@@ilovegoogleandyoutube I started a new question on exactly that, suspect even if it works, there is additional proprietary hardware needed for control etc
Meanwell power supplies are actually very reliable. I have many deployed in outdoor enclosures powering remote security cameras and have never had one fail. Even had one go through a tornado and worked perfectly when we found it and dried it out.
There's a lot of industrial equipment out there with Mean Well PSUs; they use quality components. I have no idea if Sequential's price is out of line with other manufacturers. High parts markups are nothing new, unfortunately, but at least now it is easier to source parts from other vendors.
Is it possible to use switched mode supplies on audio circuits in a synth? I need to make a custom supply for something and thought it would be easier to use multiple off the shelf switched modes for all the protection circuits in them rather than design a full supply. Tried searching but I can't get a straight answer. I figure with the right filtering it should be OK?
@@jdmjesus6103with the right filtering and regulation for each rail, yes. A LOT of Eurorack power supplies work very similarly, and I've not had issues with using Meanwell SMPSes for my Eurorack systems personally.
@@jdmjesus6103 Yes. With the right filtering it will be likely be just fine, but switchers can be noisy so use good ones (MeanWell, TDK, etc.) with a high switching frequency. The only real problem you run into by using multiple supples is power sequencing. Sometimes circuits are very sensitive to one rail coming up to voltage before the others are ready. Most of the time there is enough tolerance that this is not an issue but you need to be aware of the possibility.
What I was expecting was just another angry rant. What you delivered is priceless information, that will give Prophet X owners real help. Awesome! (I don´t have this synthesizer.)
You are so calm when talking about your $4k brick. I would be sobbing if my PX did that, as I am not a technician by any means and would not be able to do a fix on my own. For that kind of cash, I would expect no problems. Evidently, that’s not the case anymore I guess… It’s odd that I have old analog synths that have never given me one problem! Thanks for your videos, keep them coming.
This is God-Tier content for the synth community. For it's specificity, I believe you make a very solid case in regard to your last video that was a huge, controversial hit, which I (FOR THE MOST PART!), agreed with. Instances of specificity like this, do in fact sell the point home. I'm curious to see how it moves the Q.A. Meter for manufacturers though, or whether the average customer is at all even informed or passionate enough to even care. But I'm totally with you here! You may've entered Pioneer Territory, in lieu of creating a totally new way for reviewers to rate synths... open the sucker up and analyze cost/benefit scenario for the consumer at the component level. Solid work Mr. Kraft, very Very Good work!
This synth has a lot of INCREDIBLE features. Like being able to change the start and end point of a sample loop plus the position of the loop. Fx not bad at all of for onboard fx. Great sounding hammond sample waves. Microtonal. Very good sounding filters- even better in stereo 8 bit mode. And sequential will help you keep any or their synths running for a flat 25$ fee. There are and abundace of ‘pros’ for this sampler synth. But the freeze/crash and ‘unable to reach procceesor’ messages when booting it up were just too indicative of an overall design that was not fully ironed out and i was thankfukly able to return my prophet xl on the 45tb day since purcing it
Living proof of your previous video . Loads of marketing and greatness just to retire a product couple of years down the line that has issues and goes dead. Thx for the troubleshooting video
My Kronos is a PC. With a USB soundcard and a control surface. Your Prophet X is a synth with a PC controlling it. The big difference is that your SEM chips are the actual audio path, it simply is not a software defined audio path. Even a Juno 60 is a computer that controls an analog synth. The fact that back in those days they developed their own digital control board rather than using a standard form factor PC mainboard makes no difference. Be glad that repairing has come so much easier since components can be replaced.
I would LIKE to own one but right now it's out of my reach. But I still enjoyed this video, always nice to know new stuff. And I'm really hoping that lots of X users will be helped by this very well put together video. Clear and concise as this kind of content should be.
thank you for these tips! Hope I can get it running again cause I love my 4k brick, no synth was ever as inspring to me as the Prophet X. It's a shame it's starting to break down so quickly
I paid 2300 euros for mine in December 2023. It has the Prophet 5 sound expansion. Disappointing to learn about these isues. Thank you for showing the fix!
Thanks for this video, Espen. Even if I don't own a ProphetX (and don't dream about that) it's helpful to those who have one and, more important, it gives us an idea of of what's inside these pricy things.
I don't see a problem with this synth having a pc as a "brain" (that was always a part of a digital synth). I do see a problem with the brand itself, lacking support for a customer who paid the high price for this amazing sounding when it was new (and there are still some brand new units available on stores). Not everyone would be able to identify the problem and solve it on their own! I'll keep that in mind if I ever think about buying a synth from this manufacturer...
@@tonykara Did I understood incorrectly, or did Espen Kraft said it wasn't anymore? My comment was based on it, and I do stand by the principle that a "premium" product should not only be a good product in itself, but also have a long service support (I know that even some premium cars don't have it anymore, but I also strongly disagree with that way of looking at customers). The same applies to the software that runs this synth, which doesn't bother me (at all) if it's Linux or Windows 😃, as long as it performs reliably and without bugs or crashes (even if it would require some updates until it gets stable). I have several japanese digital synths (some with over 30 years) which never had any software bug, and their OS wasn't that simple back when they were new, implying that those bugs were solved _before_ the synths were released in the market.. 😉 I also own a MODX+,, the Wavestate Module, and I haven't heard about any software bug yet. I spent decades with my old synths without even thinking that it had some form of computer and OS running under the hood, because they always worked - as musical instruments should. 😉 I will see how the Wavestate behaves in the long run (since it also runs on Linux), but theoretically, synths shouldn't behave like computers, because they aren't computers. 😉 They're not browsing the web while editing videos, running software synths and updating antivirus at the same time. 🙂 The code should be very simple by comparison, and much more focused on what it needs to do. I confess that I considered buying one a few months ago (new), because I really love the sound, features and look of this synth. But I don't look at synths like smartphones, that become paper weights after some years, no matter what their price was when new. My old Yamaha SY 77 was still on gigs with me on the second decade of its life with me, and still has very usable and unique sounds that I use in my small home studio. It needs a battery replacement, although it plays the original patches perfectly without it (it only needs a reset by pressing 3 keys, but the battery died a little after the 30 year old mark 👀). That's what I expect from a flagship synth, even if I don't expect it to last forever). If a synth costs 4.000 euros but ends up lasting 20 or 30 years, it ends up costing a lot less than we spend on smartphones and TV's over the same period. 🙂 If a digital synth lasts a long time, it will still sound (mostly) like it did when it was new. I don't expect my synths to become what my old iPads, smartphones (etc) have become, which is basically useless, even if the hardware still works fine today. Cheers
long-term maintainability is why the originals became classics. I highly doubt any company would keep their source code up-to-date in escrow, to be released when they drop support, or at least license it out to repair houses so the things could be fixed, but it would be very customer-friendly.
This is a great design! Standard user replacable parts (just like 80s synths). Man I wish more things where like this. It's not "lazy" to use standard off thr shelf parts, it's sensible and makes repair for us much easier!
Thanks Espen. Sorry that happened to yours! I did have to do the F1 thing about a year or maybe two years ago. Good to know about the other trix! Happy Holidays, maestro. - Tommy M. nyc. PS. I got my S700 samples into the S3000xl and sold the S700 AND the S7000 that I'd bought. I still have the SXM card if you need one, for pretty cheap sale.
Raspberry Pi boards are used in the newer KORG products like OPsix, Modwave, etc. You know why they use an off the shelf product, because coding it is easy and it doesn't take R&D, custom PCB design etc it's just cost saving for the manufacturer.
The PC guts are frankly to be expected, I can’t think of any other way they’d get the 8Dio samples to work. The ProphetXL is an odd one - I love mine, even if it is a bit temperamental. Solid repair!
I’m sure the PX would had been even more expensive, had they developed their own PSU and motherboard. Frankly, I see nothing wrong in using parts already invented, to hold costs down.
