so everyone used the prophet 5

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eg. ihttp://www.synthmuseum.com/sequ/seqprophetad.gif

look at that just about everyone used that thing, i want one..

― startrekman, Saturday, 30 October 2004 03:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Its a nice synth... MOTM (www.synthtech.com) makes a good filter based on it for a few hundred bucks, which is far cheaper than the multiple thousands they go for now...

― Mediawhore, Saturday, 30 October 2004 04:07 (twenty-one years ago)

what are you going to do with just a filter?

― Savin All My Love 4 u (Savin 4ll my (heart) 4u), Monday, 1 November 2004 04:46 (twenty-one years ago)

There's quite a market for recreations of filters from Golden Age analogues. The idea is that when you feed your modular's oscillators through them, the tone takes on characteristics of the synth from which the filter circuit was copied.
That said, I don't understand why anyone would bother with a Prophet-5 filter module. It's a great-sounding synth, but the distinctive timbres that it's valued for today are not attributable to its filters or oscillators - which were off-the-shelf IC's designed by CEM (or, in the case of the rev. 1 Prophet-5, SSM). Those same CEM components were used in a dozen other relatively dull (and now largely forgotten) polysynths of that era.
The reason why the Prophet-5 is still of interest is its Poly-Mod panel, which allows certain components to interact with each other in fascinating and often unpredictable ways. The Prophet-5 pumps out with alacrity all the bread-and-butter brass, string or organ sounds that were required by the working musicians of the day, but it is also capable of generating the kind of extraordinary, otherworldly ambiences you hear on recordings like Japan's Ghosts and Taking Islands in Africa. That ability, however, does not spring from the Prophet-5's filters - which are good, but not amazing.

― Palomino (Palomino), Monday, 1 November 2004 14:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Eh, I beg to differ about the SSM2040 filter, used in the early prophet 5 (as well as the octave plateau voyetra 8, as used by new order) There was (and is ) a reason why early rev prophet 5s are worth more than the later Curtis chip versions, and the poly mod section is pretty much the same on both versions. The SSM2040 has one of the richest, most powerful sounds of any lowpass VCF. I actually have the MOTM filter module above, and as mentioned, you can't do much w/just the filter. you'd need a couple of VCOs, a couple of envelope generators, an LFO and a VCA to recreate one Prophet 5 voice. The filter does sound absolutely wonderful, though, especially for bass drones, it's very "musical". The only thing I've ever heard that's as good as it is the Wiard buchla/korg hybrid filter, the "borg" filter.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:27 (twenty-one years ago)

...that said, I bought an Alesis Ion last week, and that's a great little machine. It sounds awesome, is really easy to programme, and I suspect all other virtual analogue synths are now PWND. In all honesty, I'd pick one of those up over a Pro5 any day.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Can you start a thread and talk about the ION on it? I'm most interested in the vocoder and how easy it is to spin up patches from scratch.

N0r|\/|4n what do you use for recording BTW?

― TOMBOT, Monday, 1 November 2004 19:21 (twenty-one years ago)

the ION is great, especially for the price. the presets are vile and discouraging but the second you dive in, you are there

the one encouraging thing about soft synth recreations is the promise of being able to easily create bizarre mutant combinations, being able to play "prophet 5" vca's with "moog modular" filters, etc.

― (Jon L), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Does anyone have any opinions about the Roland JP-8000? I'm thinking of buying one.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

i just started a keyboard thread

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

i always confuse prophets and fairlights, maybe they're the same thing. anyway, they are the sound of early-mid 80's art rock to me (peter gabriel III/IV, kate bush). I love them!

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Is the JP-8000 the one with the mini-faux-MPC2000 sampler thing built-in? I think my friend Brandon uses one of them and, if it's the same thing, I testify in the favor of TIGHT.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:05 (twenty-one years ago)

God, I hate reading about synthesizers I'll never be able to afford.

― nickalicious uses a Roland JX-3p, a Crumar Performar, Moog/Realistic MG-1, etc. , Monday, 1 November 2004 20:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe, but I don't think it has a sampler. It's this:

http://www.sequencer.de/pix/roland/jp8000_l.jpg

Btw, Nick: keyboard/synth recommendations here

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:07 (twenty-one years ago)

prophets and fairlights can't be more different.

www.vintagesynth.com is your friend!

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

OH OH that one! The tail end of the Jupiter movement. Those are pretty kick-ass.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Dave Gilmore and Pete Townsend both used it...!

― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Vintage keyboards I crave teh mostest:

*Arp String Ensemble
*Crumar Bit-1
*Moog Liberation
*Moog Taurus II

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Tom, The vocoder is about the only thing I haven't tried on the Ion. There is a set of generic patches at the end of the user bank - setups ready for vocoder use, and a vanilla sound, which I've used as a starting point for the 4 patches I've programmed into the thing so far. The control layout, and the way the controls/menus are set up is very impressive, it must have been designed by people who would actually use such an instrument, I think.

For recording, I use a hardware 8-track digital hard disc recorder, the Vestax HDR-V8, one of a range of machines designed by this canadian genius Jean-Paul Bertsch (I believe Vestax licensed the design from him). It's kind of like one of those Tascam things w/the removable front panel, except there's a built-in mixer w/good-sounding 3-band EQ, and 3 effect sends per channel, all midi automatable. It's a great machine. Unfortunately, the guy's company, Bertsch Electronics, seems to have gone under in 2002, and there seems to be no service documentation available, so if/when it breaks, I'm fucked. Next year, I'm building a computer midi/audio recording workstation - linux/asla/rosegarden 4 if I can get it working (50/50) windows/cubase if I can't.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 13:38 (twenty-one years ago)

what about oberheim?

― startrekman02, Tuesday, 2 November 2004 14:20 (twenty-one years ago)

nine months pass...

Anyone have experience with Kenton's Prophet 5 MIDI retrofit?

I went with them over Wine Country for the additional options. Here's their web page: Kenton UK.

― Rob Uptight. (Rob Uptight.), Tuesday, 2 August 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

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