19 thoughts on “U-He Repro-5, Inspired By The Prophet 5, Now Available”

1. Prophet-5, not V.

   1. True. Prophet V is a peice of software from Arturia. It’s a competitor to Repro, not an inspiration.

   2. Thanks for the feedback. Post updated!

2. Listen to these samples and then go to youtube and watch actual Prophet 5 or even the in production prophet 6 demos and you will surely see that software is still miles behind analog hardware in sound quality. This just sounded like a typical soft synth to me, not at all like the magical warmness of a real prophet 5 that Richard Wright of Pink Floyd used. At least they included the micro tuning feature like the original.

   1. I think this is a case of confirmation bias.. check this video with A/B comparisons..

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA_B6pP9AA

      The author let the audience guess in the comments.. No one had them all correctly.

   2. It wouldn’t be Synthtopia without someone making a comment like this.

   3. Sure, man, whatever you say: https://soundcloud.com/ned-bouhalassa/solar-winds-u-he-repro-5

3. U-HE has done it… once again…

   Simply an awesome piece of software!
   Congratulations, Mr. Heckmann & Team!

4. To me it sounds pretty good and it has an awesome design as well. Soft synths have come a very long way.

5. Wow! It does sound incredible! That percussive high res stuff is stunning.

6. Frodo’s idea of “magical warmness” amuses me a bit. Its like the LP vs. CD argument. The simple facts are that LPs sound warmer because of the compression required to keep the needle in the groove, whereas CDs sound cleaner because of the fuller dynamic range and lack of physical shmutz on the playback medium. I have both for exactly those reasons. He’s not big-W Wrong, but he’s also dismissing the great gains too much.

   Having owned a lot of hardware makes me love software because it really is 98% there for me. Whatever isn’t already at hand as a ready-to-go preset can generally be programmed from a close version. The effects are now jaw-droppers, so I can slot in whatever cream, bark or fuzz I need. That last imagined 2% of sonic purity simply isn’t an issue. You can also run your outputs into a blizzard of hardware modules & pedals that’ll add some good Warm for ya. I’ve owned 3 Prophets. This plug has the classic cream, plus FX, plus that defining poly-mod section, plus a mod matrix. Whaddaya WANT, for Bob Moog’s ghost to come over and make you an omelet? 😀

   1. I would argue that it wasn’t exactly the mastering compression that made analog sound “warmer”. In fact most CDs were cut with the same masters that were used for LPs. They didn’t remaster every album when CDs came out.

      But you are right about the”shmutz”. Analog “warmth” of LPs comes from the electro-mechanical compression inherent in the technology. You have an electric pulse generated by coils driving an electro- mechanical lathe cutting a groove into plastic which is then used to vibrate a mechanical needle connected to some other coils to generate an electric pulse which is then converted into sound via speakers with yet another set of coils. At every step of this scenario there is an electro-mechanical component whose physical response to every waveform is confined by the laws of physics.

      In other words, an LP can never reproduce a perfect square wave due to the restrictions of the components. They cannot respond quickly enough and so in effect “round off” waveforms to varying degrees producing a subjectively more pleasing, less harsh version of the waveform transients and spikes. This is even more compounded by music originally recorded on tape, which is affected in a similar way. The tape “rounds off” transients and spikes and square waves due to the physical limitations of the medium. All of this is very subtle of course, but it is perceivable.

      Digital, on the other, can reproduce waveforms perfectly, because the medium is a mathematical representation of the waveform. Because of this, digital does not impart any “warming” of the sound, ie “rounding off”. It just pukes out a perfect square wave and transients and spikes exactly how it digitized them.

      And it is this reason software synth makers realize the best way to emulate analog synths is to model the componentry, or at least the analog way the components reproduce the waveforms (and filters and envelopes). No synth makes a trully perfect square wave. The physical limitations of the electronics makes this impossible. Warmth mainly comes from the “imperfect” reproduction of waveforms.

7. For me the biggest difference in sound between analog and digital is the harmonic overdrive and distortion. Digital comes really close in most other ways but I love high gain tones so it’s analog all the way for me.

8. Uhe are always pushing the envelope when it comes to software synths. Good on them

9. Digital also has aliasing issues in the very high treble ranges. play a really high treble note with overdrive cranked and start doing pitch bends, any digital synth will fall apart and sound almost like a harsh white noise while analog remains smooth as silk.

   1. Dude, the early 2000s called, they want your soft synths back.

      1. I agree with Frodo. Softsynths nowadays sounds amazing, especially U-he’s Zebra has a super smooth analog sound, except in very high notes you still hear as in any other softsynth aliasing issues that sometimes really hurts. If you don’t use the usually filter techniques and you want hear lovely harmonic spikes in high frequencies hardware gear is still the game.

         1. You need to run your stuff on a high SR if you want to avoid aliasing. Or turn on oversampling if your plug in offers it (as u-he does).

10. Pleeeease post your comments about how hardware sounds better than software. I’ve only heard this about 200 million times and I need reminding of this on just about every. single. Synthtopia. post.