@@matszh I doubt you'd be singing the same tune if say Behringer had done this with one of their synths. All of you defending this, you'd all be ragging on Behringer till the end of time. No one is saying all virtual synths aren't just PC's inside. This one though, is literally something you can buy off Ali Express as a plain old consumer. Rose colored lenses.
@@raffitchakmakjian my issue with big B has never been the kit FWIW. My issue has been how they’ve treated folks - from Peter Kirn and DSI (suing the company) to Loopop.
@@matszh yep. We also need to remember the Prophet X/XL is almost a decade old! Computers have changed a lot since then! It’s such a lovely sound sculpting machine. I wish more companies would pursue and refine the road it was heading down!
@@matszh to add again - I can’t think of a way you’d get the massive 8Dio libraries to work without a traditional x86_64 computer somewhere in the mix. Keep in mind this was released in 2018 - ARM architecture was nowhere near as mature as it is now! I’d actually love to see Sequential take another crack at this with all the advances is computing that have happened since - I imagine we’d get something with a solid m.2 SSD, 32GB of RAM, and a nice ARM chip! I would even argue using traditional PC components is a benefit. This makes the unit easy to understand and maintain. I wish I could say the same for some of the other synths I have! The Prophet X will always be a divisive instrument. Those of us that love it, love it. Those that don’t, won’t. That’s fine! Not every tool is for everyone, and that’s what makes this fun. If Espen doesn’t enjoy his, he can always find someone who will, and that’s just as wonderful! 🥰
Your band has 10 Pro X's? What the hell are you playing? I'm guessing symphonic prog doom jazz fusion metal, with Rick Wakeman-esque sparkly capes blowing in the wind. That, or 80s pop covers.
My PX has the same problem. Contacted Sequential and I currently have a replacement motherboard and power supply winging their way from Sequential HQ in San Francisco. I will be changing them over myself and then have to post back the old ones - which I imagine will cost a bit in postage. Good support, but shame this has become such a common problem. Thanks Espen for all the useful info.
@@JimAlfredson Well, exactly. They're no longer making or enhancing the product, but they always are keen to support their existing customers - they don't want to piss off the potential buyers of their future synths!
This reminded me of the terrible heartbreak and disappointment i endured during the brief spell my that my Kurzweil K2500R rack workstation was at the centerpiece of my studio, it started crashing and no matter how many parts I sourced including engine board and Kdfx board swap I could not get it back on its feet ever again. It's finally gone and I am never buying an expensive digital workstation Synth ever again.
Very interesting, i don't own a Prophet X but i have a Rev2, looking at a teardown the Rev2 doesn't have an ITX board inside so i would expect this information isn't any help if i have issues in the future but still interesting to see the insides of your synth. Thanks for taking the time to film the process for people and provide the information on parts etc.
Disappointing Sequential made it this way in 2018 or whenever it was. Korg with their super expensive Oasys in the mid 2000's did the same thing. I can kind of give Korg a pass on that in away, since it had vast polyphony and a huge screen and other things workstations didn't have at the time. But they used a PC motherboard, AOpen, and the capacitors fail, and repairs are needed, due to copy protection (they didn't want anyone just cloning the drive and having a cheap pirated Oasys) some repairs can be tricky. For the price I'd like the Phophet X to have been made with a bit less 'off the shelf' components. Some modern synths (I think Jupiter X, Yamaha Montage?) have an internal power supply which is just an external power supply plastic brick inside the case with a short extension cord. :/
Korg used an industrial version motherboard though. I think my Oasys is around 18 years old and is still working. You are right about the failures but I think it's a far more reliable instrument than the Prophet X appears to be.
Brick and extension cord inside the case is how I converted some ancient 90s MIDI-over-gameport keyboard into MIDI-over-USB. The device originally got +9V from the game port, and used a 7805 to step it down. I just bypassed the 7805 and put a +5V brick in there instead. I also stuck a USB hub in there, with two of the ports exposed for my EWI and Nanopad.
"this synth is just a PC" always seemed like a strange complaint to me. digital synths have always been Just Computers with some special sound hardware attached. the roland s-series samplers are a weird hybrid of MSX and intel embeded chips, the jupiter-8 is a ZX spectrum with no video, as are the emulator I and many akai samplers. the phophet VS and ensoniq EPS and a ton of others are classic macs. it's very rare to find a digital synth that actually runs its operating system on a DSP chip or custom silicon and not whatever CPU architecture is popular in its era.
as for that power supply... yeah that's garbage. they should be using something standard and interchangeable like a low noise flex-atx PSU that could just be unscrewed and replaced with any other psu meeting the power requirements off the shelf.
Yes, why should anyone use something else than a standard embedded PC for a "cheap" synth these days. They aren't sold that many times, weird CPU architectures or complex ASICs aren't worth it. And it's digital anyway. It doesn't matter what part is flipping the bits.
It's fundamentally a position of purpose and reliability. Once you're packing in a modern mini-pc, you're burning up a ton of processing to things that don't actually pertain to the core function of the instrument [even if its running linux]. While Linux may be one of the better options out there, the reliability aspect is a factor because there are aspects of the machine that can take it out of service, that have nothing to do with the job its supposed to do. Its definitely a cost-effective, and easier development path to get something out the door fast, but there are a ton of trade-offs for product life and use. In my own space its the argument of Arduino vs. bare-metal coding. Arduino is great for tinkerers and amateurs, but it has a huge amount of bloat that takes away from the performance of the microcontroller. The development time to get a basic bare-metal library up is not insignificant, but the trade-off is much higher performance than layer-upon-layer of software abstractions that burn cycles with errands before doing the core job you need it to do.
@FormulaXFD As long as thermals aren't a problem (and the synth is not battery powered) and the realtime constraints aren't violated, burning up cycles doesn't matter.
It is ironic that this is a sequential. i always blamed Korg and Dave Smith for the computerized beginings of the synth. Now i particulary dislaike DSP sneaking into so-called analog synths (eg Muse, Polybrute) Your comments and those from timschulz, FormulaXFD should be posted as a 123 punch on every digiatl forum. So satisfying to read the trio
*EDIT: Ignore the first paragraph, it will not prevent this from happening again, because the default setting is 'halt on error', so it will halt if the battery goes flat again... That was a dumb advice, I just realised...* -To prevent this, you should connect a monitor to the motherboard and enter the BIOS. There should be a setting about what it is supposed to do in case of a system error. It is currently set to halt on error, set it to ignore errors and continue to boot. I don't think the synth uses the system RTC for anything, and it seemingly works fine with the default settings.- That noname CR2032 you used is garbage, they usually fail within a year while a proper one should last 5-10 years in a motherboard. And as I said, make a system backup from that SSD, use a cloning software and set it to raw backup mode so you get a bit-perfect copy of the whole drive with all its partitions, just to make sure it will be bootable. And don't store the backup on an SSD or flash drive thrown in a drawer, put it on a hard drive and/or burn it on Blu-Ray discs.
@@ShirokoCycling You can't assume it does though. Chromebooks, for example, use UEFI but they do not have NVRAM. If you run the battery all the way down, they'll lose their settings and power up thinking it's the year 2077 or something like that. (And before you ask "how is this relevant?", it's not particularly difficult to hack a Chromebook into booting another OS. Driver support is a different matter.)
@mal2ksc Chromebooks are not UEFI. They use a custom coreboot payload called DepthCharge. If it's UEFI, it uses NVRAM. DepthCharge uses the NVRAM area as "GBB Flags". Source: Dell Chromebook 11 3180 firmware dump from the SPI EEPROM.
I actually dig a hole in the ground and throw the batteries in there. Hoping someone from the future will find them in 200 years and wonder what idiot lived here.
