The 12dB/octave mode refuses to be so vulgar, and delivers a refined timbre that I like a lot.Īlthough the principles of filtering and warping external audio signals using a synthesizer are well understood, the Mopho has a rather neat trick up its hybrid sleeve. The 24dB/octave mode will whistle, whine and shriek with the best of them, happily self‑oscillating at higher resonance values. But when you apply resonance, their true characters are revealed. With no resonance applied, the differences between these are not as great as you might expect.
#Sequential circuits pro one monophonic or polyphonic pro#
Nonetheless, the Mopho can enter timbral territory forever denied to the Pro One because its filter has two modes: the traditional 24dB/octave mode and a less aggressive 12dB/octave mode. But when I patched some filter‑dominated lead and bass patches on the Pro One I found that I could emulate all of them closely on the Mopho. Of course the Mopho has those sub‑oscillators and the Pro One can generate multiple waveforms simultaneously but, fundamentally, the two instruments can sound very similar.Īlthough the OnChip filter in the Mopho is a descendent of the CEM3320 chip used in the Pro One, the sonic differences between the two synths are a bit more noticeable here, especially when you ask the filters to jump through some of their more esoteric hoops. Although there were differences, these were too small to care about. With this in mind, I placed the Mopho and a controller keyboard next to my Pro One and started the review by comparing their sawtooth, triangle waves and pulse waves (the last at various widths) all with the filters wide open. You can't have stronger confirmation than that! Making Sounds
Indeed, open up a Mopho, and written on the motherboard is says 'Pro One II'. Nevertheless, if you approach the Mopho as a monophonic 08, just as the Pro One was regarded as the monophonic Prophet 5, you'll not go far wrong. On the other hand, the Mopho omits a few of the 08's refinements such as user‑selectable velocity‑ and pressure‑response curves. Most obviously, the Mopho adds a useful square wave sub‑oscillator to each oscillator, a handful more modulation sources and destinations, and it has an external audio input, the lack of which was one of the few deficiencies of the 08. But there are differences between the two. Indeed, the similarities between the Prophet 08 and the Mopho are so great that you can use the control surface of an 08 as a programmer for its little brother. Its dual oscillators are DCOs, its low‑pass filter is on the same chip manufactured for the 08, and the four LFOs and three contour generators are calculated digitally and then converted to control voltages. Some people have already described the Mopho as one voice of a Prophet 08 and to a large extent that's correct. The Mopho's rear panel features (from left to right) headphone out, left and right audio outputs, audio input, MIDI In and Out/Thru and a socket for the 13V external power supply.
I appreciate that the build cost was kept to a minimum, but this is one area in which I think that DSI have gone a bit too far. For an instrument of this size and price, the use of a wall‑wart is acceptable, but there's no on/off switch, so the only ways to switch the Mopho off are at the mains socket or by pulling out the power connector, both of which generate a thunk. Round the back there are quarter‑inch sockets for the audio input (which also generates a gate signal and acts as an envelope follower), audio out (left & right) and headphones, MIDI In and Out DIN sockets (the latter of which can double as a Thru) and a socket for a 13V DC adaptor. Looking as if someone has hewn it from a section of a Waldorf Q control panel, it offers just 10 rotary encoders (including four assignable performance knobs), two potentiometers (input gain and output volume), six buttons and a 2x16‑character screen. Physically, there's not a lot to the Mopho. It's the DSI MOnoPHOnic synthesizer, or Mopho for short. But it's not the keyboard‑based monosynth you might have expected, it's a small yellow box that looks more like an effects unit than an instrument. Unsurprisingly, I haven't been the only one thinking along these lines, because here it is. But if the Prophet 08 - which in many ways replaces vintage polysynths such as the Prophet 5, 10, 600 and T8 - has not been as widely adopted as I had envisaged, maybe it would have been different if DSI had manufactured a low‑cost successor to the Pro One. To my pleasure, I was able to give it an almost unreserved 'thumbs‑up', so I have to admit that I am a little surprised at how few I see on stage and in the studios I visit. The latest synth from Dave Smith owes more than a little to its illustrious ancestor, the Sequential Circuits Pro One, but costs only £299 $399.
0 kommentar(er)
