9 ms·

Dave Smith popularized the polyphonic analog synthesizer in the 70’s and 80’s with the Prophet V, pioneering the use of integrated circuits to make synths. The

Dave Smith popularized the polyphonic analog synthesizer in the 70’s and 80’s with the Prophet V, pioneering the use of integrated circuits to make synths. The company he built was called Sequential Circuits for a reason. A Bay Area pioneer. Analog synths were phased out int the late 80’s by digital synthesizers, the main culprit being the Yamaha DX7. Those synths were mass produced, cheaper, they sounded great and they sounded different. Sequential fell into hard times and eventually got sold. Dave Smith went to collaborate with other companies to produce new concepts. More recently though, he came back to make his own synths under the DSI brand, and finally he regained control of the Sequential brand. Under Sequential he re-released the Prophet V. This all coincided with analog synths becoming popular again, with people craving the imperfect but very musical sound of analog synths. This is a story of a great comeback, and I for one, am happy thinking he died doing what he loved, and after seeing his life’s work regaining the stardom it always deserved.

dietrichepp 4y ago
Another explanation that I've heard is that R&D for synthesizers in the 1980s and 1990s got brutally expensive, and a lot of companies just didn't make the transition.
- jdkee 4y ago
  Building synthesizers out of discrete components was simply far more expensive than using digital technology to create and modulate various sound waveforms. The Yamaha DX was far cheaper to manufacture than the polyphonics Prophet 5, Oberheim OB-Xa, or monophonic Minimoog. The DX was lighter and more reliable, produced a wide array of sounds, and was easier to keep in tune despite being more difficult to program for useful sounds. Many DX users used the stock sound patches except for Brian Eno and a handful of others who could dive into FM synthesis. See https://hub.yamaha.com/keyboards/synthesizers/discovering-digital-fm-john-chowning-remembers/ https://hub.yamaha.com/keyboards/synthesizers/discovering-di...
  - dietrichepp 4y ago
    I don't think that's really an accurate account. The Minimoog and Prophet 5 are both from the 1970s. Despite the Minimoog's status as a collector's item today, it had roughly the same retail price as the DX7 in the 1980s--around $2000 USD. The Prophet 5 was more expensive at $4000, but it was also an incredibly successful, flagship synthesizer. Of the synthesizers listed--Prophet 5, Oberheim OB-Xa, and Minimoog, only the Minimoog was made primarily out of discrete components. The others relied heavily on integrated circuits from SSM or CEM. (Obviously they all contain discrete components--but the synth modules in a Prophet 5 or Oberheim OB-Xa are basically ICs with some support circuitry.) Sequential went out of business after developing the Prophet VS. Although it bears the "Prophet" name, it is a digital (or hybrid) synthesizer. It uses wavetables (like the PPG), but four of them simultaneously, with a Curtis VCF. It had a novel architecture (therefore confusing), the synthesizer itself was expensive, and there were some QA issues. It used TMS DSPs plus some custom ICs designed by Sequential. Apparently, during the design of the Prophet VS, there were various problems with the ICs that were fixed with kludges--Sequential wasn't in a financial position to make revisions to the ICs. In other words, the R&D cost for digital synths was too high.
    - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