There is nothing wrong with the Prophet X it's a very powerful synthesiser even if Espen loves his clickbait to be controversial. It's great though to get the detailed information to repair these though. The PC mainboard is only there to run the Linux kernel and manage the storage. He hardly talks about the analogue logic board which has the stereo filters. A few years later FPGA chips became cheaper to program and so the likes of Roland were using these as custom chips for their flagship synths such as the Fantom and Jupiter X synths. The D50 had massive issues with it's afyertouch the Juno 106 with it's voice boards the prophet 5 rev 1 and rev 2 were never stable neither were the minimoog you needed 5 on your incase two broke down. People paint this picture of utopia on older 80s synths but they were limited compared to today's technology VST in a box the Prophet X isn't and this shows the narrow mindedness of people. Korgs recent success with their 2nd best selling synth The Kronos was built solely on an even older and cheaper PC Motherboard using an Intel Atom CPU built for Internet PCs for its Linux operating system and didn't stop artists buying them in their droves
i've had a Prophet Xl. never gave me problems, but i sold it to get a P10. missed my PXL, and recently bought a PX. no problems with it. Espen's PX was bought used. could very easily be one of the units from the first batches that were known to have bugs. even Espen says it's a great synth other than the problems he's had, and has no intention on selling it.
Very helpful video! Thank you Espen! 👍🏼 Could you please make another video that shows how to peel off the protection foils from the Prophet‘s displays? 😉
At one point in the future I will sell this to a nice looking teenager of my choice and then I can say that I've used the protection for all it was worth. Cheers ;-)
Nope. Your Prohet X is NOT just a PC. It contains a control board based on the PC architecture, but all the synthesis engine is big chunk of electronics on the main board. The "PC" merely handles the user interface, patch storage and controls the synthesis board.
Really sorry to hear this, Espen. It puts your 'rant' against modern high-price instruments in a new light. As it happens, AudioPilz released a video about the Moog Muse today, and again, while it sounds great, it's a dog to use. It's one reason why I appreciate your channel a lot. Videos are reasonable in length (a 30+ minutes review of a synth is a lot to stomach), and it's realistic in shaping one's expectations. And while I still list for an MKS-30 and an MKS-70 (the MKS-50 has been stuck in the mail for almost a fortnight now), I don't think I'll buy them, despite your glowing reviews. Something tells me that I'm going to run out of luck when it comes to vintage instruments. Something Will break. Heck, even a relatively new Prophet X breaks.
The "PC" is surely also responsible for access to the sample library and for the actual playback of those samples. That's the real reason you are seeing a motherboard inside this particular sequential synth.
I just suddenly got a new respect for those Behringer clones of old synths at their super price points. I don't think people realize that the parent company that owns Behringer also owns Cool Audio and the factories that are remaking and copying those old chips in the 70s and 80s synths. It's eventually gonna be impossible for these modern companies, even the modern remakes of old companies like Sequential, to compete with Behringer. You can't beat a company that has access to their own vintage chip making factory. Like those old impossible to find chips in the Yamaha CS series. Cool Audio can crank them out if need be.
@@b4time718 no. Behringer is “owned” by Music Tribe, which is a holding company founded and chaired by Uli Behringer. All the Behringer companies, Klark-Teknik, Midas, TC Electronics, etc, are under this holding company. Moog is owned by InMusic, a different organization owned by Jack O’Donnell. They also own Akai, Avid, Alesis, Denon, etc.
I don't know anything about this synth, but I DO know a lot about pc hardware. And from what I can see, an easy fix for always needing to press F1 when the CMOS dies is to see if you can get a monitor connected to it and boot into the BIOS. Lots of boards have a setting that lets your ignore errors such as incorrect date and time settings, so that even if the CMOS battery is dead, it could ignore it and boot without having to press F1. There's also a good chance this board doesn't have that setting available in the BIOS, and there's a decent chance that setting is controlled by the CMOS! Which would defeat doing this at all. But, if it bothers you that it eats batteries like candy, it could be helpful to try. Also, I see a lot of comments about people wanting to know if you can connect a monitor to it and what it would look like. I'd like to see too!
This is actually great for repair as one can see with the power supply. Much better than some specific rare part. The value of a synth has nothing to do with the type of main processor I'd carefully state.
I've seen the same issues in the gaming world. I have a fairly extensive game collection and every Atari Vectrex Coleco etc. runs flawlessly 50 years later. Then they started putting HDDs in them and I'm on my 7th PS3. Gave up on exbox after the third 360 died. Its sad. Buy a Sequential Six-Trak now! its all hardware and has MIDI! Costs less than a grand and CAN BE REPAIRED!
I've fixed a fair share of older synths but when I've occasionally seen inside a modern synth- to my eyes anyway , yes they are pretty much are all little basic PC's running Linux..( with some dac& voice chips attached). You're paying for the specialised software really😉. The meanwell PSUs have saved my butt several times, especiallywith weird old things like Ensoniqs.😀. Great you were able to get it going , thanks for sharing Espen 👍
The PSU is just be a Mean Well PT-65C triple output. $18. All Sequential synths use the same one to give 5V for digital and +/-15V for analog. They post -regulate to 3.3V (and 1.8V for FPGA/DSP...) and +/-12V for analog. The control feedback is on the main 5V output so all outputs track the trimmer setting of 5V. They also have specific minimum load requirements that can make them tricky to implement sometimes. The RPT-75C 'can' be used instead but should be able to get the original PT-65C for
Very helpful video. Thanks for doing it. I have the Prophet 12 and wondering how similar these Prophet X things might be in regard to the power supply. Thanks also so much for posting where to get a replacement. Our synths are around a similar vintage. They often used a similar power supply I guess for various models.
I believe that Sequential service will exchange your motherboard or power supply for $25. That used to be the cost of their "anything" service. Reach out to their service department.
IMO I would disagree that their service is poor. While I haven't had my motherboard replaced then I've been in touch with support regarding my Prophet 12 pre and post the Focusrite acquisition. I had my keybed replaced in 2023 and that cost 75 USD. Same price was announced to me back in 2019 (two years before Focusrite takeover). They sent me several pots and caps for free that needed to be changed, no charge for parts or shipping (from US to Europe). I got great instructions on how to fix things and how to maintain my synth and it's keybed.
I think the focus should go to a user configurable, minimal programming vst controllers with 32-64 lit encoders etc these days. Problem is if someone got that right, then ther's only one sale per person.
Hi @EspenKraft I can understand the “disappointment” that a $4000 synth innards mainly consists of: off-the-shelf consumer parts and some bespoke parts: housing, pcbs and some custom software to clue everything together. I have no skin in the game (not a musician, mainly interested in sounds/fiddling with VSTs and making electronics for my own enjoyment). I have however worked in several jobs where there was a small, but demanding, enthusiast customer base that had opinions on what and how things should be done. What do you think a fair price (where the manufacturer could sustain a business with decent customer support) should be for a piece of gear like this? It seems that there is a missed opportunity in the gap between the $4000 and whatever a fair and sustainable price might be.
I know that question was calling for Espen to answer, but I wanted to comment on something. Prophet X was fairly good priced, IMHO, at least at time of release. Remember, that it needs margin to justify development and production. And look at that package - it's so much more than the board inside. It has great user interface and... is a hybrid, with flexible voicing and very unique approach to synthesis. It's uniqueness is what gets people lost - I know that I had problem with changing my mindset and mine was designated to be sold, but currently I can't let it go, because while it doesn't sound like other synths, it... doesn't sound like other synths. :] One can fight over certain components, but as a person who built my own Deckard's Dream, I will say that it cost me almost monthly income (where I live) to guarantee quality components over what could be put inside at budget. These things add up unexpectedly. DD was my first big project and I collected parts for months and didn't see my total price until - at the end - I collected all the bills paid. If I was making it for someone else, I would be selecting individual components with more caution, sometimes cutting corners and taking responsibility for eventual bad choices. I wouldn't - in example - put ten times more powerful power supply than needed for random customer. I would just go with 10% reserve over calculated demand.
@@Normanion Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective and elaboration on how things quickly adds up. It is also my experience and the reason to my question.
if they dumped product but you love it ! I would want to clone the hard drive (look like sdd) to future proof repairs , then if all go to S**** you can replace the hole Pc part !
