Background to Prophet 12

[Sacred Synthesis]

[chysn]

Interesting video. When the Prophet 12 came out in 2013, I was not looking for a polysynth, so I never even seriously considered it. These days, I think it would have made my polysynth short list* in place of Hydrasynth. I was considering only instruments in production.

Of course, that's the real answer to the question "Why doesn't anybody talk about the Prophet 12?" It doesn't mean it's not well-regarded. It's just pushed aside in favor of new things. It sounds great, and there's a lot to like about it. I wish I could have had the opportunity to try one out.

I did think it was kind of ridiculous to show the clips of Dave Smith saying that the Prophet 12 was his favorite design. We all know marketingspeak when we hear it. I'm glad they circled back on that idea near the end.

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* The short list was Take 5, Trigon 6, Prophet 5, and Hyrdasynth.

[Sacred Synthesis]

Yeah, I put my two cents in on that "favorite synth" comment.  I'm also wary of having anyone else express Dave's feelings, other than Dave himself.

I'm not quite sure where to put the Prophet 12 in my assortment of synthesizer opinions.  I borrowed one for a month and spent enough time with it to get a good sense of the instrument.  I thought the panel was masterfully designed.  It was intuitive and complete.  The instrument could in no way replace a Poly Evolver Keyboard, though, but that's another topic.  My single complaint was that the overall tone was metallic.  The digital oscillators and analog filters arrangement didn't work for me.  The Evolver seemed to be a much more successful hybrid sum.  In the end, I found that a stereo set up (using the B outputs) made a substantial improvement in the overall sound.  The result was possibly the best sawtooth solo patch I've ever heard.  I would have liked to have paired the keyboard version with a module version.  Clearly the Prophet 12 was a masterpiece.

[Soundquest]

Of the polysynths I use, its the one that is easiest for me to start from scratch and end up right where I wanted it to. Hopefully that makes some sense.   I mean, whether  I wanted to make a bird, a timpani drum, or a oriental string instrument- the process seems simple to me.  Its easy to keep track of your modulations,  very well laid out.   On the Summit or Hydrasynth for example, I seem to get led astray more easily.  Plus, things can be going on that take a while to spot.

My only complaints were I'd prefer a few more waveforms and sometimes it can be confusing to know what layer you're editing

[LoboLives]

All this video did was make me hope for a P12 MKII

[Sacred Synthesis]

Or at least the discovery of a cache of Prophet 12s somewhere in Dave's attic.  That happened once with the Poly Evolver Rack.