Battle of the Sequential (and DSI) Prophets | From VCO (P10) to DCO (P08) to DSP (P12) ambient pads

video upload by MIDERA

"A friend of mine suggested 'why not compare your Prophets?' And I thought that was an interesting idea. So I sat down with my Prophet 10 and started recording. Only... I didn't actually record the audio. I recorded about 10 minutes of video and looked over and never hit record in my DAW. I should have kept it in the video, the biggest sigh as I put my hand over my face and said 'You've got to be kidding me.' It sounded so good too.

So, I went through the process again. I recorded the Prophet 10. Then I decided to record something similar with the Prophet 08. Then I decided to record something similar with the Prophet 12. All three synths I tried to record something similar, and go through similar sound processes. The end sounds weren't identical, but the process was as similar as I could make it. Everything is recorded mono out into the Strymon El Cap to be equivalent in this regard. The P08 and P12 obviously would have advantages in a stereo playing field.

What's my take on the comparison? The Prophet 10 is just a joy to use. Absolutely brilliant synth to play. At no point did I need to access menus or set, in a difficult way, modulation sources/destinations. They're already preconfigured and give you such a wide range of sounds. I surprisingly found the Prophet 12 to be the most difficult to work with, despite it's excellent UI. But you can't really use the UI to its full potential when you need to use both hands to change things (or what I mean is, if you want the great UI to work, you need both hands so that you can hold a source and twist a knob).

I won't argue that the Prophet 12 is better for some things than what the Prophet 10 or 08, because it's a hybrid synth and has a lot of other waveshapes and people don't always desire making 'analog sounds' whatever that means. From what I understand, some folks prefer to make sounds without even using the filter (or leaving it wide open), and with the P12, you can do that more easily.

Either way, the Prophet 10 to me was the winner here, it might not be the best sounding (although I do think it is), but it provided the most enjoyable experience."