These make the best motorbike noises

Can you get that in a rack?
I don’t have a lot of space.

If you gig with one you'll get plenty of rack

I’m already working on my VCO face to pull it down.

The Roland SH-32 is beat for motorcycle noises; seriously, there's an effect built in which does just that.

Prophet 10 will be best for helicopter.

I suspect Polybrute will excel at fighter jet.

But which ones are good at making music? I keep buying all these instruments and tools and they just sit there, doing nothing. I really hoped they’d make music for me.

One of these days I’ll have to take matters into my own hands and do it myself!

I think Repro 5 will need an update if it wants to compete with P5Rev4 on sound.

Only if they want to emulate the new sound.
I don't think it needs an update. Sure, I'd welcome one. But I doubt there'll be one anytime soon, and it doesn't need it. Zebra 3 is the focus over in Uheville.

Sure; Repro 5 in no way replaces the P5r4. You just get yer thing and then use it and enjoy it, either way, no point looking over your shoulder (unless you have a pet bird and then it's just a question of whether you need to change your shirt, AGAIN).

Interesting. Do you know anything about that Unicorn's progress?.

I'm not really comparing these two synths. They are so different, like comparing a DX7 to a PPG Wave.

P5 is a classic synth with a good range of typical polysynth sounds, and a few polymod sounds that we're all now very familiar with. I like the sound, but I'm not going to spend that kind of money on it.

PB is something really new. It can do most of those standard pads or brass, but the morphing and mod options takes it into new worlds that even a modular can't go. If you can't make great patches with it, you can't blame the synth.

I'm not a youngster, but I'm looking for new synth territories to explore and the PB offers just that. Not interested in playing "hits from the '80s" all day long. That's what your Spotify/vinyl collection is for, if you really must.

This kind of comment is not unusual about the P5, P6, OB-6, etc. The people make the music, not the tool. If your brain associates a sound with a year, that's your brain, not everyone's. A tool is not limited to the year it was made (hey - P5 would be a 2020 instrument... aka timeless), it's only limited by the musician. These kinds of synths aren't limited in sound or genre. They are designed to be more for playing than noodlng - so that's the impact of the design and philosophy taken on them, not the type of music you can use them in. That's also a great context to compare them within.

The "player's synths" emphasize sound quality over features, and are fast and easy to make more amazing sounds with, up to and including those with moderate complexity. The "sound designer's synths" emphasize features over sound quality, and with time and effort spent, can produce amazing soundscapes with few limits.

Unless you fit 100% into one of those buckets, the best of all worlds is to have at least one synth of each type.

Yes, of course, all of the above is a simplification and there's always exception etc etc etc etc.

Complexity isn't everything, I agree. I like the tone of the PB, and the modern features make it great to program too. I also think the PB is the ultimate players synth: morphee, ribbon, etc. More of a performance synth than the P5 in fact as it has so much expressive potential.

Prophet 10 on order, no polybrute here. Sunsyn which goes wild or quantum for a digital edge. The P10 can do much much more than the standard cheese/funk that many gravitate to.

I used to ride motorbikes before I could afford cars. Lovely things. The biggest issue is other road users. I thought about buying one again but the research strongly suggests that 40% deaths the motorcyclist could do nothing about and risk per mile in the UK is actually pretty significant. Not as bad as horse riding obviously;-)

There are lots of ways to have fun in life and that goes for synths and bikes etc.

Thank you for the wishes

And yes, when I see idiots in shorts or even with no gloves I just tut, clearly they've never been down the road at speed because once that happens you don't ride without protection again.

I remember sliding my gsxr750 round a roundabout in my jeans, I was just moving the bike between locations a mile apart so truly didn't think about my leathers, cold tyres and wooosh, slid up the road on my knees which really was a blessing as no highside which would have been worse, 25 years later I still know I did it and man did I know it at the time.

But still, polybrute is mmmmm delicious imo.

And it's a proper synth, with features to push synthesis, which is really why I love synths.

Love them all. From the grandest, most perfectly restored OB-Xa to the tiny, 8-bit Roland A-01K. They each make sound, and each sound is interesting, if your mind is open to it.