This reminds me of how my Prophet '08 won't output sound from voice 8, when it goes through the voice calibration process when I attempt to fix it it hangs just like that on voice number 8 😵💫
Heck yeah great job taking apart this synth and showing us that we’ve been duped. Dave Smith and his boomer friends have been taking notes from the rest of the value engineering crowd. Sad to see this kind of thing in the synth community. Wonder what synths from today will still be here in 40 years. Probably not anything with a cheap ass Linux computer and power supply built into it.
Yeah you might be right about the 1st revisions eating the CMOS, mine started doing this a few months back - interesting if its around the same time.. i'll try replacing the battery I still love the sound you can get out of it though, if you take the time to curate a lot of cool velocity levels to your samples it can sound glorious
I don't have it...but it's always interesting to see some synth problem solvings. Oh, and I hate Raspberry Pi junk in synths, it's a blasphemy, I want special FX chips in my synths, like the AN1X, Radias, M2000R, etc., lol.
Man, that's pretty wild! I am happy that the only computers I use for making music are the ones in the TB-303 and TR-808, hence they're labelled #ComputerControlled 🎉
i just tried the virus ti and microwave emulator, it impressed me more then most of the newer sequential machines ...those emulators are definitly the next level. they made such great synths with 100mhz motorola cpus , i hope the emulator scene will take off even more
Wow.... One shouldn't have to deal with all this hassle after spending $4000!! I got a Hydrasynth Deluxe last year that I absolutely love, and it cost less than half of the Prophet X!!
The best part about it just being a standard mITX board is that you can probably put just about any other mITX board in there and it will likely boot just fine
That would be interesting to test. I'm assuming the build of linux, on the drive, is looking specifically for that J3455 celeron processor and related mobo chipset. If not, it would be interesting to see if a performance upgrade could be had with something stronger.
@BananasananaB it’s probably going to be looking for the serial com hardware, will definitely need to be a board with a com1 header on it, assuming that’s where that connector with one single white wire is going into, other than that, if they didn’t use a specially compiled Linux image that only has support for this board only, it should at least boot
I had this same problem with my PX. Happened after I added some downloaded patches with a thumb drive. I just sent it to Sequential and they repaired it free of charge.
Oh my God! That’s unbelievable. The reason for all this shenanigans is, they didn’t use an Eeprom chip like almost every other digital synth- which is essentially permanent and won’t generally ever corrupt.
This is ISA PC BIOS configuration data. The reason for all this shenanigans is that Sequential used off the shelf PC BIOS to start their Linux up. It's that BIOS code which can't recover gracefully from loss of config data. If sequential had written their own boot code, it could simply use default values when the config data is lost but here the BIOS can't even figure out how to boot Lnux until it understands where the drives are. That's not a problem with not using e2prom, it's a boot code problem. Should boot parameters be in flash? Of course but ISA PCs don't work that way.
@@Peter_S_ it's even stupider... this seems like the "CMOS settings invalid -- press F1 to continue" message. sequential should've paid AMI (or ASrock) to make some very minor changes to the BIOS to avoid this.
@@poofygoof That's exactly what I just said. It's the UEFI boot code. Sequential decided to use an off the shelf ASrock OEM motherboard with UEFI BIOS which is commonly used in industrial applications like Human-Machine Interfaces. These lineage motherboards are usually manufactured with a commitment that they will be supported for 6-10 years, 6 in this case. You're simply NOT going to get ASrock to make custom BIOS changes, LOL. It doesn't work that way at these volumes. The way around this hangup is to use a watchdog CPU which is able to emulate USB and provide a synthetic press of F1 and/or other keys if necessary. The real solution is to design and program your own motherboard which you control.
@@Peter_S_ ASRock may not do custom UEFI at the volumes sequential planned on shipping, but there are plenty of other board manufacturers like Kontron, iEi, Aaeon, and Advantech, making comparable motherboards who will do UEFI customizations -- I wonder why sequential didn't go that route? what was the cost delta, and why was it considered significant? What prevented sequential from using a newer ITX board and continuing to keep the Prophet X in production? a separate watchdog controller to emulate a USB keyboard seems like an expensive workaround for what is likely flipping a PCD policy default bit, but I work on server UEFI, not client, so reality may be stranger than than I think it is.
@@poofygoof Why don't you ask them these questions? Why don't you interview their director of engineering? Why are you asking me questions about their internal business matters from years ago? Using an embedded PC is foolish to me even though that same board was sold until September of 2023. The PC architecture was junk in 1981 and it's still junk today.
When I get home I'm going to hug my Poly 61and apologize for every mean thing I said about it.
lol
Poly 61 is a great Maschine, What ever people are saying.
@@janhelmle8173 I was laughing at the joke, not the synth x
Poly61 is my
Favourite synth of all time. Especially with the tubbutec upgrade
good guy .. love mine as well, and the DW-8000
So many questions.................
What happens when you connect a monitor to the video outputs?
Can it run Doom?
Can it run VST synths?
can it play crysis
Yeah I wanna see it run Doom! Come on Espen
And
Can you take out the hard drive and clone it?
Then put in another PC with the cloned hard drive?
@@ilovegoogleandyoutube I started a new question on exactly that, suspect even if it works, there is additional proprietary hardware needed for control etc
Pretty sure you could do both on it, but I wouldn't.
That's pretty wild. Genuinely was not expecting to see a micro ITX mb and standard pc components in a Dave Smith synth.
It's pretty sad.
There’s also a huge board with 32 filter chips (16 voices in stereo) - they sound like magic
Dave phoned this one in.
I should've kept my 20 years old micro board from "book pc" i found in my garage the other day 😂
And Korg digital synths (Opsix, Wavestate, Modwave, etc) have a Raspberry Pi module inside (along with some custom audio circuitry).
Meanwell power supplies are actually very reliable. I have many deployed in outdoor enclosures powering remote security cameras and have never had one fail. Even had one go through a tornado and worked perfectly when we found it and dried it out.
There's a lot of industrial equipment out there with Mean Well PSUs; they use quality components. I have no idea if Sequential's price is out of line with other manufacturers. High parts markups are nothing new, unfortunately, but at least now it is easier to source parts from other vendors.
Is it possible to use switched mode supplies on audio circuits in a synth? I need to make a custom supply for something and thought it would be easier to use multiple off the shelf switched modes for all the protection circuits in them rather than design a full supply. Tried searching but I can't get a straight answer. I figure with the right filtering it should be OK?
@@jdmjesus6103with the right filtering and regulation for each rail, yes. A LOT of Eurorack power supplies work very similarly, and I've not had issues with using Meanwell SMPSes for my Eurorack systems personally.
@@jdmjesus6103 Yes. With the right filtering it will be likely be just fine, but switchers can be noisy so use good ones (MeanWell, TDK, etc.) with a high switching frequency. The only real problem you run into by using multiple supples is power sequencing. Sometimes circuits are very sensitive to one rail coming up to voltage before the others are ready. Most of the time there is enough tolerance that this is not an issue but you need to be aware of the possibility.
@@Peter_S_ thanks very much! Yes, that's a good point, I'll bear it in mind. I think it's worth a try then.
What I was expecting was just another angry rant. What you delivered is priceless information, that will give Prophet X owners real help. Awesome!
(I don´t have this synthesizer.)
You are so calm when talking about your $4k brick. I would be sobbing if my PX did that, as I am not a technician by any means and would not be able to do a fix on my own. For that kind of cash, I would expect no problems. Evidently, that’s not the case anymore I guess… It’s odd that I have old analog synths that have never given me one problem! Thanks for your videos, keep them coming.
At this point I'm more than motivated to build my own 4000 € Synth out of a MIDI-Keyboard, an ITX Motherboard and a minimal install of Debian.
Done and DONE! I mean.. Did it 😛. Then Open Labs did it, then every one did it, now what? Raspberry pi synths? Oh wait.. scratch that lol
Still need those analog components
Might as well just use your desktop...
@@NightPaddle At this point in technological evolution you literally can. Shove a Pi into a master keyboard and you're done.
You are absolutelly correct dude! At least it would have been a vst you like, haha
This is a very useful maintenance video Espen, thank you..! (I would be so tempted to attach an HDMI monitor to that motherboard, though..!)
