Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Dave Smith Instruments announces the Mopho x4


From GearJunkies:
"Dave Smith Instruments is just a week away from introducing DSI's new Mopho x4 synthesizer keyboard to the world. This new synth is polyphonic Mopho keyboard! The Mopho x4 is the newest addition to DSI's revered line of analog subtractive synthesizers. Building upon the same award winning voice architecture of the Mopho and Mopho Keyboard, the Mopho x4 boasts huge sound and 4 voice polyphony in an ideally sized, portable, and elegantly designed package. Use it to create huge unison basses, creamy leads, maniacal sequences, and ethereal pads. The Mopho x4 is sure to satisfy all your polyphonic analog synthesis needs.

Arturia Prophet-V2 Review


A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Arturia stepping up their game recently and revamping their line of softsynths into the new 64-bit future, meaning they'll run better on newer machines that have 64-bit processing.  Since this blog has been around for only a year, this offers me a unique opportunity to revisit some of their older plugins.  I was given 3 for review, and the first one I'll be talking about is the classic Prophet-V2 plugin, based on the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5.

If you don't know, the Prophet 5 is a classic.  It's been incredibly popular since its release in 1978, and was a huge step forward for synthesizer technology, being one of the first to have patch memory and polyphonic sound -- hence the "5", for the 5 voices, in the name.  The synthesizer has been used by so many greats-- off the top of my head, Phil Collins-- that its status as legend has propelled its price point up into the thousands range.  Enter Arturia, who take classic and convert them to code so the average musician can enjoy and perform with the sounds of the legends.