I played a Prophet O8 last night...

A good friend of mine recently traded in his beloved Prophet 5 for an O8 and I went over there last night to check it out. At first glance, it's a great looking synth - definitely a smaller footprint than the Prophet 5, and considerably lighter in weight. Obviously, it's got tons of realtime control, yet nary a slider in sight, it's all knobs. The wood side panels are a nice touch too.

I do have to say, that while I appreciate analog synths and have owned an Oberheim OBXA and Juno 106 back in the day, I tend to favor more modern synths like the Korg Karma, and my last two purchases have been a Roland V-Synth and Korg M3 module, so I'm probably not the best person to evaluate something like the Prophet 08. However, for people who like classic retro analog sounds, this synth has definitely got them. I do love Jarre, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine dream, and those percolating arpeggiator patterns are easy to create on it. Interestingly, the Prophet 08 has no built-in effects, so it's a bit dry-sounding compared to what I'm used to. But after running it through his Eventide Eclipse, some of those sounds really came to life. After a while we midi'd it into his computer running Spectrosonics Atmosphere soft synth, and wow, the combination was awesome!

So while the Prophet 08 isn't something I'd be tempted to buy, for analog synth lovers, it seems to be as good as it gets - all the classic sounds with modern conveniences. I will say that some of those pads and string sounds were not only fat, they were obese! And the modulation possibilities are awesome. I have a lot of respect for Dave Smith and his innovations over the years (still have my Wavestation SR), and he's certainly upped the ante on the Prophet 08.

*wince*

Even a fart can come to life with an Eventide...

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Too true!

it sounds like you had a positive experience with the prophet 08. i enjoy my prophet 08 quite a bit, but you don't tend to hear it's praises being sung very often on these forums.

out of curiosity, how does your friend like the prophet 08 compared to the prophet 5? my curiosity has been piqued as the difference between the two keyboards is like night and day.

I wish I could try one. However, with Chicago being such a small city with so few musicians, no stores actually stock the damn thing. All I have to get my GAS flowing is a picture in the Sweetwater catalogue. Not quite the same as laying hands on one and needing to have it at any cost.

Seriously?

Such a shame.

I once owned a P'08...not a terrible synth per se but the filter is *anemic* in the extreme. The P5 had CEM3320 filter chips.

after "Karma" I stopped reading

And yet somehow still managed to hit the post button.

I love the P'08

Sarcasm.

However, the part about no stores stocking them is true.

I love the P'08

I did too, for a while.

Until I got tired of the sterile sound.

...and the little collection of mildly annoying bugs.

It's a shame, because Dave's other polysynth is one of the coolest modern synths made: http://www.carbon111.com/evolver.html

No love here and I don't miss it. Never found any use for it in my music. I'm a hell of a lot happier with the Blofeld Keyboard.

It's a nice keyboard if your a bit retro or doing cover band stuff but I just never found any use for it. Other aspects of it just didn't gel with me either.

Wow you guys are pretty harsh towards the P'08. I like it. I am less experienced, though. I don't think it sounds sterile. It is up to the programmer to make the sound do things and there are lots of modulation routing paths for that. It is funny because when I first got it the thing sounded so huge to me that I did not really want to use any effects at all. Perhaps it is a matter of experience with different analog synthesizers.

The one thing that bugs me about the P'08 is that the encoders are sensitive to bumping. You can definitely feel a huge difference between an encoder on the P'08 and a potentiometer on the Voyager. Even my 10 year old can tell the difference, though he is used to playing with the encoders on the Alesis Ion.

Are the P'08 encoders the same as the Evolver? I have only messed around with an Evolver KB one time at a GC and that was when I was much lower down on the learning curve.

Compared to what?

See, because of its moniker, I'm comparing it to all the other "Prophets" Dave made. Even the lowliest of them have a "grit", "girth" and "beef" the P'08 lacks - mostly because of the filter character (or lack thereof ). Even my Juno 60 is positively obese by comparison...and it's a DCO synth as well.

The P'08 just sounds very bloodless to my ears - not a bad thing per se. I don't hate it - I did, after all, use it a whole bunch on my album Shadow. Hell, I may even get a P'08 rack down the road.