You here!! ;-)) Was the new RPT-75C power validated by Sequential?
@@rcmusic35 Ha..!!
This is God-Tier content for the synth community. For it's specificity, I believe you make a very solid case in regard to your last video that was a huge, controversial hit, which I (FOR THE MOST PART!), agreed with. Instances of specificity like this, do in fact sell the point home. I'm curious to see how it moves the Q.A. Meter for manufacturers though, or whether the average customer is at all even informed or passionate enough to even care. But I'm totally with you here! You may've entered Pioneer Territory, in lieu of creating a totally new way for reviewers to rate synths... open the sucker up and analyze cost/benefit scenario for the consumer at the component level. Solid work Mr. Kraft, very Very Good work!
At one point in time I had fomo for the X after buying a Rev 2
I do not have that fomo anymore. Thank you for the informative video!
This synth has a lot of INCREDIBLE features. Like being able to change the start and end point of a sample loop plus the position of the loop. Fx not bad at all of for onboard fx. Great sounding hammond sample waves. Microtonal. Very good sounding filters- even better in stereo 8 bit mode. And sequential will help you keep any or their synths running for a flat 25$ fee. There are and abundace of ‘pros’ for this sampler synth. But the freeze/crash and ‘unable to reach procceesor’ messages when booting it up were just too indicative of an overall design that was not fully ironed out and i was thankfukly able to return my prophet xl on the 45tb day since purcing it
The EPS16+ has those as well, except for the analog filters
Running Linux makes sense, using substandard consumer grade components in pro synth does not. Great video with great information.
exactly, that motherboard is about 60 dollars.
Living proof of your previous video . Loads of marketing and greatness just to retire a product couple of years down the line that has issues and goes dead. Thx for the troubleshooting video
My Kronos is a PC. With a USB soundcard and a control surface. Your Prophet X is a synth with a PC controlling it.
The big difference is that your SEM chips are the actual audio path, it simply is not a software defined audio path.
Even a Juno 60 is a computer that controls an analog synth. The fact that back in those days they developed their own digital control board rather than using a standard form factor PC mainboard makes no difference. Be glad that repairing has come so much easier since components can be replaced.
I would LIKE to own one but right now it's out of my reach. But I still enjoyed this video, always nice to know new stuff. And I'm really hoping that lots of X users will be helped by this very well put together video. Clear and concise as this kind of content should be.
thank you for these tips! Hope I can get it running again cause I love my 4k brick, no synth was ever as inspring to me as the Prophet X. It's a shame it's starting to break down so quickly
I paid 2300 euros for mine in December 2023. It has the Prophet 5 sound expansion. Disappointing to learn about these isues. Thank you for showing the fix!
Thanks for this video, Espen. Even if I don't own a ProphetX (and don't dream about that) it's helpful to those who have one and, more important, it gives us an idea of of what's inside these pricy things.
I don't see a problem with this synth having a pc as a "brain" (that was always a part of a digital synth).
I do see a problem with the brand itself, lacking support for a customer who paid the high price for this amazing sounding when it was new (and there are still some brand new units available on stores).
Not everyone would be able to identify the problem and solve it on their own!
I'll keep that in mind if I ever think about buying a synth from this manufacturer...
Odd because I've had several Sequentials and all of my customer service issues were handled really well
@@tonykara we can't have that because Espen is a hack
@@tonykara Did I understood incorrectly, or did Espen Kraft said it wasn't anymore?
My comment was based on it, and I do stand by the principle that a "premium" product should not only be a good product in itself, but also have a long service support (I know that even some premium cars don't have it anymore, but I also strongly disagree with that way of looking at customers).
The same applies to the software that runs this synth, which doesn't bother me (at all) if it's Linux or Windows 😃, as long as it performs reliably and without bugs or crashes (even if it would require some updates until it gets stable).
I have several japanese digital synths (some with over 30 years) which never had any software bug, and their OS wasn't that simple back when they were new, implying that those bugs were solved _before_ the synths were released in the market.. 😉
I also own a MODX+,, the Wavestate Module, and I haven't heard about any software bug yet.
I spent decades with my old synths without even thinking that it had some form of computer and OS running under the hood, because they always worked - as musical instruments should. 😉
I will see how the Wavestate behaves in the long run (since it also runs on Linux), but theoretically, synths shouldn't behave like computers, because they aren't computers. 😉
They're not browsing the web while editing videos, running software synths and updating antivirus at the same time. 🙂
The code should be very simple by comparison, and much more focused on what it needs to do.
I confess that I considered buying one a few months ago (new), because I really love the sound, features and look of this synth.
But I don't look at synths like smartphones, that become paper weights after some years, no matter what their price was when new.
My old Yamaha SY 77 was still on gigs with me on the second decade of its life with me, and still has very usable and unique sounds that I use in my small home studio.
It needs a battery replacement, although it plays the original patches perfectly without it (it only needs a reset by pressing 3 keys, but the battery died a little after the 30 year old mark 👀).
That's what I expect from a flagship synth, even if I don't expect it to last forever).
If a synth costs 4.000 euros but ends up lasting 20 or 30 years, it ends up costing a lot less than we spend on smartphones and TV's over the same period. 🙂
If a digital synth lasts a long time, it will still sound (mostly) like it did when it was new.
I don't expect my synths to become what my old iPads, smartphones (etc) have become, which is basically useless, even if the hardware still works fine today.
Cheers
long-term maintainability is why the originals became classics. I highly doubt any company would keep their source code up-to-date in escrow, to be released when they drop support, or at least license it out to repair houses so the things could be fixed, but it would be very customer-friendly.
I see a problem using a cheap ass off the shelf motherboard in a 4 grander, cheeky as f!
This is a great design! Standard user replacable parts (just like 80s synths). Man I wish more things where like this. It's not "lazy" to use standard off thr shelf parts, it's sensible and makes repair for us much easier!
Thanks Espen. Sorry that happened to yours! I did have to do the F1 thing about a year or maybe two years ago. Good to know about the other trix! Happy Holidays, maestro. - Tommy M. nyc. PS. I got my S700 samples into the S3000xl and sold the S700 AND the S7000 that I'd bought. I still have the SXM card if you need one, for pretty cheap sale.
Thanks man! My PX works fine now and I use it a lot.
Raspberry Pi boards are used in the newer KORG products like OPsix, Modwave, etc. You know why they use an off the shelf product, because coding it is easy and it doesn't take R&D, custom PCB design etc it's just cost saving for the manufacturer.
The PC guts are frankly to be expected, I can’t think of any other way they’d get the 8Dio samples to work. The ProphetXL is an odd one - I love mine, even if it is a bit temperamental. Solid repair!
I’m sure the PX would had been even more expensive, had they developed their own PSU and motherboard. Frankly, I see nothing wrong in using parts already invented, to hold costs down.
@@matszh I doubt you'd be singing the same tune if say Behringer had done this with one of their synths. All of you defending this, you'd all be ragging on Behringer till the end of time. No one is saying all virtual synths aren't just PC's inside. This one though, is literally something you can buy off Ali Express as a plain old consumer. Rose colored lenses.
@@raffitchakmakjian my issue with big B has never been the kit FWIW. My issue has been how they’ve treated folks - from Peter Kirn and DSI (suing the company) to Loopop.
@@matszh yep. We also need to remember the Prophet X/XL is almost a decade old! Computers have changed a lot since then! It’s such a lovely sound sculpting machine. I wish more companies would pursue and refine the road it was heading down!
@@matszh to add again - I can’t think of a way you’d get the massive 8Dio libraries to work without a traditional x86_64 computer somewhere in the mix. Keep in mind this was released in 2018 - ARM architecture was nowhere near as mature as it is now! I’d actually love to see Sequential take another crack at this with all the advances is computing that have happened since - I imagine we’d get something with a solid m.2 SSD, 32GB of RAM, and a nice ARM chip!
I would even argue using traditional PC components is a benefit. This makes the unit easy to understand and maintain. I wish I could say the same for some of the other synths I have!