      By the mid-80s the analogs were seen as last decade's sound for last year's people. They were immensely unfashionable, and by the beginning of the 90s they were being sold off for bargain prices. The low end of the analog market had been captured by budget polysynths from Korg and especially Roland which had most of the sound at much less of the price. The problem wasn't the cost of digital R&D, it was commoditisation which turned a high-margin super expensive boutique professional market into a low-margin semi-pro and amateur commodity market with cheaper, less exclusive and less prestigious products. The high-end market essentially disappeared and so do its distribution and promo channels. What was left supported a much smaller number of companies. All of the headline synth companies went under at that point, no matter what tech they used - Sequential, Oberheim, Moog, PPG, ARP, Ensoniq, E-mu, and even Fairlight and eventually Synclavier. As well as also-rans like Octave, Gleeman, Crumar and Siel. Korg also went under and were bought out by Yamaha. Yamaha survived because it's a huge zaibatsu with deep pockets. Even with the DX7 the synth division is a sidenote on its bottom line. Roland are also a huge corporation - mostly immensely profitable while also having street-level cool - and weathered the 80s and early 90s with some functional but clever hybrid models at relatively affordable prices. Around 2005 the boutique market started to reappear, but aimed less at professionals and more at now-affluent collectors and dabblers who "always wanted one of those", and/or are willing to drop $$$$$ on something spendy just to prove they can. So you get hipster-toy module makers in the Eurorack space, wildly overpriced Veblen toys like the OP 1, remakes of Classic Brands™, and various clones and reissues in both hardware and software form. It's very nostalgic and backward looking, and I suspect there will be another shakeout before the end of the decade.
afro88 4y ago
You mean the Prophet-5, not to be confused with the Prophet VS. His comeback is legendary. The Prophet 6 is huge in music today, not to mention all the other new and rereleased synths he fostered.
- ushakov 4y ago
  could you name couple songs off your head where Prophet 6 can be heard? which genres?
  - boffinAudio 4y ago
    Orbital use the Prophet 6 extensively. So did Aphex Twin. And Frank Zappa used the Prophet 5 ..
    - boomlinde 4y ago
      I am sure that you are referring to the Prophet 5, which unlike the Prophet 6 was released during Zappa's lifetime.
      - boffinAudio 4y ago
        Yes, thanks for that correction ..
  - afro88 4y ago
    Any James Blake song for example.
  - auto 4y ago
    Radiohead’s Everything in its right place : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnXxh5U25Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnXxh5U25Y
    - i_am_proteus 4y ago
      The Prophet 6 was released after this song was made— it used a Prophet 5. But the two synths sound very similar.
DennisP 4y ago
And most recently, teamed up with Tom Oberheim again for the OB-X8, being released right about now.
SeanLuke 4y ago
If I may: Dave Smith did not popularize the polyphonic analog synthesizer. That was Tom Oberheim, with his 4-voice and 8-voice SEM module systems (and there were earlier examples than that using voice division). What Dave Smith did with the Prophet-5 (not V) was something much more important. The Prophet-5 was the first significant synthesizer on the market with patch storage and recall, and this required for the first time RAM and a CPU in a synthesizer. Patch storage was absolutely revolutionary. It changed the entire synthesizer field. Realizing the potential of a CPU inside a synthesizer, Dave Smith then went on to propose what later became MIDI.
- musicale 4y ago
  It's silly to try to minimize the impact of the Prophet 5 in making analog polysynths mainstream (especially in popular music), or the general impact of towering figures like Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim. I think of the 4/8-voice as predecessors to later analog polysynths (including models from Sequential, Oberheim, etc.) because they were more like a collection of mono (SEM) modules that you could play polyphonically. The Korg Mono/Poly and even the DSI Tetra are a bit like that too (and kind of fun to play polyphonically in voice cycling mode where every voice is a bit different.) We are amazingly fortunate to have modern incarnations of Sequential and Oberheim making amazing instruments, from the Prophet 5 reissue (and affordable/portable Take 5) to the upcoming OB-X8.