If Dave had named it anything else maybe I wouldn't be such a crab about it.

...but selling a P5 for one???

...but selling a P5 for one???

frankly, i found this baffling too. i like my P'08 but i wouldn't have exchanged a P5 for it. i suppose that it would make sense if you're gigging with the synth. i wouldn't want to gig with a P5, but then personally, i wouldn't want to gig with any vintage analogue.

The again, consider the Prophet VS, Prophet T8 and Prophet 2000. Different beasts from the P5, if memory serves....

ditto

I only ever played with a P'08 for about half an hour. The coolest thing about it was all the LFO's.

They were different beasts, the Prophet 5, like the Pro-One, used the CEM3320 VCF.

...However, the CEM3372 contained a great filter with tons of character:

Prophet 600 = CEM3372

Prophet T8 = CEM3372

Prophet VS = CEM3372

The chip in the P'08 is a variation on the chip Curtis designed for Tom Oberheim's Marion MSR-2...it just dosent seem to have any guts as implemented in the P'08.

To me the P'08 sounds like a cross between a roland Juno-106 (with the chorus turned off) and maybe a korg Poly-800... fairly meh.

However, I think the UI, sequencer and modulation architecture is awesome. The sound is just not what my ears are looking for.

For perspective, I prefer free-running VCOs and discrete filters, so that's my bias...

The chip in the P'08 is a variation on the chip Curtis designed for Tom Oberheim's Marion MSR-2...it just dosent seem to have any guts as implemented in the P'08.

This was my impression with the Mopho, too. It lacks character.

Compared to what? See, because of its moniker, I'm comparing it to all the other "Prophets" Dave made. Even the lowliest of them have a "grit", "girth" and "beef" the P'08 lacks - mostly because of the filter character (or lack thereof ). Even my Juno 60 is positively obese by comparison...and it's a DCO synth as well. The P'08 just sounds very bloodless to my ears - not a bad thing per se. I don't hate it - I did, after all, use it a whole bunch on my album Shadow. Hell, I may even get a P'08 rack down the road. If Dave had named it anything else maybe I wouldn't be such a crab about it. ...but selling a P5 for one???

Yeah, like I said lack of experience on my part. I have never played any of the earlier Prophet models. The only times I had played with an analog board before I got the P'08 were about 10 mins with a PEK at a GC once and the Yamaha CS-15 that my little brother had when we were in junior high (I think he sold it when I was about 15). Oh, and once in high school I jammed with an older guy who had a Mini Moog but I did not play it.

It could also be perhaps that what I would call the grittier sounds of a synthesizer are not my favorite types of sounds. I prefer smoother washes.

I am also curious - and this is a more technical question - what is it exactly that makes one 12 dB/octave or 24 db/octave filter "better" or "grittier" than another? Is it the amount of resonance / self-oscillation that you can achieve and/or the ability to overdrive the input? Do the better active low pass filters have a second pole placed somewhere that give the response boost in the low end that makes the sound deeper or fuller sounding?

Also, are the filters on the Evolver not the same as on the P'08? Is it the digital oscillators combined with analog oscillators that appeal to you more? Or is it the feedback that you like? (again not looking for a particular answer - just very curious) The one thing the PEK has that I wish were available on the P'08 (well maybe it sorta is with an external loop and attenuator) is feedback.

I guess my own personal measure is how much fun I have with an instrument, and the P'08 is definitely fun for me. Hours of entertainment

Language is relative..."grittier" to me means "warm intermodulation of sources present in the filter".

Seriously though, the analog filters that seem to me to be the most "musical" or have the most "character" are basically mathematically imperfect in their response...there is a lot of non-linearity to their resonant characteristics...some subtle or sometimes not-so-subtle "chaos". The old CEMs seem to have it...the new one doesn't in my view.

For perfectly smooth and well-behaved filter action I have digital synths.

For me, the "politeness" of the filter in the P'08 sort of defeats the reason for making it as an analog synth in the first place.

Maybe the Evolver escapes this "problem" because of the amount of feedback, distortion and recursion in its signal path: