Review: Dave Smith Instruments Prophet '08

Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jason Scott Alexander

THE FORECAST CALLS FOR AN ANALOG FUTURE

My allegiance to Dave Smith's work dates back to his early days with Sequential Circuits, when I cut my analog teeth on a borrowed Prophet-5 and experienced a polyphonic richness and warmth that sent chills down my spine. No “virtual analog” or soft synth has been able to fully duplicate that to this day.

I'm also a die-hard fan of new Dave Smith Instruments (DSI) creations. As one of the first to review the Poly Evolver Keyboard (Remix, February 2006), I cited it for the best synth design, “possibly ever.” Later, after glowing comments on the Poly's little brother, the Evolver Keyboard (Remix, October 2006), I bought it outright, unable to bear the thought of returning my little buddy. But those were decidedly digital-analog hybrids.

With the Prophet '08, Smith aimed to rescue the classic Prophet name from a bevy of simulations and provide the only eight-voice, 100-percent analog signal path on the market. This keyboard also marks the 30th anniversary of the introduction of the Prophet-5 and the 25th anniversary of the introduction of MIDI (another Dave Smith initiative). So, is this the return of a legend or the beginning of a new era?

CLASSIC TYPEFACE

There's something comforting about having the original Prophet script logo emblazoned on this keyboard. It represents an era of grabbing controls and easily changing sound in the moment. The 51 endless rotary knobs (plus volume) and 27 backlit buttons become your lifeblood; all program parameters can be edited from the front panel, with selected parameters and values appearing in the 2-by-16-character red LCD.

The logo acts also as a stamp of authenticity to the basic voice structure of the original Prophet-5, including those famous Curtis analog resonant lowpass filters and two beefy oscillators per voice. The oscillators generate sawtooth, triangle, saw-tri mix and pulse waves selectable from minimum width (0) to maximum (99); a true square wave can be found at Pulse 50. Coarse tuning happens over a 10-octave range, and fine-tuning has a precision of ±50 cents. Glide can be set independently for each oscillator, and a Sync 2->1 button forces Oscillator 1 to reset every time the second oscillator cycles, for the classic hard-sync sound. Analog in sound but digitally controlled for stability, the Prophet '08 oscillators are very accurate. If instability is your thing, the oscillator Slop function will inject a subtle amount of frequency drift for authentic analog character. Oscillators can be blended and white noise can be mixed into the filter.

The filter and amp section looks a lot like DSI's Evolver line, featuring both classic and some pretty novel controls. Coupled with a four-stage ADSR envelope featuring pre-delay, the lowpass filter is selectable between 2-pole and self-oscillating 4-pole operation, with a filter cutoff frequency of more than 13 octaves and controls for envelope amount, velocity and key-tracking. The Audio Mod parameter adjusts the output of Oscillator 1 used to modulate the filter cutoff frequency, making all sorts of harmonically rich material possible. By cranking up Mod and turning off Oscillator 2 completely, you can generate FM bell-like sounds — essentially creating filter-only audio.

The voltage controlled amplifier (VCA) similarly sports an ADSR envelope with pre-delay and controls for level, envelope amount and velocity tracking. Though oscillators cannot be panned individually, there is a Pan Spread circuit after the VCA that pans each voice in the stereo field. With Pan Spread set to zero, all eight voices are sent straight down the middle, but as you turn it up, each voice gradually moves away from the center. One note results in a ping-pong effect; chords give you a lush stereo image.

A third envelope is freely assignable to one of 42 destinations, including oscillator level/mix, noise level, oscillator pulse-width, filter frequency/FM amount, LFO rate, output pan, envelope and more. Heck, you can even set it to loop into itself. Regenerating in that manner, Env3 lets you fluidly create all sorts of custom LFO shapes by adjusting its four stages in real time, and that's cool.

The automated modulation possibilities are much deeper than the original Prophet-5. Four identical and MIDI-syncable LFOs per voice each range from 30 seconds (slowest) to a maximum of 261 Hz or middle C (fastest). That lets you create clang-y and twangy FM-style inharmonic tones without eating up a main oscillator to act as modulator. The LFOs can also be set to musically relevant intervals for tempo-synced operation.

A 4-by-4 modulation matrix animates sounds in many ways, such as using any or all of the 16-step sequencer's four tracks as mod sources. Each track can vary in length and modulate a different destination per step, which is a flexible way to create polyrhythms containing pitched phrases, dynamically stepped filtering, envelope shaping, pulse width modulation and more. Because it is a “gated” sequencer, a note must be played either from the keyboard or via MIDI in order for the sequence to be heard. A tempo control (30 to 250 bpm), as well as a wide range of clock divisions (including swing), is shared between the sequencer and the basic, nonprogrammable, arpeggiator.

The Prophet '08's keyboard is semiweighted for fast action, featuring velocity and aftertouch/pressure sensitivity (lacking on the original Prophet-5). The wood end panels and retro-style knobs are a nod to the Prophet-5's aesthetics, but I'm not fond placing the spring-loaded pitch wheel and an assignable mod wheel above the keyboard; it feels bizarre. Everything remains relatively status quo around back: two unbalanced stereo output pairs — Main/A and B — headphone output, ¼-inch jacks to receive Sustain and Expression Pedal/Control Voltage sources, MIDI In/Out/Thru ports and a special Poly Chain Out MIDI port for linking up a second Prophet '08 to double the polyphony. Finally, the included external wall-wart power supply is one of those handy snap-on international socket adapter types, with plenty of cable length.

Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus

Want to use this article? Click here for options!