prophet 6 Keyboard or Module for a total of 12 voices. However, if you tried to Poly Chain a Prophet 6 to an OB-6, with the P6 as the Master, the first six notes you played from the P6 would sound like the selected P6 patch, while the next six notes would sound like the selected OB-6 patch. Not very useful!

However, any two MIDI equipped instruments can be "stacked", as in two timbres emanating from the same key press, with a single MIDI cable, provided that the two instruments are set to send/receive on the same MIDI channel.
SEQUENTIAL

Sacred Synthesis

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2016, 04:05:31 PM »
And that instrument - a Prophet-6 controlling an OB-6, or vice versa - would be one gorgeous synthesizer!  I expect many will try it.

Shaw

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Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2016, 04:06:25 PM »
Certainly you could MIDI control one with the other, but because they're of two different designs, they could not be poly chained.

Stack those puppies!!!
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Sacred Synthesis

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #5 on: June 15, 2016, 04:12:28 PM »
If only these instruments had eight voices, I would certainly add the module versions to my PEK or P'08.  So close, and yet....

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2016, 09:05:22 AM »
Thanks for your replies.

the first six notes you played from the P6 would sound like the selected P6 patch, while the next six notes would sound like the selected OB-6 patch. Not very useful!

I agree, but if the poly-chaining functionality could be extended in the following way, having P6 and Ob-6 chained would become very interesting: If there was an additional setting that would tell poly-chain to randomize or alternate voice allocation between the two synths. If you had the OB-6 and P6 patches reasonably close, the result could be very rich tonally.

I'm guessing this feature would be a bit too obscure to justify implementing it. But while I'm at it... (and maybe this has already been requested): Could you add a way to limit how many additional voices are added when poly-chaining two P6s? For example I bet many people would love to have the choice between playing an 8-voice, 10-voice or 12-voice P6 or OB-6........  :D

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #7 on: June 16, 2016, 12:54:46 PM »
Quote
If there was an additional setting that would tell poly-chain to randomize or alternate voice allocation between the two synths. If you had the OB-6 and P6 patches reasonably close, the result could be very rich tonally.
This doesn't make sense as a built-in feature, but you could certainly achieve this with the aid of a computer and a simple Max/MSP or PureData patch.

Quote
I'm guessing this feature would be a bit too obscure to justify implementing it. But while I'm at it... (and maybe this has already been requested): Could you add a way to limit how many additional voices are added when poly-chaining two P6s? For example I bet many people would love to have the choice between playing an 8-voice, 10-voice or 12-voice P6 or OB-6........  :D
Are you asking for split/stack functionality when poly chaining two P6s or OB-6s? While this would be fun, these instruments don't have the UI to support bi/multi-timbral operation, and the "what you see is what you get" interface is important to us in terms of our design philosophy for the P6/OB-6. We aren't likely to add new functionality to these instruments--they are pretty much feature complete at this stage.

If you are asking for the ability to disable voices when poly chaining, I'm not sure what the benefit would be to restricting the number of available voices. The Prophet08/Mopho/Tetra line allow you to select the number of voices used when poly chaining, but this is because the various models have different voice counts.

Since the P6/OB-6 models all have six voices, poly chaining two P6s or two OB-6s will always yield 12 voices.

I hope this helps to clear things up regarding poly chaining.
SEQUENTIAL

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #8 on: June 16, 2016, 03:38:56 PM »
If you are asking for the ability to disable voices when poly chaining, I'm not sure what the benefit would be to restricting the number of available voices.

Yes this is what I had in mind. I use a lot of long-release patches, and it makes a difference in the character of the patch, how many voices you have ringing.

To say it another way, I'm actually a fan of voice-stealing, and like to have control over how many voices are stolen or not stolen. But I'm probably just a freak that way :)

blewis

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Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2016, 06:34:24 AM »
Seems like the MIDI control portion of poly chain would work - i.e. if you load a patch on the Prophet-6 as master then a poly chained OB-6 would switch to the same patch number. The patch, of course, would be different between Prophet-6 and OB-6.

Then it would seem that a round robin note selection routine would select notes bouncing between the Prophet-6 and the OB-6.  There could be some coolness to this. Chords that aren't doubled up, but have different notes composed from different synths.

People intentionally makes patches on the Pro-2 that have all 4 oscillators being different (even different pitch offsets). It's considered something fun and cool to do because you can.  ;)

I think the big problem would be people expecting MIDI CC to behave at least similarly.  For example, grab the LPF's cutoff on a master Prophet-6 and.... what happens on the OB-6?  Does the cutoff change, or is the MIDI-CC map so far off that it becomes totally useless?

JAV

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2016, 12:39:25 AM »
Answers my poly chaining questions.

What would the range of notes be on a desktop?

Thanks

LoboLives

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2016, 06:18:31 AM »
They technically can be poly chained but you have to be creative about it. Perhaps set them both in Unison mode but with different patches and have each synth in different tuning and different patch. Perhaps have one in Unison mode droning (not on Hold but with a single finger) on a low note while you play over top with the other synth. I'm sure there are ways...just have to work around a few hurdles.

Re: Is it possible to poly-chain an OB-6 with a Prophet-6?
« Reply #12 on: October 10, 2020, 10:15:48 AM »
Quote
If there was an additional setting that would tell poly-chain to randomize or alternate voice allocation between the two synths. If you had the OB-6 and P6 patches reasonably close, the result could be very rich tonally.
This doesn't make sense as a built-in feature, but you could certainly achieve this with the aid of a computer and a simple Max/MSP or PureData patch.

I know this was a post from a long time ago but I'm hoping I may be able to persuade you or anyone else at the Sequential team to implement the alternate voice allocation with polychain; I think this would be incredibly useful even when using two identical synths rather than the P6+OB6 usecase above.

The main reason I think it should be implemented is because of my fortune of playing with an original Prophet 10. There are a number of keyboard allocation modes on the Prophet 10 but the alternate mode was indeed the most inspiring! If you loaded the same patch on both the upper and the lower sections of the 10 and then changed one just slightly it opened up a while new world of expressiveness that really needs to be experienced first hand. It would be so great if this aspect of the Prophet legacy could continue.

I would even argue that it makes complete sense for alternate voice allocation to be the norm rather than an option, because from a pure voice expansion use case the end result is exactly the same, especially if one transmitting parameters from a master to slave unit, but the expressiveness of tweaking just the slave unit to be integrated into the sound as a whole is an added bonus!

I really hope anyone at Sequential reading this will seriously consider this change. Using a Pure Data / Max patch is of course possible but what a headache for something that could be so elegantly implemented with the given hardware! There are plenty of other threads with people expressing that they'd prefer this behavior, it really does make sense from a user point of view.