5 years after the Prophet-6 was introduced, Sequential has shared a video, embedded above, that demonstrates an ‘Easter egg’ feature of the Prophet-6 & OB-6.
In the video, synthesist J3PO demonstrates a hidden “spring reverb thwack” Easter egg, which works on both OB-6 and Prophet-6.
This is common knowledge since they came out. There’s an accelerometer at the top-right of the main board on both units.
Does anyone know if this works on the desktop module versions?
Yes it should work the accelerometer is on the mainboard which is common to both versions. You may need to give it a decent whack though.
this is why i’m really hoping one of the affordable 2600s is going to keep a real physical spring reverb. Such a unique effect when you hear the real thing, even tho it’s simple technology.
The Behringer 2600 uses an emulation – “Realistic digital spring reverb for inspiring sound effects”.
Korg is expected to put out cheaper variations on their ARP 2600 FS, which has a physical reverb tank – but nothing official is out on that yet
I get that although a real spring tank is only ~$25 there are reasons to skip it in a budget synth.
But to me there’s something quite sad about using a digital emulation of this, when everyone makes so much fuss about not emulating the vcos and vcfs etc..
What I’d suggest to Korg / Behringer is to have the dsp but to leave space and connections for customers to fit their own tanks, e.g. accutronics, if they want to do that.
Is it me or is the keyboard distorting rather nastily?
Also, it doesn’t sound very much like when I slap my actual spring tank — sounds more like a mic’d slap going into a tank than wobbly springs.
Yes it’s really just a cool gimmick. I’m pretty sure it was Dave Smith himself as well as a few other DSI guys that told us about the gimmick feature when the OB-6/P6 first came out. Obviously it’s just a simulated spring and not very accurate or all that good. It uses a small NXP MMA7660 accelerometer and the SHARC DSP to simulate a spring.
Sorry if I sounded grumpy, I’m all in favour of easter eggs and the demo has a nice groove.
That guy is a monster!
The behringer 2600 will have the same easter egg – you just have to drop it from 8 feet off the floor.
The video = a brave attempt at integrating this meaningless gimmick into a song
Now Nick Batt has an excuse to slap every new synth that much harder – “Did they include the spring reverb emulation on this one?. No? Pity about the dodgy build quality, doesn’t seem durable.”.