Product Reviews

Having cleaned out the vintage synth closets of the 1960s and 1970s, French developer Arturia has turned its attention to two hardware classics from the early 1980s. Prophet V is based on the first and last incarnations of Sequential Circuits' legendary Prophet synthesiser, the 5 and VS models.

The original Prophet 5 used analogue subtractive synthesis, while the later VS introduced digital wave table or vector synthesis: this Prophet V offers recreations of both. However, the modelling goes beyond mere emulation with a unique Hybrid mode, whereby you can combine the two synths to meld the lush, evolving digital timbres of the VS with the warm analogue sound of the 5. It's a similar concept to that employed by Korg with its Legacy Collection and it works just as beautifully here, drawing entirely new sonic potential from familiar instruments.

Prophet V looks great: its clean, clear layout is easy to understand and operate. Switching between the synth modes also activates the so-cute-it-hurts Robocop-style unfolding interface, as the program stacks one Prophet on top of the other. Cool interface tricks aside, though, nothing could detract from the quality of Prophet V's sound. This is largely down to Arturia's TAE True Analog Emulation technology, which the company has refined for Prophet V, resulting in near-identical reproduction of the original hardware's oscillators, filters and waveforms. This is Arturia's warmest, most authentic sound yet.

Prophet V ships with plenty of presets to show this off, although with the original factory set showing its age a bit, it's fortunate that the 500-plus new presets from Arturia's global sound

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design collective put a whole new perspective on both Prophets, particularly in Hybrid mode. There are also supplied templates for new preset structures (such as the arrangement of the filters, oscillators and so on), which act as helpful building blocks for creating your own sounds. Owners of the original hardware can also transfer any treasured settings lovingly created over the years to the software version via SysEx data dumps.

In operational terms, the only new features are the Legato (monophonic) mode and the Hold (sustain) option, along with the modulation matrix, where the two Prophets are combined in Hybrid mode in such a way that you can create features, inputs and signal manipulation not possible with the original hardware. The magic of the originals has been retained, including five-voice polyphony, white noise modulators, dynamic waveform cross-fading with the VS joystick, two ADSR envelopes and 54 parameters on the V, 96 digitally sampled waveforms and four oscillators with the VS, three five-point editable envelopes and a multi-mode filter.

Given the considerable charms of Prophet V, it's regrettable that such a magnificent instrument has been saddled with a temperamental copy-protection system. We had considerable trouble getting the supplied Syncrosoft USB key to recognise our installed Prophet V. It refused to work both in a powered USB hub (where our other USB keys happily reside) and in the Mac's keyboard port, only finally co-operating when inserted directly into one of the test Power Mac's two USB ports. Such a demanding protection device won't endear itself to anyone.

Another issue is that Prophet V didn't take too kindly to being woken from the Mac's sleep mode: the plug-in frequently wouldn't respond in Logic Pro 7 to either Midi input or to clicking its name to open the GUI for editing - notes wouldn't sound and the Prophet V interface window wouldn't appear. Deselecting then reselecting the plug-in solved this, but any settings were lost.

Hopefully, Arturia can iron out these issues in a future update, as when it's up and running, Prophet V is one of the best virtual synths available. It's a near-perfect reproduction of the original hardware and offers a tremendous range of sounds.