|
You can get the Prophecy by itself, or as an option with the Korg Trinity. This is the closest thing to a head-on competitor to the VL1, and it's not very close. My take on the Korg Prophecy is that it has lots of knobs and controllers, including a unique ribbon/wheel device, which some players may like. It has fairly powerful processing, and it is pegged as a lead instrument with limited polyphony, but loads of expressiveness, like the VL1. You can do lots of sonic things with it. The people who will like the Prophecy the most are people who like synthetic sounds, who like to program their synth a lot and customize the sounds, and who like lots of different kinds of performance controls. When it comes to physical modeling of acoustic instruments, however, it's not there yet. In fact, it looks to me like the folks at Korg decided that they could not compete with the VL1, so they went in another direction and that's what we have in the Prophecy. A quick trip down to your friendly local synth dealer, and you can check it out for yourself. Just dial up one of the acoustic emulations, or ask a salesperson to do so, and try the factory patch first. Then try tweaking it and see if either you or he can get it to sound like a real one. Then try another acoustic patch. Try them all -- they didn't include very many. Then note the way that the controllers work, how you might perform with this instrument, and ask yourself if you could get into playing like that. Korg may yet come out with some stiff competition for the VL1, and I for one would like to see it. For right now, though, we're awaiting further developments. I love the Prophecy's big main screen, and I suspect that we will see big screens like it showing up on most of the mid to high end synths in the future. I'm not so crazy about the time-sliced (blinking) displays on the small screens. The user interface is more complex than most synths, including the VL1. This is partly justifiable, because it has lots of controls, but it still is complicated. You'll be fortunate if you can find a salesperson who even half-way knows how to put it through its paces. I think there is a future in ribbon controllers, but I like the positioning and feel of the ones on the K2500 a little better than those on the Prophecy and Trinity. The Prophecy was not designed to take advantage of a breath controller like the VL1 is. It is not very acoustically oriented either, so you see it is a different design, and not a close competitor with the VL1. I have spent more space on the Prophecy because currently it is the major alternative to the VL1 for physical modeling. It is the only synth, other than the VL1, that does complete physical modeling of acoustic instrument sounds. You can reproduce your performances on it with midi, a major advantage over the synths described above. You can find out more about the Prophecy before going down to try one by reading Geary Yelton's review in the Feb '96 issue of Electronic Musician. |