Sequential announced Prophet-5 Voice Expansion and New OS

Sequential has announced two major enhancements for the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 Rev 4 synthesizers. The first is an easy-to-install voice expansion card for the Prophet-5 that expands its polyphony to 10 voices, enabling it to benefit from the second enhancement — a new OS that adds bi-timbral, stack and split capability to 10-voice Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 synths.

With a ten-voice instrument and the new 2.0 OS, players can stack two different programs together for more powerful, complex sounds. Each program is allocated 5 voices of polyphony, allowing 5-note bi-timbral operation. Alternatively, players can split the keyboard into two separate performance zones, each with a different program. This allows for bi-timbral performance of bass and leads, or bass and pads, for example.

To use the new stack/split feature, Prophet-10/expanded Prophet-5 owners will need to upgrade to version 2.0 of the operating system. The OS upgrade is provided free of charge to Prophet owners and is available on Sequential’s website. The Prophet-5 voice expansion card is available directly from Sequential and includes instructions for installation.

“We’re excited to bring stack and split capability to 10-voice Prophets,” said Sequential founder Dave Smith. “It gives even more musical versatility to an already awesome-sounding instrument. Musicians are going to love the sound design possibilities of bi-timbral stacks. And players will be able to make good use of splits in live performance.”

Sequential’s CEO, David Gibbons had this to say about the enhancements: “There’s nothing more satisfying than making a legendary instrument even better than its original incarnation. Turning the Prophet-10 or an expanded Prophet-5 into a bi-timbral synth takes it to new places as an expressive instrument. That’s always been Sequential’s first priority: Putting great-sounding, expressive musical tools into the hands of musicians.”

The Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 Rev 4 reintroduced the music world to Sequential’s most famous and beloved instrument: the Prophet-5. The instruments revisit a landmark era in American analog synthesizer design and are an authentic and authoritative return to roots for the company.

Faithful to the original, the instruments feature five voices with two multi-waveform analog oscillators, resonant analog low-pass filters and amplifiers, and a filter and amplifier envelope per voice. Modulation is provided by a multi-waveshape LFO and Poly Mod, a ground-breaking modulation scheme for its time that allowed the filter envelope and oscillator B to be routed to a variety of destinations including filter cutoff frequency, oscillator A frequency, and oscillator A pulse width.

The Prophet-5 voice expansion card has a US MAP of $899 and is available directly from Sequential. It is compatible with both keyboard and desktop models of the Prophet-5.