I lost count of the times I saw first-time users trying to select a parameter by pressing the painted tab on the front panel instead of the corresponding row switch at the left and column switch below.

Typically for a mid-'80s keyboard, it only had a three-character seven-segment LED display for user feedback, but at least the numbers were displayed in the decimal system, instead of in hexadecimal as in the Mirage's two-character LED display! Also, you didn't have to keep a separate laminated list of the user parameters to hand as you did on the Mirage all the available parameters were shown on the front panel, even if it was a bit tricky at first to use the combination of horizontal and vertical membrane switches surrounding the parameter rows to select the one you wanted to work on. Looping & MappingĪctually, the operating system of the Prophet 2000 only looked good from an ease-of-use point of view when compared to the Mirage. However, finishing the session with the Prophet placated them, and when I transferred the samples across to the Mirage via the newly implemented MIDI Sample Dump, the sound quality was more impressive than if they had been sampled from the tape by the Mirage itself. The Waterboys had paid £1800 for their Mirage, so they were a bit cheesed off to discover that for a couple of hundred quid more, it would soon be possible to get a much better-sounding sampler that wasn't quite so difficult to use. I seem to remember I was taking brass samples from a multitrack so that Karl could play 'The Whole Of The Moon' live when Roy Goudie (now at Emu, but then recently transferred to Sequential UK from Moog) turned up at the studio with the Prophet. The day before the launch in London, I was at Livingstone Studios doing some sampling with a newly acquired Ensoniq Mirage for The Waterboys' Karl Wallinger (then their keyboard player, and now of World Party). I was quickly able to strike a deal whereby I would receive a machine to do the launch in London which I would be able to keep and use afterwards.

What's more, my old boss from Sequential was there in Milan, and he was looking for someone to do the British launch the following month. Imagine my joy, then, when I discovered that the Prophet actually sounded better than the eight-bit EII. The best I was hoping for at that price point was a sampler that sounded better than the Ensoniq Mirage I couldn't imagine it equalling the Emulator. Having managed to make our arrival there seem like a coincidence, I managed to gain early access, and was on the booth when the show opened. The first public presentation of the Prophet 2000 was at the Italian Music Fair in Milan, so I cunningly arranged my holiday that year to be on Italy's Lake Como to coincide with this (neglecting to mention to my girlfriend that the planned visit to Milan was on the first day of the show). When I got wind of the much more affordable price Sequential were quoting for a Prophet 2000 (around £2000, appropriately enough) I knew I had to hear one, and laid plans to get an early listen to the machine. In 1983, I had worked for Sequential as a UK demonstrator/rep, but by the mid-'80s, I was working as a freelance Emu EII programmer, as you may recall if you read my two-part Emulator II Retrozone feature in SOS a few years ago (see However, I couldn't afford my own EII - they cost around 10,000 pounds at the time - so I had to use rental units on sessions when clients didn't have their own. So when Sequential Circuits (the company behind the classic Prophet 5 and 10 polysynths) announced that the next Prophet would be called the 2000, and would feature 12-bit sampling, it really seemed that the future had arrived early. To put the technology of the era in context, eight-bit sampling was the order of the day, unless you could afford the tens of thousands of pounds needed to buy a New England Digital Synclavier. Now that the year 2000 has come and gone without any of the apocalyptic nonsense we were promised, it is difficult to remember just how far off it seemed back in 1985. We take you back to the dawning days of SOS, when 12-bit was king. Photo: Sequential Prophet 2000 Mark Ewingīack in 1986, Sequential's Prophet 2000 represented a genuine breakthrough in sampling technology, and became a 'secret weapon' for up-and-coming programmers. SOS co-founder Paul Gilby came up with the oriental theme, the counting frame to echo the review headline 'Increased Prophets' and to comment on the increasing Japanese competition US samplers had to confront.

The original picture used to accompany SOS's April 1986 review of the Prophet 2000.

Nowhere prophet torrent