dietrichepp 4y ago

Another explanation that I've heard is that R&D for synthesizers in the 1980s and 1990s got brutally expensive, and a lot of companies just didn't make the transition.

jdkee 4y ago
Building synthesizers out of discrete components was simply far more expensive than using digital technology to create and modulate various sound waveforms. The Yamaha DX was far cheaper to manufacture than the polyphonics Prophet 5, Oberheim OB-Xa, or monophonic Minimoog. The DX was lighter and more reliable, produced a wide array of sounds, and was easier to keep in tune despite being more difficult to program for useful sounds. Many DX users used the stock sound patches except for Brian Eno and a handful of others who could dive into FM synthesis. See https://hub.yamaha.com/keyboards/synthesizers/discovering-digital-fm-john-chowning-remembers/ https://hub.yamaha.com/keyboards/synthesizers/discovering-di...
- dietrichepp 4y ago
  I don't think that's really an accurate account. The Minimoog and Prophet 5 are both from the 1970s. Despite the Minimoog's status as a collector's item today, it had roughly the same retail price as the DX7 in the 1980s--around $2000 USD. The Prophet 5 was more expensive at $4000, but it was also an incredibly successful, flagship synthesizer. Of the synthesizers listed--Prophet 5, Oberheim OB-Xa, and Minimoog, only the Minimoog was made primarily out of discrete components. The others relied heavily on integrated circuits from SSM or CEM. (Obviously they all contain discrete components--but the synth modules in a Prophet 5 or Oberheim OB-Xa are basically ICs with some support circuitry.) Sequential went out of business after developing the Prophet VS. Although it bears the "Prophet" name, it is a digital (or hybrid) synthesizer. It uses wavetables (like the PPG), but four of them simultaneously, with a Curtis VCF. It had a novel architecture (therefore confusing), the synthesizer itself was expensive, and there were some QA issues. It used TMS DSPs plus some custom ICs designed by Sequential. Apparently, during the design of the Prophet VS, there were various problems with the ICs that were fixed with kludges--Sequential wasn't in a financial position to make revisions to the ICs. In other words, the R&D cost for digital synths was too high.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    By the mid-80s the analogs were seen as last decade's sound for last year's people. They were immensely unfashionable, and by the beginning of the 90s they were being sold off for bargain prices. The low end of the analog market had been captured by budget polysynths from Korg and especially Roland which had most of the sound at much less of the price. The problem wasn't the cost of digital R&D, it was commoditisation which turned a high-margin super expensive boutique professional market into a low-margin semi-pro and amateur commodity market with cheaper, less exclusive and less prestigious products. The high-end market essentially disappeared and so do its distribution and promo channels. What was left supported a much smaller number of companies. All of the headline synth companies went under at that point, no matter what tech they used - Sequential, Oberheim, Moog, PPG, ARP, Ensoniq, E-mu, and even Fairlight and eventually Synclavier. As well as also-rans like Octave, Gleeman, Crumar and Siel. Korg also went under and were bought out by Yamaha. Yamaha survived because it's a huge zaibatsu with deep pockets. Even with the DX7 the synth division is a sidenote on its bottom line. Roland are also a huge corporation - mostly immensely profitable while also having street-level cool - and weathered the 80s and early 90s with some functional but clever hybrid models at relatively affordable prices. Around 2005 the boutique market started to reappear, but aimed less at professionals and more at now-affluent collectors and dabblers who "always wanted one of those", and/or are willing to drop $$$$$ on something spendy just to prove they can. So you get hipster-toy module makers in the Eurorack space, wildly overpriced Veblen toys like the OP 1, remakes of Classic Brands™, and various clones and reissues in both hardware and software form. It's very nostalgic and backward looking, and I suspect there will be another shakeout before the end of the decade.

afro88 4y ago

You mean the Prophet-5, not to be confused with the Prophet VS. His comeback is legendary. The Prophet 6 is huge in music today, not to mention all the other new and rereleased synths he fostered.

ushakov 4y ago
could you name couple songs off your head where Prophet 6 can be heard? which genres?
- boffinAudio 4y ago
  Orbital use the Prophet 6 extensively. So did Aphex Twin. And Frank Zappa used the Prophet 5 ..
  - boomlinde 4y ago
    I am sure that you are referring to the Prophet 5, which unlike the Prophet 6 was released during Zappa's lifetime.
    - boffinAudio 4y ago
      Yes, thanks for that correction ..
- afro88 4y ago
  Any James Blake song for example.
- auto 4y ago
  Radiohead’s Everything in its right place : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnXxh5U25Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnXxh5U25Y
  - i_am_proteus 4y ago
    The Prophet 6 was released after this song was made— it used a Prophet 5. But the two synths sound very similar.

DennisP 4y ago

And most recently, teamed up with Tom Oberheim again for the OB-X8, being released right about now.

SeanLuke 4y ago

If I may: Dave Smith did not popularize the polyphonic analog synthesizer. That was Tom Oberheim, with his 4-voice and 8-voice SEM module systems (and there were earlier examples than that using voice division). What Dave Smith did with the Prophet-5 (not V) was something much more important. The Prophet-5 was the first significant synthesizer on the market with patch storage and recall, and this required for the first time RAM and a CPU in a synthesizer. Patch storage was absolutely revolutionary. It changed the entire synthesizer field. Realizing the potential of a CPU inside a synthesizer, Dave Smith then went on to propose what later became MIDI.

musicale 4y ago
It's silly to try to minimize the impact of the Prophet 5 in making analog polysynths mainstream (especially in popular music), or the general impact of towering figures like Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim. I think of the 4/8-voice as predecessors to later analog polysynths (including models from Sequential, Oberheim, etc.) because they were more like a collection of mono (SEM) modules that you could play polyphonically. The Korg Mono/Poly and even the DSI Tetra are a bit like that too (and kind of fun to play polyphonically in voice cycling mode where every voice is a bit different.) We are amazingly fortunate to have modern incarnations of Sequential and Oberheim making amazing instruments, from the Prophet 5 reissue (and affordable/portable Take 5) to the upcoming OB-X8.