I found a virus T12 desktop for 1500 and a prophet 12 desktop for 1500. Which one would you prefer? Which one goes deeper for sound design? I’m just a hobbiest that likes to have fun at home and play around, nothing too serious!
Thank you!
If you want to go left field prophet 12.
Prophet 12.
But you knew I was gonna say that.
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Virus TI2 is a chameleon. Top quality Reverb, delay, distortion, phaser, chorus, on 16 channels is hard to beat.
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Nah. Prophet 12’s a Sequential.
That is hard to beat.
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I DID know you’d say that!! Very on brand! :-p
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Question is: What do you want out of the money?
Sequential Sound vs. Multitimbral Multitalent?
I personally would always rebuy the TI2, because it can do soo much, has awesome FX built in and can play 16 Tracks at once.
Oh, and while there still is some menu/button clicking needed, tons of features on the TI2 have their own knob or at least a button to select.
Prophets stripped of their keyboard just seems plain wrong to me. Just for that id say the Access T12.
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But it’d be the virus desktop!
I’ve heard way more virus recommendations vs the prophet 12. That said, people who really seem to get and know how to work with the P12 swear by it, and I can understand that too.
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Every time I approached a Virus, anything that came out of it sounded like trance from the 90’s.
That’s not a bad thing I can quite enjoy such a banger. But I never heard any sound from it that didn’t sound like any other sound, although a great version of that sound.
But there’s so much stuff pouring out of the Prophet 12, I’ve just never heard anywhere else.
So there’s that.
And I’ll be prepared to change my opinion on the Virus, if someone throws a track my way that tells me I should get a haircut and find a job. Or the other way around.
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I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to TI2 desktop prices cos I’m not interested in a Virus (have never played one though but I don’t find the sound that much to my liking) but I just got the P12 desktop a couple of months ago for 900€. I know it’s discontinued and maybe prices will climb because of that but 1500€ sounds steep.
So if you’re not in a hurry to get either, I’d say wait for a better price on a P12 and/or keep listening to both P12 and TI2 on Youtube and see which one speaks to you.
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Damnit, this is a compelling post towards the p12!
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You’ve heard my work. That’s all Prophet 12. I’m gonna bet, you can’t find those sounds on a Virus.
And that’s fine, cause one doesn’t have to like my stuff. At all
But if one does … well …
I own both but as keyboard versions. Advantage for TI2 as module is that it has the same knobs and will be easier to use for sound design.
I would not say everything on the TI2 sounds like the 90s, it can do the virtual analog no problem, but of course the 1000+ patches in the synth tend to lean in that direction. If you start from an init patch and don’t detune the oscs to max you can get some really nice sounds out of it.
Regarding Prophet 12 for me - and I read it elsewhere a few times - it is much harder to program and get some sounds out of it, you need to invest more in the amount of features that the P12 has. But that is not a bad thing, just something you need to be aware of. I own the P12 for more than 5 years now and probably only scratched the surface of what it can do, also because I am not a very good sound creator, I tend to stay within a certain range of sounds. When going through patches on both I sometimes wonder how the h*ll people created those sounds
Pro on the P12 is the dual/stack mode because you can easily get some nice arps going on both and that sounds lovely. Con are the delays which are harder to program than on the Virus. And the effects in the Virus really sound nice, all of them. Delays and reverbs. But of course you can use an external efx or plugin for that.
Oh and 1500 (€ or what currency?) sounds a little high for a used TI2 where I live.
Most importantly: Check out as many patch examples as you can to find out which synth sounds nicer to your ears. Especially when it comes to the Curtis filters you either like it or not.
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Counterpoint: P-12 and Pro-2 were both released within a year of one another. (2013 and 2014, respectively.)
Pro-3 was released last year, and Sequential’s set to announce at least one new instrument this year.
I’d personally wait to see what they drop.
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Every sound in this blows me away. And they’re all presets? That’s damn impressive! Now I’m leaning p12…
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Yeah, Virus can’t touch that.
This guy does it even better -
https://www.youtube.com/user/arthurfussy
You should compare the specs and the sound … and to know what you are looking for … 
When I considered the P12 back in the day, I didn’t buy it, because I had the Virus TI2 already.
Just a couple of Virus specials:
- There are 8 different oscillator models, some of them can not be found on other synths, example: based on formants or based on granular technology
- 64 different single cycle waveforms, and each waveform can be used as LFO waveform as well
- LFOs allow to slew the waveform … using any of the more complex waveforms gives us plenty of motion …
- 64 different wavetables
- a huge selection of FX, which was amended by many firmware updates
- the “Atomizer”
- the arpeggiator is legend
- multitimbrality with up to 16 timbres on 16 MIDI-channels
- one of the best synth keybeds in the market
- very long term support by Access, and there is a reason why the Virus is still in production
What made me look into the P12 was:
- having 4 oscillators
- beeing a Prophet …
Both have plenty of modulation sources and destinations:
- 4 envelopes
- Virus 3 LFOs, P12 4 LFOs
IMO both sound great, but the Virus comes with additional sound design options. There is a reason, why we can buy so many professional soundbanks for the Virus.
Just to have it said … as much as the MPC is not reserved for Hip-Hop, the Virus isn’t reserved for Trance The virus is a white canvas with many different colors and brushes, but we have to understand and use them wisely
I would also compare the usability of both desktops. Are there enough hands on options? The “total integration” of the Virus isn’t perfect, but it worked for me.
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Between you and my pal Michael I’ve been interested in a P12 for a while now. Beautiful sounds.
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