The Prophet X will always be a divisive instrument. Those of us that love it, love it. Those that don’t, won’t. That’s fine! Not every tool is for everyone, and that’s what makes this fun. If Espen doesn’t enjoy his, he can always find someone who will, and that’s just as wonderful! 🥰
I came here to tell you to trim the power supply to 5v, but you got there. I'm touring with a band that has 10 of these, its been an uphill battle.
It’s astounding that you need to make any adjustments to the 5 V rail. What the hell is a voltage regulator for, after all. Oh my God!
@@alphabeets5v rail will be switched mode, much more efficient.
Your band has 10 Pro X's? What the hell are you playing? I'm guessing symphonic prog doom jazz fusion metal, with Rick Wakeman-esque sparkly capes blowing in the wind.
That, or 80s pop covers.
@@leopoldbluesky Or they just have the one keyboardist with his Pro X and 9 backups due to lack of reliability lol
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol Word
My PX has the same problem. Contacted Sequential and I currently have a replacement motherboard and power supply winging their way from Sequential HQ in San Francisco. I will be changing them over myself and then have to post back the old ones - which I imagine will cost a bit in postage. Good support, but shame this has become such a common problem. Thanks Espen for all the useful info.
But how is that possible?!?! Espen claims in this very video that Sequential has "totally abandoned" the Prophet X. ;)
@@JimAlfredson Well, exactly. They're no longer making or enhancing the product, but they always are keen to support their existing customers - they don't want to piss off the potential buyers of their future synths!
This reminded me of the terrible heartbreak and disappointment i endured during the brief spell my that my Kurzweil K2500R rack workstation was at the centerpiece of my studio, it started crashing and no matter how many parts I sourced including engine board and Kdfx board swap I could not get it back on its feet ever again. It's finally gone and I am never buying an expensive digital workstation Synth ever again.
Meanwhile my old Prophet 5 keeps on truckin' and warming up my studio on a cold and frosty evening! We did not have these problems in the 80s.
I love gear that warms up a cold room. My fender amp does this.
I hate about modern music equipment that it takes forever to be ready for use after being turned on.
Very interesting, i don't own a Prophet X but i have a Rev2, looking at a teardown the Rev2 doesn't have an ITX board inside so i would expect this information isn't any help if i have issues in the future but still interesting to see the insides of your synth. Thanks for taking the time to film the process for people and provide the information on parts etc.
When you showed that pressing the F1 key fixes the problem I was like: "yup, that can be repaired using a 50 cent CR2032 battery."
Disappointing Sequential made it this way in 2018 or whenever it was. Korg with their super expensive Oasys in the mid 2000's did the same thing. I can kind of give Korg a pass on that in away, since it had vast polyphony and a huge screen and other things workstations didn't have at the time. But they used a PC motherboard, AOpen, and the capacitors fail, and repairs are needed, due to copy protection (they didn't want anyone just cloning the drive and having a cheap pirated Oasys) some repairs can be tricky. For the price I'd like the Phophet X to have been made with a bit less 'off the shelf' components. Some modern synths (I think Jupiter X, Yamaha Montage?) have an internal power supply which is just an external power supply plastic brick inside the case with a short extension cord. :/
Korg used an industrial version motherboard though. I think my Oasys is around 18 years old and is still working. You are right about the failures but I think it's a far more reliable instrument than the Prophet X appears to be.
Brick and extension cord inside the case is how I converted some ancient 90s MIDI-over-gameport keyboard into MIDI-over-USB. The device originally got +9V from the game port, and used a 7805 to step it down. I just bypassed the 7805 and put a +5V brick in there instead. I also stuck a USB hub in there, with two of the ports exposed for my EWI and Nanopad.
"this synth is just a PC" always seemed like a strange complaint to me. digital synths have always been Just Computers with some special sound hardware attached. the roland s-series samplers are a weird hybrid of MSX and intel embeded chips, the jupiter-8 is a ZX spectrum with no video, as are the emulator I and many akai samplers. the phophet VS and ensoniq EPS and a ton of others are classic macs. it's very rare to find a digital synth that actually runs its operating system on a DSP chip or custom silicon and not whatever CPU architecture is popular in its era.
as for that power supply... yeah that's garbage. they should be using something standard and interchangeable like a low noise flex-atx PSU that could just be unscrewed and replaced with any other psu meeting the power requirements off the shelf.
Yes, why should anyone use something else than a standard embedded PC for a "cheap" synth these days. They aren't sold that many times, weird CPU architectures or complex ASICs aren't worth it.
And it's digital anyway. It doesn't matter what part is flipping the bits.
It's fundamentally a position of purpose and reliability. Once you're packing in a modern mini-pc, you're burning up a ton of processing to things that don't actually pertain to the core function of the instrument [even if its running linux]. While Linux may be one of the better options out there, the reliability aspect is a factor because there are aspects of the machine that can take it out of service, that have nothing to do with the job its supposed to do.
Its definitely a cost-effective, and easier development path to get something out the door fast, but there are a ton of trade-offs for product life and use.
In my own space its the argument of Arduino vs. bare-metal coding. Arduino is great for tinkerers and amateurs, but it has a huge amount of bloat that takes away from the performance of the microcontroller. The development time to get a basic bare-metal library up is not insignificant, but the trade-off is much higher performance than layer-upon-layer of software abstractions that burn cycles with errands before doing the core job you need it to do.
@FormulaXFD As long as thermals aren't a problem (and the synth is not battery powered) and the realtime constraints aren't violated, burning up cycles doesn't matter.
It is ironic that this is a sequential. i always blamed Korg and Dave Smith for the computerized beginings of the synth. Now i particulary dislaike DSP sneaking into so-called analog synths (eg Muse, Polybrute) Your comments and those from timschulz, FormulaXFD should be posted as a 123 punch on every digiatl forum. So satisfying to read the trio
*EDIT: Ignore the first paragraph, it will not prevent this from happening again, because the default setting is 'halt on error', so it will halt if the battery goes flat again... That was a dumb advice, I just realised...* -To prevent this, you should connect a monitor to the motherboard and enter the BIOS. There should be a setting about what it is supposed to do in case of a system error. It is currently set to halt on error, set it to ignore errors and continue to boot. I don't think the synth uses the system RTC for anything, and it seemingly works fine with the default settings.-
That noname CR2032 you used is garbage, they usually fail within a year while a proper one should last 5-10 years in a motherboard. And as I said, make a system backup from that SSD, use a cloning software and set it to raw backup mode so you get a bit-perfect copy of the whole drive with all its partitions, just to make sure it will be bootable. And don't store the backup on an SSD or flash drive thrown in a drawer, put it on a hard drive and/or burn it on Blu-Ray discs.
If it uses UEFI, it probably has NVRAM instead of normal CMOS. It may be possible for the setting to stick.
@@ShirokoCycling You can't assume it does though. Chromebooks, for example, use UEFI but they do not have NVRAM. If you run the battery all the way down, they'll lose their settings and power up thinking it's the year 2077 or something like that. (And before you ask "how is this relevant?", it's not particularly difficult to hack a Chromebook into booting another OS. Driver support is a different matter.)
@mal2ksc Chromebooks are not UEFI. They use a custom coreboot payload called DepthCharge. If it's UEFI, it uses NVRAM. DepthCharge uses the NVRAM area as "GBB Flags".
Source: Dell Chromebook 11 3180 firmware dump from the SPI EEPROM.
Gotta admire your resolve to keep that pile of electronics dust free. :P
Now it works? Congratz! You can finally now play sounds that were cutting edge only 40 years ago!
But I bought a Solina! 😎
@@Digitalstone It's a late 80s style rompler like M1 or D50 with a larger sample bank.
The phrase: Never meet you heroes, also applies to opening your gear.
Pay attention to the warning stickers on your gear lol
Nice of them to put in SOME discrete circuits, for that money...they could have emulated everything in one tiny chip, lol.
@@Aetila The entire heart of the synth is a big PCIe card with synth hardware. This is not a soft-synth by any stretch.
