Oberheim OB-X Demo

video upload by SonicProjects

"Dry demo of the Oberheim OB-X. The OB-X was Oberheim's answer to the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 and Oberheim's first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer.

The stereo output of the OB-X was recorded unprocessed directly to disk using the line inputs of an RME Fireface UC.

Infos about the OB-X:

At the NAMM show of January 1978 Sequential Circuits shocked the synthesizer world with the introduction of the Prophet-5 as the world's first fully programmable polyphonic analog synthesizer.

As a consequence the sales of Oberheim went downhill and they had to react - and introduced the OB-X in 1979.

The OB-X could be ordered with 4, 6 or 8 voices. The voices sat on separate boards, and the synth could be manually expanded with further voice boards if the synth was shipped with less than 8 voices, which was the number of slots it offered.

The voices of the OB-X still used the fully discrete circuit of the SEM with the exception of the envelopes which were realized with CEM3310 chips to save space. Also they didn't offer the SEM's multimode feature but only the lowpass part.

The OB-X was only built for about a year until it was replaced by the OB-Xa which now also used CEM chips for the oscillators and filters.

The fact that the OB-X still uses the old discrete SEM circuit and that only about 800 units were produced makes the OB-X extremely rare and sought-after and prices go through the roof."