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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,

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.
- piva00 4y ago
  > So you get hipster-toy module makers in the Eurorack space Which are used by artists all around (from amateur hobbyists to professional acts), they aren't "toy modules", there's been a lot of innovation in Eurorack and painting all of them as "toys" is a huge disservice to the whole format...
- radiowave 4y ago
  What ended up working during the late 80s and through the 90s were ASICs that could be reused in areas other than just "pure" synthesizers - digital pianos, home organs, PC soundcards (IIRC both Emu and Ensoniq ended up being bought by Creative, the SoundBlaster company). So this worked out well for those companies that were in a position to do a good job of both the ASIC and logic board development, and also use the resulting technology to address those broader markers - Yamaha being the pre-eminant example. (I agree with the point about the DX7 being a sidenote, but I'd say that all the other product lines that the tech eventually flowed into will have ended up being rather more than just a sidenote.) Regarding the current market, despite all the retreads, I do think there's more interesting stuff going on than there has been for a long time (certainly in comparison to the analogue synth revival of the 90s), and I hope that manages to continue happening, even as I also kind of hope that the retro-appeal stuff will simmer down a bit.
  - musicale 4y ago
    The A6 in the Alesis A6 Andromeda name refers, of course, to ASICs.
- musicale 4y ago
  I am a fan of the analog renaissance! They sound great and are fun to play. It's not just classic reissues (and improved versions) or clones either - there's a huge range of analog from cheap pocket synths to monster synths to hybrid to modular. One particularly great development is more affordable analog from the IK Multimedia UNO to the Korg Minilogue to the Sequential Take 5 to Behringer's Deepmind and Neutron (not to mention their clone army if it ever reaches production.)
teilo 4y ago
The VS does not use wavetables like the PPG. Vector synthesis is in a category of its own. It uses four single-cycle waveforms that can be selected individually, and one morphs among them in a 2D plane using a joystick or via envelopes and LFOs. It is not a crossfade, as it recalculates the resulting waveform on the fly. The result is similar to a wavetable, but in 2 dimensions.
- kilobaud 4y ago
  Well I'm pretty sure the oscillator bank in the VS does use wavetables, it would have no other way of supporting 127 different voices (including user-provided voices). (But you're correct that the approach to modulating sounds on a VS is fundamentally different to, say, a PPG wavetable synth.)
  - teilo 4y ago
    That's not what a wavetable is, by any definition relevant to synthesis. Of course the VS has waveforms stored consecutively in ROM, with 32 more stored in NVRAM. That's just data. In wavetable synthesis, an entire table of consecutive waveforms is loaded into an oscillator. In vector synthesis, 4 individual and arbitrary waveforms are loaded into an oscillator.
    - dietrichepp 4y ago
      I think of a wavetable as a system with multiple short, periodic waveforms, where you can interpolate between them. On the PPG, you get something like 32 waveforms, and interpolte between consecutive ones. On the Prophet VS, you get 4, and you interpolate between all 4 at the same time. It sounds like you use a different definition, which is fine. I don't think we're going to learn anything by litigating this kind of disagreement.
- jdkee 4y ago
  Chris Meyer, who worked at Sequential Circuits, designed the VS. Here is his take: https://learningmodular.com/the-story-of-the-prophet-vs/ https://learningmodular.com/the-story-of-the-prophet-vs/ RIP Dave Smith.
jdkee 4y ago
"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.)" I am currently recapping/restoring an Oberheim OB-Xa 8-voice. I just finished the power supply and now have eight voice cards that need about 13 parts, capacitors and mini-potentiometers, that need to be replaced on each. Each voice card has thirteen ICs but over one hundred discrete components. The main board has dozens of ICs and many other discrete components. The ICs replace the discrete components that comprised the oscillators, filters and VCAs but there are over a thousand discrete components in this synth. Comparing a Minimoog with a DX7 is apples and oranges. They were released 13 years apart. the Moog has one voice while the DX sixteen voices. The U.S. inflation calculator puts the Minimoog at $11,884 in today's dollars and the DX at $5,790.