Don't throw the battery in the bin, take it back to a collection point at your local supermarket! :)
I actually dig a hole in the ground and throw the batteries in there. Hoping someone from the future will find them in 200 years and wonder what idiot lived here.
My Minimoog is watching this, scatching it's head, and saying "What the f...."
to be fair, an oberheim matrix 1000 also has a cpu inside. always had.
This is great! There should be a channel that shows whats inside synths so we can see what we'r buying :)
Thanx
I absolutely needed that - thank you! I love my Prophet XL; I am happy again.
You know that PC is alien technology we took from saucer … because it crashed 😂
Even aliens 10,000s of years more advanced than us cannot escape the ever-dreaded BSOD.
That's a good one
@@shaft9000 bsod even warns you "as soon as we're finished collecting error info" but you never know what exactly they are collecting lol
HAHA!
There is nothing wrong with the Prophet X it's a very powerful synthesiser even if Espen loves his clickbait to be controversial. It's great though to get the detailed information to repair these though. The PC mainboard is only there to run the Linux kernel and manage the storage. He hardly talks about the analogue logic board which has the stereo filters. A few years later FPGA chips became cheaper to program and so the likes of Roland were using these as custom chips for their flagship synths such as the Fantom and Jupiter X synths. The D50 had massive issues with it's afyertouch the Juno 106 with it's voice boards the prophet 5 rev 1 and rev 2 were never stable neither were the minimoog you needed 5 on your incase two broke down. People paint this picture of utopia on older 80s synths but they were limited compared to today's technology VST in a box the Prophet X isn't and this shows the narrow mindedness of people. Korgs recent success with their 2nd best selling synth The Kronos was built solely on an even older and cheaper PC Motherboard using an Intel Atom CPU built for Internet PCs for its Linux operating system and didn't stop artists buying them in their droves
i've had a Prophet Xl. never gave me problems, but i sold it to get a P10. missed my PXL, and recently bought a PX. no problems with it. Espen's PX was bought used. could very easily be one of the units from the first batches that were known to have bugs. even Espen says it's a great synth other than the problems he's had, and has no intention on selling it.
Dude, that is a great video and will undoubtedly save a lot of people a lot of heartache.
Great vid Espen. Inspired me to buy a multimeter 🤩
Ouch! That must have hurt some egos.
Very helpful video! Thank you Espen! 👍🏼
Could you please make another video that shows how to peel off the protection foils from the Prophet‘s displays? 😉
At one point in the future I will sell this to a nice looking teenager of my choice and then I can say that I've used the protection for all it was worth. Cheers ;-)
Nope. Your Prohet X is NOT just a PC. It contains a control board based on the PC architecture, but all the synthesis engine is big chunk of electronics on the main board. The "PC" merely handles the user interface, patch storage and controls the synthesis board.
Really sorry to hear this, Espen. It puts your 'rant' against modern high-price instruments in a new light. As it happens, AudioPilz released a video about the Moog Muse today, and again, while it sounds great, it's a dog to use.
It's one reason why I appreciate your channel a lot. Videos are reasonable in length (a 30+ minutes review of a synth is a lot to stomach), and it's realistic in shaping one's expectations. And while I still list for an MKS-30 and an MKS-70 (the MKS-50 has been stuck in the mail for almost a fortnight now), I don't think I'll buy them, despite your glowing reviews. Something tells me that I'm going to run out of luck when it comes to vintage instruments. Something Will break. Heck, even a relatively new Prophet X breaks.
… and apparently it doesn’t do a very good job at that!
@@alphabeets because one unit broke? Just like plenty of other devices not using a pc?
The "PC" is surely also responsible for access to the sample library and for the actual playback of those samples. That's the real reason you are seeing a motherboard inside this particular sequential synth.
I just suddenly got a new respect for those Behringer clones of old synths at their super price points. I don't think people realize that the parent company that owns Behringer also owns Cool Audio and the factories that are remaking and copying those old chips in the 70s and 80s synths. It's eventually gonna be impossible for these modern companies, even the modern remakes of old companies like Sequential, to compete with Behringer. You can't beat a company that has access to their own vintage chip making factory. Like those old impossible to find chips in the Yamaha CS series. Cool Audio can crank them out if need be.
Think they also own moog now.
@@b4time718 I'm not sure. I didn't see Moog listed on the parent companies website which is Music Tribe.
@@b4time718 no. Behringer is “owned” by Music Tribe, which is a holding company founded and chaired by Uli Behringer. All the Behringer companies, Klark-Teknik, Midas, TC Electronics, etc, are under this holding company. Moog is owned by InMusic, a different organization owned by Jack O’Donnell. They also own Akai, Avid, Alesis, Denon, etc.
that's miserable... like opening a Rolex and finding a cheap Timex movement running it...
I've actually built a cheap PC with this exact Asrock motherboard.
Great !
i get to buy Brick'ed Prophet Xs for cheap &
sell them fixed for a huge PROPHET !
seriously , even discontinued, an OS update is needed
I don't know anything about this synth, but I DO know a lot about pc hardware. And from what I can see, an easy fix for always needing to press F1 when the CMOS dies is to see if you can get a monitor connected to it and boot into the BIOS. Lots of boards have a setting that lets your ignore errors such as incorrect date and time settings, so that even if the CMOS battery is dead, it could ignore it and boot without having to press F1. There's also a good chance this board doesn't have that setting available in the BIOS, and there's a decent chance that setting is controlled by the CMOS! Which would defeat doing this at all. But, if it bothers you that it eats batteries like candy, it could be helpful to try.
Also, I see a lot of comments about people wanting to know if you can connect a monitor to it and what it would look like. I'd like to see too!
Downside: that battery is what maintains that setting. Welcome to 1990's "jumper free" design.
Thank you for posting this!
This is actually great for repair as one can see with the power supply. Much better than some specific rare part.
The value of a synth has nothing to do with the type of main processor I'd carefully state.
meanwhile hundreds of thousands of DX7s are still happily singing away despite being over forty years old.
Great video. A really good ad for VST's.
I don’t think the PC inside is making the sound as it’s the case with VSTs. But yeah…
All products have issues, even analog ones.
I've seen the same issues in the gaming world. I have a fairly extensive game collection and every Atari Vectrex Coleco etc. runs flawlessly 50 years later. Then they started putting HDDs in them and I'm on my 7th PS3. Gave up on exbox after the third 360 died. Its sad. Buy a Sequential Six-Trak now! its all hardware and has MIDI! Costs less than a grand and CAN BE REPAIRED!
I've fixed a fair share of older synths but when I've occasionally seen inside a modern synth- to my eyes anyway , yes they are pretty much are all little basic PC's running Linux..( with some dac& voice chips attached). You're paying for the specialised software really😉. The meanwell PSUs have saved my butt several times, especiallywith weird old things like Ensoniqs.😀. Great you were able to get it going , thanks for sharing Espen 👍
I wasn't expecting this is a more modern device. Also don't forget to backup that SSD.
Def won't be getting a prophet X lol, kudos for knowing how to fix it~
The PSU is just be a Mean Well PT-65C triple output. $18. All Sequential synths use the same one to give 5V for digital and +/-15V for analog. They post -regulate to 3.3V (and 1.8V for FPGA/DSP...) and +/-12V for analog. The control feedback is on the main 5V output so all outputs track the trimmer setting of 5V. They also have specific minimum load requirements that can make them tricky to implement sometimes. The RPT-75C 'can' be used instead but should be able to get the original PT-65C for
Very helpful video. Thanks for doing it. I have the Prophet 12 and wondering how similar these Prophet X things might be in regard to the power supply. Thanks also so much for posting where to get a replacement. Our synths are around a similar vintage. They often used a similar power supply I guess for various models.
Thank you for all this great information. Well done.
I believe that Sequential service will exchange your motherboard or power supply for $25. That used to be the cost of their "anything" service. Reach out to their service department.
Unfortunately, that was Sequential (Dave Smith Instruments) before it was sold. Their service is poor for anything out of production now.
No it's not....
They give me a new power supply and pc bord for free...
