The Prophet 5 was released in 1978 by newcomer California company Sequential Circuits. Big deal, at the time who had ever heard of Sequential Circuits? However the Prophet 5 offered users to store their sounds in preset memory—with the press of a single button the Prophet would instantly call up another pre-programmed sound. In 1978, this was simply miraculous and the Prophet 5 became THE synth for professional users to own. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Prophet 5 also featured five voices of polyphony, a killer tone, quality hardware and a beautiful finished wooden chassis. Thus a legend was born and Sequential Circuits redefined the world of synthesizers.

In fact the Prophet 5 would have been a landmark instrument with just its programmable memory. However, the Prophet 5 was also an instrument capable of amazing power and grace—as well as being blessed with bags of character. Compared to other synths that existed before and long after the Prophet 5′s heyday, the little Prophet can still hold its own. Truly a remarkable instrument in capable and knowledgable hands. Time has not diminished one iota of the greatness of the Prophet 5. Read More »

The Oberheim OB-Xa was released in 1981 amidst a market gone ape for polyphonic analogs like the current darling, the Prophet 5 by Sequential Circuits. The OB-Xa’s predecesser, the OB-X was designed to directly compete with the Prophet by offering polyphony, memories, and a fat beefy analog sound. The OB-X was, as it turned out, a bit of a reliability nightmare and thus the design was re-thought, Curtis chips—like those found in the new revision 3 Prophet 5′s—were added, and thus the OB-Xa was born.

The OB-Xa is a massive synth. Massive looking. Massive sounding. Featuring a cosmetic overhaul and general technical improvements (and admittedly some losses like oscillator crossmodulation) over the OB-X, the OB-Xa became a very popular high-flight synthesizer among professionals. Traditional rock and heavy metal musicians especially became enamored with the Oberheim’s thick sound that was capable of meshing with guitar music, as well as cutting through when need be. Quickly, the OB-Xa became the weapon of choice for keyboardists in groups as diverse and unlikely as Queen, Prince, Styx, Van Halen, The Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode, Faith No More, Europe, and Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force. Gary Numan himself has gone on record to call the OB-Xa his favorite “analogue synth ever.” Read More »

The Clavia Nord Modular, one of the few synths everybody can agree is pretty damn cool. It is the ideal synthesizer for anybody who doesn’t want to drop the money on a real modular synth, but still wants the freedom of modular.

First of all, for the sound. The Nord Modular can basically make almost any sound in any range. From a sub-bass that will drop below your hearing, to pads as smooth as a baby’s ass, to leads that are whinier than a goth holding a razorblade, to funky effects that nothing can come close to, the Nord Modular can do it, and do it pretty well. The options for you sounds are almost endless (I don’t want to take the time to calculate out every single possible combination of modules and settings, but it’s in the trillions). The sound, which is a not too digital 24 bit/96 Khz signal, can get pretty damn close to true analog. Read More »

I recently came across this unit in my quest for a DAW. It has impressive features and a nice price.

The portable (16.75″ L x 12.5″ W x 4″ D) AW16G can record up to eight simultaneous tracks of 16-bit, CD-quality digital audio without data compression. Each track features up to eight virtual tracks and records directly to the internal 20 GB IDE hard drive. In addition, up to 16 tracks may be exported all at once as WAV files to CD ROM for detailed editing on a personal computer. The unit is built with solid construction, and has an overall professional design. Read More »

I will start by saying this is not a synthesizer I was excited about the first time I heard of it. Another mid priced, generic VA. Why are they even bothering? I ignored it because I was convinced it was going to be a thoroughly unimpressive piece of gear. I didnt even know it had been released when I ran into it in the store last week. I saw it sitting on a stand in the prestigious company of an ms2000, which I assumed to be its closest competition, and a microkorg.

Walking over to it I was a bit surprised to find it was not housed in a flimsy plastic, or even thin metal casing like the ms2000. Synths in this price range usually seem to have a lightweight plasticky feel to them but the ion, while being quite slim (maybe 4 or so inches tall) feels sturdy and a good bit heavier than I expected. Looking over its metallic silver body reveals a nice sized graphic display which was the next thing to surprise me. With a case like it has they had to cut corners somewhere.. where was the 2 line lcd with everything abbreviated beyond any recognition? The next thing to surprise me were its knobs, 30 of them I believe- I felt safe in assuming that with a fairly heavy duty case and a graphic display like that the pots would surely have been straight out of the radio shack reject barrel yet another pleasant surprise, the pots are infinite spin and they feel very solid with none of the cheap feeling wiggle that the ms2000 sitting above has in such great quantity. A firm twist of the ions knobs poses no risk of breaking them off. By this time I was becoming fairly interested because so far as build quality goes it had already beat the pants off of the competition, but physical construction and sound quality are two separate things and even with the initial impression it had made on me I was still not harboring high hopes about the sound. Read More »