Prophet 5 sound incredible, Polybrute Hmmm........
 

Just from Youtube. Are you guys hearing what I'm hearing?.

Prophet 5 sounds like I've been transported away to analog-ville, where the 80's live and disco and everything possible again.

Polybrute, huh, how do I say this. Is it moving me at all?. No.

With all the Polybrutes power, it's still the sound that counts, like it always did.

I was going to get a Summit, then ok I''ll stretch for a Polybrute. 500 quid more.

Now wtf, this thing is into me for three and a half grand. But that sound. That sound.

I’ve never really been wowed by certain families of sound...Arturia, Korg analogs for example don’t really do anything for me. But different strokes, it’s great to have so many choices.

The core sound of the PB is “fine”. It’s good. But it’s all the functions that make it an alternative more than the core sound (again, it sounds better than average to me on that front). You can craft what seems like amazing complex and/or evolving sounds with it that you can do on many other synths.

I think the PolyBrute is amazing and producing sounds I've never heard from an analog synth before. The question is, how useful are those crazy morphing sounds in music aside from producing demos of the PolyBrute. It's very deep, very expressive, and certainly also has much utility as a MIDI controller too - so there's plenty of value added for your other synths and plugins too. But you won't get THAT sound if you need THAT sound that can only come from a Prophet 5.

I'm considering the P5 for other reasons.... not because anybody will care or notice that I'm using a genuine P5 on a track (versus RePro or even roughly similar noises from other synths), but because it's still going to be a collector's item and is simple, immediate, and approachable.

As I discovered with my Wavestate, it's easy to get bogged down with "analysis paralysis" when you have so much complexity at your disposal. But is it worth paying so much more, for the sake of simplicity and nostalgia? The PolyBrute then somehow becomes the more rational choice because of what it adds as a primary controller, besides the onboard sounds. But then none of this is rational to begin with, I should just be sticking to plugins.

I can't help but wonder how much would people care about those sounds if they were new to the scene and not some familiar thing they've been hearing for decades.

Are there some deep jungle dwelling, completely disconnected from modern music, people around here? We need subjects for a listening test gooof

Buy the P5 if you want that sound, if you are like me nothing else will really satisfy you. Don't buy synths for features if you want to make music, sound design is cool but I feel most of the time complex modulation will not fix a sound that is "meh" to begin with.
I have a Baloran coming but it also isn't a replacement for the Prophet, gotta buy em all mezed

I've grown up listening to Prophet's for decades ... and they sound ... fine ... but my ears/brain don't get this "magic" P5, and the PB does sound fine too ... perhaps with the potential for more complexity and variety... but played live into a PA or in the studio into a mix ... I won't be able to tell the subtle differences and I don't think I am unique.
Buy it because "you have to have that sound" or perhaps as a collector...

Jesus. We're all spending like drunken sailors. Hey we only live once.

Same thoughts here.

For me, that Arturia sound suits some edgy monosynths. I really like the sounds from Microbrute - it's interesting, useful and the price goes well with the limitations.

But the PolyBrute, for what it aspires to be, lacks the sound and the looks IMO. My reaction to this synth was 'hmmm...hmmmmmmm.... ok, let's listen to a demo... no. Nope.'

My reaction to the P5 release - 'yes... YESSSS... see you soon in my rig'.

Im with you on that, the core sound has never appealed to me...the matrixbrute has to be the most in and out of the checkout basket of any synth Ive looked at...It looks like an amazing synth but just that tone


I never learn, Ive got three korgs, Oddy, MS, Prologue, and almost never touch them

Im definitely on the Roland and Sequential side of analogue

I just can't get on with the Arturia filter sound. It's a shame because the MB is such a deep synth but the basic sound is always yuck for me.

I think those of us who have strong memory associations with the P5 sound find the P5r4 significant.

Younger players who aren't struggling to recreate the past will feel quite differently.

Good to have these choices.

I can’t get over why people say VERY subjective things like this on GS, and pass it off as objective truth.

There are many people around here who love “tone” more than anything else...

F*ck sound, I’m good at mixing, I’ve got EQ. The Polybrute is mega mega complex, capable of worlds more timbres than the P5, and it has some interesting features (like wavefolding in an analogue Poly) and THAT’s what counts to me.

Now like zero crossing says, it’s good to have one swarmy, warmy synth around, mine is probably the DSS1 and the OB6 on a good day...the OB6 is a total Ice Queen on a naughty day, but to start a thread about why you subjectively like one synth you don’t own, and don’t like another synth you don’t own, and tie it to some kind of shared opinion that doesn’t exist, and will never exist, is a bit of a waste of time for all of us IMHO.

But then again, that’s what forums are for...

Based on the sound I hear in the Sonicstate review video, the PB seems to sound very edgy. That's the bottom line. If it sounded as good as the Microbrute (osc/filter) ... I dont hear the roundness of the Microbrute. The P5 on the other hand sounds very balanced, also how the filter saturates.

You might be right, I can imagine in many cases it's true. But for me it's the pure sound quality of the new Prophet 5 that grabbed me. I don't know a single famous song that I'm specifically aware it prominently featured Prophet 5. Alright, I think the brass sound from 'Robin - The Hooded Man' by Clannad was P5. Vangelis used it in one of his improvisations for one sound...

I probably couldn't be more ignorant about the historic use of this synth, but it struck me from the first demos how well balanced and musical the basic tone is. It is exactly what makes the synth useful for me. It growls, sizzles and swirls, but it does it in a very natural way, nothing seems to sound too harsh or too strong or too weak. The basic underlying tone has huge integrity and gravitas. No matter how the knobs are set, it always has that pleasant quality.

I've never gone the route of accumulating a lot of synths, because despite of the recent proliferation of all kinds of synths, it is a rarity for a synth to pack such a punch as Prophet 5 does. Most of the synths that do are out of my range - new Moog Modular, Buchla systems. I've kept the DX7 as my mainstay synth because in terms of sound character, this one has it all too, and for silly money. I do have the Wavestation family (all generations), though - these are for nostalgic reasons as well as practical.

I don’t know about you cats but I’m holding out for a poly freak in polybrute/matrixbrute format.

I’ve bought and sold all of the “desirable” vintage korg poly analogs...and really not into any of the logue series sound character, for whatever reason.

Roland analogs are almost always pleasant, easy to use in a mix, to my ears. But definitely on the “safe” side of thee fence also. I do like sequential as well.

The Microfreak is one of the more interesting things out of Arturia, I indeed didn’t buy one because I expect they will eventually release a bigger one.

Yes?

That sounds like a nightmare to me. Disco sucks. :lol:

I had the exact opposite reaction.

They both produce sound. howdy

Now I’m totally confused. You’re ditching the idea to get a synth that’s not an analog synth (I’m aware it has analog filters, but I own a Peak and it could never pass for an analog synth, not to my ears) for a synth that is an analog but now you want a synth that’s twice as expensive for a lot less features because it sounds like the analog you want. That’s quite a trip around the block.

It’s still way cheaper than an original Prophet 5. If that’s the sound that’s inspiring to you, then that’s the price. You may save some money if you wait until the module comes out. I’m really lucky, as I have no nostalgia for the original Prophet 5, and from everything I’ve heard, I like my Prophet 6 a lot more. The r4 demos strike me as having an almost distorted top end and not much low end body.

That’s just me, though. If someone offered me a Prophet 5 r4 in trade for my Prophet 6, I’d take it... sell the 5 and rebuy a Prophet 6 and use the extra money for the Polybrute, which sounds really special to me.

I ended up selling my MicroFreak off for that exact same sentiment. It was too micro. Not enough voices, LFOs, EGs, etc. A good amount of oscillator types, but not enough modulatable parameters to keep me interested. I hated the interface too. I like the sound and the concept, but the whole package just seemed a bit too much like a novelty to me. I used the proceeds from the sale to buy an iRig Duo for my iPad Pro and miRack.

If I could turn back time and share PolyBrute and Rev4 demos, each doing what they're good at, in a "Guess the synth" thread a year ago, I think many people would guess "Prophet 5" for the Rev4's demo. The Polybrute guesses would be all over the place, if many of its unusual features were used. And if I guaranteed that it's definitely an analog hardware synth, with no extra processing, no confederate MIDI device pulling the strings! No-one would guess Prophet 5, because that would be impossible.

For some reason the Rev4 has that "sounds like a pro instrument" thing going on for me, the "oh yeah, that's the real deal" vibe I don't always get from every synth. Probably it's because I've heard it on so many records all my life. I'm assuming it's pure bias. It's happened for me with new instruments, too though, so IDK what to make of it. I want one of everything. I should find a synth commune.

No worries, I’m getting both.

Yes, I absolutely understand that; the Prophet 5r4 is at root a simple synth, which makes great use of its simplicity with polymod and sync options. Not to say you can't make a world of sounds with it, but in the case of subtractive synthesis, you're getting more of the "core" of the sound on anything you do.

Whereas with the Polybrute, or other synths with more complex modulations, routings, filter combos, etc., you're going to have endless microsculpting away at the core sound, and your results are invariably going to be pronounced in certain parts of the frequency spectrum as a result. The Polybrute can do "more," and probably more precisely, but it's that ability to sculpt in multitudinous ways that also leads to a characteristic sound.

Plus, yeah, the base oscillator sounds are going to be different. The P5r4 is CEM3340RevG-based, the Polybrute I don't know the part number yet, but it's a different kind of core oscillator. They're going to be different foundations for soundmaking.

This is all the stuff we learn as we go along, and it really depends on what you want. I think Sequential has always appealed more to those who want to get right into playing; the Polybrute, like the Quantum (as far apart as those are in architecture), is more of a sound designer's dream synth, useful for adding all sorts of interesting and fresh sounds to a musical environment that is in fact extremely saturated with possibilities, regardless of what we might opine about the results (sucks or great, etc.).

Wait! Are you saying that different synths are good for different things?! The nerve!

HAHAHAHahahahaha. Cheers.

On Gearslutz the last synth released is always the best.

YES! Dare I say I also like software? Both OBXa V AND Obsession? Reaktor AND Massive X? Even, horrors, Arturia's Prophet V (where else can you get a Prophet 5, a Prophet VS, and a combo of the two, WITH effects boxes, all in the space of a little real estate on a 2D computer screen? I'm telling you, it's magic! Magic, I'm telling you!).

The fact I've gotten neither a Matrixbrute nor plan to get a Polybrute says absolutely nothing about either instrument; it just says something about me. Don't try to figure out what.

OK, so the Prophet 5/10 takes you to 1982. Then what?

Do you have a band ready to back you up and cut tracks to tape?

Have you been practicing with a metronome

Or are making some patterns and movement in your music

And you don't want to assign CCs on the computer

The Polybrute with it's LFOs and sequencer will do Much more than the P5/10

Anyway.. you need both types of synths

A tone machine (P5) and a noodle machine (Polybrute)

Two half-perfect synths don't add up to a perfect one.

Agreed. I can buy any synth I want, yet with all the tons of amazing soft-synths I have in my MacBook Pro (and I have all the great, current ones), there's no need to spend more money on another box, for any reason. Sonicially, I can do anything I could (and couldn't) think of for the rest of my life, and no one but me would know if I was using hardware or software.

Sometimes being able to do a thing doesn't mean you always should. Restraint and self-control is a good thing.