DSI Prophet 12

Fri Jan 25 06:54:20 CET 2013

As Andy pointed out, it's all relative.
the prophet 08 is around $2K, the 12 gets you 50% extra on voices and some
extras for $3K.
Again, the price is reasonable compared to his own stuff.
and yeah, you can buy a monophonic voyager for $3K or a 12 note polysynth,
I know where my money would go.

But this debate about pricing is why Tempest was killed, the world is so
used to paying peanuts for synths. DSP synths have really crippled the
market. Consider the inside of a DSP poly synth, maybe 3 or 4 large chips
(couple of DSPs, MCU), some interface and power supply.
The software will take a long to produce, so it has quite high development
costs, but the cost to "replicate" that software is almost zero!
Time to set up / test, again probably quite small, there's going to be very
little in the way of presets that need setting up/adjusting.

Now, inside there hardware synth there must be 12 sets of oscillators, 12
sets of filters, 12 sets of VCAs, then you have the MCU, plus any effects,
then the same interface logic and power supply.
Development of the circuit is where a lot of the work is, a lot more than
the DSP synth but there's still a hefty chunk of software in there.
Now this is where the REAL cost is, the cost to replicate the hardware is
far from zero, it's a minimum of 10 times the cost of the hardware for a
DSP synth! but again the software replication is also minimum.
time to setup / test, well test time no more than the DSP, but set up time
could be considerable. Consider the DW8000, 8 VCF/VCAs, each had 6 presets
to adjust and set up, just so the VCFs would track and everything would
sound the same on each voice.

Each voice board on Aurora is going to cost me around £100 in parts (I have
10 I want to build), then there s a control PCB (Budgeted around £80) and a
panel (Budgeted on £500), so that's £1580 before I even start writing the
software, or assembling it.

like I say, DSP synths and scales of economy (like korg and ms20mini, I bet
they do a run of 100,000 to start!) have made people forget just how much
work, time and cost there is in building a true hardware synth for a small
company like DSI (I think they're like 8 people?).

"relative" is a good word, as is "realistic".

Paul

On 25 January 2013 02:51, Komatos <komatos at comcast.net> wrote:

> I see your point, being a true analog synth with 12 note polyphony but
> it's still only duo phonic. That price is what similar analog synths like
> the Voyager, Andromeda, etc. cost because that is what the market is
> willing to bear.
>
> My counterpoint: why is the market (read musicians, especially hobbyist
> musos who don't earn $$$ making music) so willing to bear that high a
> price? Does it really cost that much in component costs & labor to make? Or
> is it highly inflated?
>
> --komatos/wasted
> home.comcast.net/~komatos
> Twitter: @KomatosRecords
>
>
> On Jan 24, 2013, at 8:42 PM, Andrew Tarpinian <andrewtarpinian at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> As in "analog synth with 12 voices..." street a little under 3. That's a
> pretty good price in comparison to the market, no? Everything is
> relative. A voyager is that price with one voice.
>
> I'm a freelancer and own my own business, most people would consider my
> day rate to be pretty high. But I don't always have work every day of the
> year and I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and don't
> own a car. It's all relative.
>
> On Jan 24, 2013, at 8:17 PM, Tony Scharf <noisetheorem at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I was gonna say....I do have a good paying job and that definitely isnt
> cheep!
> On Jan 24, 2013 7:15 PM, "Komatos" <komatos at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> $3000 US MSRP is relatively cheap? Wow Andy. You must have a great paying
>> job (or not much expenses) if you think that's cheap. I'm still paying off
>> my $900 Beat Thang (of which I financed $425 & paid the other $475 + tax &
>> SD cards in cash).
>>
>> Please don't take offense with the above comment, but for that price you
>> could buy a decent used car. I wish I could afford anything over $500
>> without financing for 6 months - a year.
>>
>> --komatos/wasted
>> home.comcast.net/~komatos
>> Twitter: @KomatosRecords
>>
>>
>> On Jan 24, 2013, at 7:49 PM, Andrew Tarpinian <andrewtarpinian at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> On Jan 24, 2013, at 11:31 AM, Tony Scharf <noisetheorem at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I am going to own this one:
>>
>> http://www.davesmithinstruments.com/products/prophet12/index.php
>>
>>
>> Ok I watched the video... now that's a synthesizer! I think though you
>> really must wear a cape while playing it.
>>
>> How the fuck is it so (relatively) cheap?
>>
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