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.

piva00 4y ago
> So you get hipster-toy module makers in the Eurorack space Which are used by artists all around (from amateur hobbyists to professional acts), they aren't "toy modules", there's been a lot of innovation in Eurorack and painting all of them as "toys" is a huge disservice to the whole format...
radiowave 4y ago
What ended up working during the late 80s and through the 90s were ASICs that could be reused in areas other than just "pure" synthesizers - digital pianos, home organs, PC soundcards (IIRC both Emu and Ensoniq ended up being bought by Creative, the SoundBlaster company). So this worked out well for those companies that were in a position to do a good job of both the ASIC and logic board development, and also use the resulting technology to address those broader markers - Yamaha being the pre-eminant example. (I agree with the point about the DX7 being a sidenote, but I'd say that all the other product lines that the tech eventually flowed into will have ended up being rather more than just a sidenote.) Regarding the current market, despite all the retreads, I do think there's more interesting stuff going on than there has been for a long time (certainly in comparison to the analogue synth revival of the 90s), and I hope that manages to continue happening, even as I also kind of hope that the retro-appeal stuff will simmer down a bit.
- musicale 4y ago
  The A6 in the Alesis A6 Andromeda name refers, of course, to ASICs.
musicale 4y ago
I am a fan of the analog renaissance! They sound great and are fun to play. It's not just classic reissues (and improved versions) or clones either - there's a huge range of analog from cheap pocket synths to monster synths to hybrid to modular. One particularly great development is more affordable analog from the IK Multimedia UNO to the Korg Minilogue to the Sequential Take 5 to Behringer's Deepmind and Neutron (not to mention their clone army if it ever reaches production.)

teilo 4y ago

The VS does not use wavetables like the PPG. Vector synthesis is in a category of its own. It uses four single-cycle waveforms that can be selected individually, and one morphs among them in a 2D plane using a joystick or via envelopes and LFOs. It is not a crossfade, as it recalculates the resulting waveform on the fly. The result is similar to a wavetable, but in 2 dimensions.

kilobaud 4y ago
Well I'm pretty sure the oscillator bank in the VS does use wavetables, it would have no other way of supporting 127 different voices (including user-provided voices). (But you're correct that the approach to modulating sounds on a VS is fundamentally different to, say, a PPG wavetable synth.)
- teilo 4y ago
  That's not what a wavetable is, by any definition relevant to synthesis. Of course the VS has waveforms stored consecutively in ROM, with 32 more stored in NVRAM. That's just data. In wavetable synthesis, an entire table of consecutive waveforms is loaded into an oscillator. In vector synthesis, 4 individual and arbitrary waveforms are loaded into an oscillator.
  - dietrichepp 4y ago
    I think of a wavetable as a system with multiple short, periodic waveforms, where you can interpolate between them. On the PPG, you get something like 32 waveforms, and interpolte between consecutive ones. On the Prophet VS, you get 4, and you interpolate between all 4 at the same time. It sounds like you use a different definition, which is fine. I don't think we're going to learn anything by litigating this kind of disagreement.
jdkee 4y ago
Chris Meyer, who worked at Sequential Circuits, designed the VS. Here is his take: https://learningmodular.com/the-story-of-the-prophet-vs/ https://learningmodular.com/the-story-of-the-prophet-vs/ RIP Dave Smith.

jdkee 4y ago

"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.)" I am currently recapping/restoring an Oberheim OB-Xa 8-voice. I just finished the power supply and now have eight voice cards that need about 13 parts, capacitors and mini-potentiometers, that need to be replaced on each. Each voice card has thirteen ICs but over one hundred discrete components. The main board has dozens of ICs and many other discrete components. The ICs replace the discrete components that comprised the oscillators, filters and VCAs but there are over a thousand discrete components in this synth. Comparing a Minimoog with a DX7 is apples and oranges. They were released 13 years apart. the Moog has one voice while the DX sixteen voices. The U.S. inflation calculator puts the Minimoog at $11,884 in today's dollars and the DX at $5,790.