Prophet X from Sequential

Glad to help.

I should add that I don’t do a ton of loading of my own samples. It seems easy enough but I have option paralysis bad enough as it is.

A big part of why I love the PX is that it has almost everything I need to get work done stock.

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And I would probably use it the same way. Try to get as much out of the included content and abuse it in ways it probably wasn’t intended for. Can you playback samples at LFO speeds? Basically load up wave tables as slow modulators like on the Pro3?

I can double check tonight.

You can load up samples that are literally LFOs.

And btw, it respects the stereoness of the samples.

Meaning, custom LFOs that vary slightly (or drastically) per channel.

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Interesting, how would a stereo LFO work? When you choose where to send it, you are only choosing one mod destination, right?

By the way, excellent sound examples you posted a few days ago. Experimental stuff is exactly what I like to hear from this synth.

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I exactly positive but I think prophet X is fully stereo through the whole signal path if set in binaural mode, so I imagine if you are using a sample as modulation it could just sending one side to the left voice and one side to the right voice.

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You’re fully stereo through the whole signal path.

Yeah, I’ll have to do some testing.

You can run the unit in 32voice paraphonic mode, so I’m not sure how it would treat a stereo sample mod source.

I could be wrong on that stereo LFO thing, the extent of my testing there was using a random stereo sample tuned low to modulate a “non stereo” wav.

I could hear differences in the left and right channel, thus my assumption.

The paraphonic behavior, btw, is awesome. I’m actually a big fan of paraphonic filter movement, especially we key note modulated.

Something I wish you could do on this (and more) synths is artificially lower the voice count.

Paraphonic is cool but now you have 32 voices to wrestle with. 16 if you make a second patch stack that’s empty.

Sometimes, I’d love to be able to emulate the voice stealing of a prophet 5 or whatever else I want.

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When I got my PX few years ago, I wanted to try exactly that. Even asked at Sequential’s forum. Nobody knew the answer, so I had to check myself. I prepared stereo wave files that had hand drawn shapes, that could be easily distinguished and then checked how they behave as stereo modifiers. My finding at OS available back then was that stereo sample, when used as modulator, was always “connected” from left channel. I even asked Sequential to let us use it in stereo either with single mod slot, or to let us choose sample channel as a mod source. I am not sure that it was changed, but if it was, the only way seems to check again.

I know that one thing that I LOVED with this synth was how resonance had different character (better IMHO), when modulated negatively below zero (I tried to recreate some Rolandesque character which’s resonance dies mid cycle, by modulating resonance with saw wave - I assumed that bipolar modulator will hit zero and stop resonance, but instead intended results I had something new and interesting). Lady Gaia had similar discovery, although with different approach (envelope shape, if my memory serves), and this was assumed to be a bug and removed. Which I sincerely am not happy with. ;]

BTW: I don’t know if it’s only my unit, but from my finding: Sequential didn’t assume this filter to be pinged. When I ping mine, with resonance dialled carefully, on some notes it rings out, and on some notes it jumps into self oscillation. Backing out one step changes it too radically. I had similar experience with Parva, but now I digress.

Cheers!

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Interesting stuff! I could have been mistaken on the stereo LFO stuff. I’ll try to test again when I can. It’s been a busy work week.

Filter pings work well enough for me. One of the first things I do with a synth is key
track and play the filter.

Why did you ultimately part w the unit?

I wish there was a desktop version available. Though it might be hard to make that panel work (but maybe not…)

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Some sick demos here. Really solid sounds and playing from this dude.

And some more, less sophisticated noises from my own PX today. I was working on recording some loops into my Octatrack so I could Octatrack them up. These are from the drum bank, sequenced on board the PX itself while I fuck with knobs/mods.

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More random PXing.

Some total nonsense, but again this is the kind of stuff I would have wanted to ehar pre-purchase :smiley:

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Finally broke down and ordered one. Phil, I absolutely loved your Rev2 videos and hope you consider making a couple for the X!

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Right on!

Thanks a bunch for the kind words, I really appreciate that. Yeah I’d like to make at least one pretty long video showing off the PX. I think its going to be a future classic.

I miss the Rev2 sometimes, but the PX covers that side of things well enough for me, and I still have the P6.

Which btw, it was very hard for me to justify having two Prophets. I don’t have a lot of synths. Just the two + a Minibrute 2 (another HIGHLY underrated synth in my opinion)

I really don’t like having a lot of overlap in my setup, so its a huge testament to the PX that it has a permanent place in my attempt at a minimalist setup.

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Just some Prophet X love.

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Prophet X arrived about a week ago but between family visiting and renovations, I’ve only just now been able to spend a couple of hours with it. Having used Rev2 and P12, I found it easy to get around but still have a lot of exploring to do. I think I can safely now offload both of those synths though! Got some great results using some techniques mentioned above although I’m still finding the sample loop “center” a little confusing. Not sure why they didn’t just have loop start and length but I’m sure I’ll figure that out soon. Also, I was hoping to use chains of single cycle waveforms to create “moving” wavetables but messing with the built-in VS waves, I’m not sure that is doable. Also, can’t find a description of mod matrix destination “instr delay” in manual. I was pleasantly surprised that cutoffs for L/R filters are individual destinations. Anyway, it sounds great and really looking forward to spending more time with it.

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Sweet!

I’d spend juuuust a little more time before offloading the other two. Though I’d come to that same conclusion myself.

The Rev2 specifically did a DCO thing that I just love but honestly the PX is such a workhorse, and a unique one at that.

It’s not like a boring workhorse, it can do nearly anything I want of it all while having a unique voice and filter mojo of its own.

Be sure to play with hack/decimate too. They are pre-filter on here, unlike the P12 which I think is post.

Sample loop center is really fun to modulate. Start and end control the total sample. For the looped portion you only have center and size, which is essentially the same as start and length but from the middle.

I can’t help on wavetable ish sounds, whenever I use wavetable synths I typically use them statically to create interesting waves ha. But not much morphing.

I might try to make a morphing patch with an LFO on sample center and a small size. There is a sample fade parameter that would help here.

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Love Sequential Circuits anything, have an awesome time exploring/creating!

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And some Prophet X hate.

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Love this! Any chance of a description of what is going on here?

Thanks man! It’s actually pretty simple.

The main sound is just a self oscillating and key tracked filter.

Then I used both fx layers set as the Leslie speaker (which has a drive parameter) to get max crunch but wet mix only at 30% or so. I think I rotated them at different speeds too.

I’ve been really digging the fx on the PX, even compared to other sequential synths I’ve owned. The Plate verb is superb.

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