I spent some time with the Prophet X last night. Impressions:
- The filters, as expected, are as warm and gooey as you could hope for. Absolutely musical, they just sound "right".
- It is a massively different experience than playing with the filter knob on a Kontakt library, and not just because of the excellent sound of Dave's filters. Instant gratification. Like other DSI synths, it's almost completely knob-per-function and it takes two seconds to get where you're going. I hate to be "that guy", but Dave knows how a zillion little things in the analog circuitry, and not just the filters, all contribute to make a "good" sound - and it sounds good. Really good.
- Options to manipulate the samples are somewhat basic compared to things like the V-synth. You can modulate sample start, end, loop center, etc. but not time stretch by 8,000 % or do full-granular-mayhem. In that department it is not on a level with the Tasty Chips GR-1, Percussa SSP, V-Synth, or plugins like Granite. So PaulStretch in a keyboard it's not.
- The well-known DSI "hack" and effects sections are there and sound as expected; filter drive is a subtle tone-shaper rather than a full-on over-blaster. I sort of think of the PX as a Prophet-12 with two of the oscillators replaced with sample players.
- It CAN do FM of a sample from both the digital oscillators and/or another sample. For me this is a big deal and it bests the Quantum in this regard. There's a particular low-brass/cimbasso hybrid sound I've been chasing that can only be done this way - by using a low brass sample as an audio source and FM'ing it from another low brass sample and/or analog osc. PX can do this.
- Supplied sample content runs from excellent sounding versions of rather mundane content like pianos and strings to more out-there stuff from the 8dio collection like Bazantar, bowed metals, etc. Sound quality of the samples themselves and the playback quality both sound top-shelf.
- The upcoming sample-loading utility will reportedly allow for creation of round-robin sets etc., so it's not going to be just a crude and basic utility like the Nord Sample Utility. December is the proposed date for that.
- The only thing I forget to ask about was support for MPE / polyphonic aftertouch / etc. If that stuff is implemented correctly, then this thing with a Roli, Linnstrument, McMillen KB4, or Haken could be ridiculous. Squishy sounds controlled from a squishy keyboard - what's not to love?
At first it might seem a little puzzling at first to see how it's positioned in the market - but only at first. I don't think it's aiming to replace a Nord Stage for "gigging" musicians, but it easily goes a long way in that direction. Ordinary sounds like pianos and strings sound fantastic, many many notches above ROMpler keyboards, but you don't usually need full knob-per-function synth controls when playing the standards - and deep-diving sound sculptors may be frustrated that it's not a time-stretching granular sample destroyer with molecular-level control. BUT. It's one of those weird cases where much of the time you wonder why it's so easy to get a good sound out of the thing when it's so time consuming and frustrating to get to a similar destination in software. So much so that, with software, you wind up at a totally different destination because the process with software is so "front-brain" - while with the PX you just find a source sample, twist a few knobs, and you quickly think, "that's good - let's record that". Very much in the Dave Smith / Sequential tradition of "great sounds don't have to be hard".
Other than the massive sample storage capacity, on paper the features and specs are respectable but not totally revolutionary - but when you play it you think, "I could totally use this. I wish I had this sound yesterday on that cue that was giving me a headache, I'd have been done in ten minutes." It can sound aggressive or smooth, thin and grinding, or low and fat. You could probably replicate the entire score to The Girl On The Train or Prisoners on this thing with a pair of headphones and a multitrack (once the sample loader utility is available, that is!).
It makes music. Good music. Quickly.
After 30 years of choosing between saw and square waves, I'm no longer thrilled by "synths", and really only use the Pro-2 most of the time as the modern feature set bolsters the excitement above my boredom threshold. My Model-D, MS-20, and TTSH 2600 reissues are mostly here for nostalgia purposes, and my V-Synths sit mostly unloved as software tools have eclipsed them for the most part, their filters are "meh", and their best feature is the weird, glassy sound of the Roland "VP" time-stretching (which is still unique).
But the PX is something different. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. It's worth checking out for sure.