I have recently realized I’m just not a korg guy either, both my trident and original ms20 recently out the door. My preferences lean more towards Roland and Oberheim, I just never reached for the korg’s so out they went to make room for something I would reach for.

PolyBrute is my dream synth for exactly one thing—the tone. It, and the MFB Dominion 1, are my two fave modern synth tones.

Theres no one poly out there that covers every tone, you need a few lol
Analogue, FM, wavetable, modelling. I find that if I really like a tone that does not mean it will sit in the mix right. Swapping out those parts and trying different options always informs my eventual choices. i don't have the poly but the Matrix Brute has a very nice tidy solid useable tone, just the right balance of warmth and clarity but sometimes thats not what I need.

The filter sound is perfectly fine and creamy if you don't push the oscillators over a level of 60% and pretty much hold true for any of the Brute series. I loathe the sound of the oscillators over driven into the Steiner Filter but even a humble Minibrute can sound great when approached with a hint of finesse.

If anything, I think one could add a “voice drift” control that loosened up parameters per voice in the way that the r4’s “vintage” knob works. From the r4 demos that I’ve heard, this seems to be the thing that most noticeably sets it apart from the Prophet 6.

Here here! If I wanted to make the same sounds as synths from 40 years ago, I’d just use IK Multimedia’s Syntronik. I know people love that vintage tone, but while it sounds good, it’s very flat in terms of dynamics. I personally dislike that.

From reading/listening around, I think you're right ... the "slop" on the P6 seems to provoke divided opinions, and the "vintage" seems to be more positively reviewed. There's the suggestion that the P6 might be getting vintage ... firmware? Might be an even more interesting instrument then ... making 2020 sounds as well as 1980 ... but a module Polybrute would be something else...

Frankly, if my Prophet 6 never changes I’ll be perfectly fine with it. I’ve heard several r4 vs. 6 demos and most of the time I either can’t tell the difference (nor could the person doing the demo) or prefer the 6. The idea that somehow the r4 is this magical tone monster is just silly. People perceive that because the OG Prophet 5 was the synth sound they imprinted on at an impressionable age. I’m not saying it’s not great, but it’s just one among many great synths that are currently being made, and any “vintage knob” is more than made up for by the ability to assign velocity to filter EG amount. That to me feels like a real instrument, but YMMV.

It would definitely help keep things a bit tidy, but if there’s one synth I wouldn’t want in a module version it would probably be the PolyBrute. I’m really looking forward to having that matrix and that morph pad thing. I hope I like it, because I sold my beloved Pro 2 to fit it.

I can understand and not disagree here. I bought a Rev4 P5 because the demos’ had the big sound I remembered. Then I got it and played it for a few weeks and found myself dialing up stuff I had made in the early 90’s. Guess what happened? I got bored fast.
I was like oh now I remember why I sold my old Rev 3.3 P5 after 10 years of ownership.

In part it was because I got introduced to a VS and the world hybrids. I really never looked back . Y
I started focusing less on old analogs and more newer synths that did different things than basic subtractive with a few cool things thrown in like the PolyMod section.

Don’t get me wrong the P5 is a great sounding machine it just really is not my jam these days. Perhaps I got caught up in the Hysteria

ThePolyBrute actually looks and sounds like its got something different going on. Different is good in my book. If I made a list of the synths I have owned in the last 10 years one might understand this leaning.


Oh and ya I still think you made a mistake selling your Pro 2 . Mine is not leaving anytime soon. I will have a Polybrute alongside it ( or below it LOL) before I get rid of it .
I will probably have a Prophet X here shortly as well.

^THIS

At one point, I bought a Peak. I struggled to get the kinds of sounds out of it that I wanted. I secretly hoped I could find a bit of ol’ school Waldorf hybrid tone in there, but it is not. It was packed up and ready to return, but then I realized that I’d not really explored it in a way that did it justice. So I took it out of the box and said, “OK Peak, let’s go where you want to go.” I was pleasantly surprised. I found that it really had a character of its own and did really well in a mix. I kept it, and I’m glad I did.