DSI Prophet Rev2 16-Voice

your right, your hand often obscures
the screen. Similarly, if you want to
change patches and banks with your
left while playing with your right. Also
when programming and tweaking
settings I often accidently turned the
Patch and/or Bank knobs rather than
the Parameter and Value knobs which
resulted in me completely losing my
in-progress patch; perhaps a ‘long
press’ mode could be implemented
for the Misc parameters button which
could disable the program/bank knobs
(when programming). Plus, I would
have included the direct bank and
patch buttons from the Prophet 6;
these would have enabled much
quicker patch access/recall and would
have allowed you to have ten patches
in front of you at once.
Moving on, while the wheels being
placed above the keyboard still isn’t
the most natural place to have them,
this does keep the overall length
down, which means less bulk to carry.
Next to the wheels is the unison
button, which places up to 16 DCOs
four LFOs and eight assignable mod
slots) is also much easier to set up
and all modulation resides on the left
of the panel; simply hold Source and
turn any dial to set mod source, and
hold Destination and turn any dial to
set destination. Easy! And to set up
velocity or pressure as a source, just
tap or deep-press any key. One caveat
– I loved how on the P12 you could
press and hold LFO1’s button and
simultaneously edit all four LFOs; you
can’t do that here but it could be a
future fi rmware improvement.
in a subtle or monstrous stack! Again,
I’d like a long press mode for unison
to set the number of voices/chord
mode in combination with the value
dial, as currently this involves menu
diving. Also, it’s counter-intuitive that
you have to menu dive to set multi/
legato triggering.
Minor beefs aside, the rest of the
new panel is more logically laid out
than the 08 with all three envelopes
placed together on the right (fi lter,
amp, auxiliary). The comprehensive
modulation section (which includes
FX, SEQUENCER AND ARPEGGIATOR
T he biggest upgrade on the Rev2 is the addition of the FX engine, which allows you to take
the core sound a whole lot further and houses several digital effects including chorus,
phasers, fl angers, reverb, digital and BBD delay emulations, distortion, ring mod and a
resonant high-pass fi lter. These effects all sound high-quality and are musically voiced to
complement the DCO sound engine – each effect also has two modulatable parameters
and a modulatable mix parameter (which greatly extends the usefulness of the effects and
the Rev2’s general sonic palette). However, you can’t use more than one effect per-layer
(as on the P6). Also, the digital delay doesn’t sound as wide as on the P6 (which I’m
hoping can be tweaked in
a fi rmware update). The
64-step poly-sequencer
(with transpose) is a great
sketch pad that can help
form the backbone of
whole tunes, live or in the
studio, while the gated
sequencer is great for
complex step-based
modulation sequences
and has four tracks to play
with. The arpeggiator has
several modes including
random and assign
(though no poly mode)
and like the sequencer, it
syncs to MIDI-clock.
THE ALTERNATIVES
Behringer
DeepMind 12
£999
Behringer’s fi rst
synth has a 12-voice,
poly-chainable
DCO-based engine,
three envelopes,
4-octave keybed with
aftertouch and a
modulatable
FX engine.
www.music-
group.com/brand/
behringer/home
Roland JD-XA
£1,579
The XA is a super-
versatile machine,
featuring a 4-voice
analogue polysynth/
four independent
analogue
monosynths, paired
with a 4-part
64-voice digital
engine, with vocoder
and FX.
www.roland.com
Alesis
Andromeda A6
£2,000+ used
Now discontinued,
the A6 was the
16-voice modern
analogue poly. It
featured a monstrous
VCO-driven engine,
digital FX, analogue
distortion, plus
Moog/Oberheim
fi lters with extensive
modulation options.
www.alesis.com
It’s the same distinctive-
sounding engine as the
Prophet 08 with some
indispensable tweaks
Reviews | DSI Prophet Rev2 16-Voice
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FMU325.rev_dsi.indd 80 31/10/2017 11:22