@@oblitafier
@@oblitafier I'm really sorry to hear that. I actually benefited from the old service, and had a Rev2 motherboard replaced for about $25 USD.
IMO I would disagree that their service is poor. While I haven't had my motherboard replaced then I've been in touch with support regarding my Prophet 12 pre and post the Focusrite acquisition. I had my keybed replaced in 2023 and that cost 75 USD. Same price was announced to me back in 2019 (two years before Focusrite takeover). They sent me several pots and caps for free that needed to be changed, no charge for parts or shipping (from US to Europe). I got great instructions on how to fix things and how to maintain my synth and it's keybed.
I think the focus should go to a user configurable, minimal programming vst controllers with 32-64 lit encoders etc these days. Problem is if someone got that right, then ther's only one sale per person.
I’m shocked. I wanted this very same keyboard. Happy I became a guitarist.
Good jab at Sequential abandoning their products at the end. Truly a shame and there's no conceivable reason for it.
And yet people still hate on Behringer? at least if they do this, you're only a few hundred quid out of pocket!
Great info, thanks. Bookmarking the video!
The tinkerer in me is fascinated by the regular itx motherboard in there.
I turned my J-3455 into a pfsense router😂
Wow. So glad I never bought one (not that I could ever afford to spend that much on a synth). Great video 👍
Hi @EspenKraft
I can understand the “disappointment” that a $4000 synth innards mainly consists of: off-the-shelf consumer parts and some bespoke parts: housing, pcbs and some custom software to clue everything together.
I have no skin in the game (not a musician, mainly interested in sounds/fiddling with VSTs and making electronics for my own enjoyment). I have however worked in several jobs where there was a small, but demanding, enthusiast customer base that had opinions on what and how things should be done.
What do you think a fair price (where the manufacturer could sustain a business with decent customer support) should be for a piece of gear like this?
It seems that there is a missed opportunity in the gap between the $4000 and whatever a fair and sustainable price might be.
I know that question was calling for Espen to answer, but I wanted to comment on something. Prophet X was fairly good priced, IMHO, at least at time of release. Remember, that it needs margin to justify development and production. And look at that package - it's so much more than the board inside. It has great user interface and... is a hybrid, with flexible voicing and very unique approach to synthesis. It's uniqueness is what gets people lost - I know that I had problem with changing my mindset and mine was designated to be sold, but currently I can't let it go, because while it doesn't sound like other synths, it... doesn't sound like other synths. :]
One can fight over certain components, but as a person who built my own Deckard's Dream, I will say that it cost me almost monthly income (where I live) to guarantee quality components over what could be put inside at budget. These things add up unexpectedly. DD was my first big project and I collected parts for months and didn't see my total price until - at the end - I collected all the bills paid. If I was making it for someone else, I would be selecting individual components with more caution, sometimes cutting corners and taking responsibility for eventual bad choices. I wouldn't - in example - put ten times more powerful power supply than needed for random customer. I would just go with 10% reserve over calculated demand.
@@Normanion Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective and elaboration on how things quickly adds up. It is also my experience and the reason to my question.
if they dumped product but you love it ! I would want to clone the hard drive (look like sdd) to future proof repairs , then if all go to S**** you can replace the hole Pc part !
This reminds me of how my Prophet '08 won't output sound from voice 8, when it goes through the voice calibration process when I attempt to fix it it hangs just like that on voice number 8 😵💫
Heck yeah great job taking apart this synth and showing us that we’ve been duped. Dave Smith and his boomer friends have been taking notes from the rest of the value engineering crowd. Sad to see this kind of thing in the synth community. Wonder what synths from today will still be here in 40 years. Probably not anything with a cheap ass Linux computer and power supply built into it.
Yeah you might be right about the 1st revisions eating the CMOS, mine started doing this a few months back - interesting if its around the same time.. i'll try replacing the battery
I still love the sound you can get out of it though, if you take the time to curate a lot of cool velocity levels to your samples it can sound glorious
I don't have it...but it's always interesting to see some synth problem solvings. Oh, and I hate Raspberry Pi junk in synths, it's a blasphemy, I want special FX chips in my synths, like the AN1X, Radias, M2000R, etc., lol.
Nice discovery and fix!
So I lived long enough to see Behringer be the good guys. Oh my.
Man, that's pretty wild! I am happy that the only computers I use for making music are the ones in the TB-303 and TR-808, hence they're labelled #ComputerControlled 🎉
i just tried the virus ti and microwave emulator, it impressed me more then most of the newer sequential machines ...those emulators are definitly the next level. they made such great synths with 100mhz motorola cpus , i hope the emulator scene will take off even more
Interesting, so it's a $100 ASRock J3455-ITX inside this keyboard.
Thanks Espen. Given the components I do wonder why it’s so expensive.
I'am so happy about my Behringer DeepMind12 right now
A MW power supply is MUCH better than 90% of what you will find around...
This is what happens when you keep the display protection on.
Bad synth karma my friend. 🙏
I don't believe in karma.
Great video, thanks.
Espen out here dropping some street knowledge.
This kinda makes me want to go look for a broken Prophet X now..
Wow....
One shouldn't have to deal with all this hassle after spending $4000!!
I got a Hydrasynth Deluxe last year that I absolutely love, and it cost less than half of the Prophet X!!
The best part about it just being a standard mITX board is that you can probably put just about any other mITX board in there and it will likely boot just fine
That would be interesting to test. I'm assuming the build of linux, on the drive, is looking specifically for that J3455 celeron processor and related mobo chipset. If not, it would be interesting to see if a performance upgrade could be had with something stronger.
@BananasananaB it’s probably going to be looking for the serial com hardware, will definitely need to be a board with a com1 header on it, assuming that’s where that connector with one single white wire is going into, other than that, if they didn’t use a specially compiled Linux image that only has support for this board only, it should at least boot
I had this same problem with my PX. Happened after I added some downloaded patches with a thumb drive. I just sent it to Sequential and they repaired it free of charge.
I've never encountered this problem before because I've never owned a Prophet X.
wow this was a dream synth of mine... oh well, time for new dreams!
Oh my God! That’s unbelievable. The reason for all this shenanigans is, they didn’t use an Eeprom chip like almost every other digital synth- which is essentially permanent and won’t generally ever corrupt.
This is ISA PC BIOS configuration data. The reason for all this shenanigans is that Sequential used off the shelf PC BIOS to start their Linux up. It's that BIOS code which can't recover gracefully from loss of config data. If sequential had written their own boot code, it could simply use default values when the config data is lost but here the BIOS can't even figure out how to boot Lnux until it understands where the drives are. That's not a problem with not using e2prom, it's a boot code problem. Should boot parameters be in flash? Of course but ISA PCs don't work that way.
@@Peter_S_ it's even stupider... this seems like the "CMOS settings invalid -- press F1 to continue" message. sequential should've paid AMI (or ASrock) to make some very minor changes to the BIOS to avoid this.
@@poofygoof That's exactly what I just said. It's the UEFI boot code. Sequential decided to use an off the shelf ASrock OEM motherboard with UEFI BIOS which is commonly used in industrial applications like Human-Machine Interfaces. These lineage motherboards are usually manufactured with a commitment that they will be supported for 6-10 years, 6 in this case. You're simply NOT going to get ASrock to make custom BIOS changes, LOL. It doesn't work that way at these volumes. The way around this hangup is to use a watchdog CPU which is able to emulate USB and provide a synthetic press of F1 and/or other keys if necessary. The real solution is to design and program your own motherboard which you control.
@@Peter_S_ ASRock may not do custom UEFI at the volumes sequential planned on shipping, but there are plenty of other board manufacturers like Kontron, iEi, Aaeon, and Advantech, making comparable motherboards who will do UEFI customizations -- I wonder why sequential didn't go that route? what was the cost delta, and why was it considered significant? What prevented sequential from using a newer ITX board and continuing to keep the Prophet X in production?
a separate watchdog controller to emulate a USB keyboard seems like an expensive workaround for what is likely flipping a PCD policy default bit, but I work on server UEFI, not client, so reality may be stranger than than I think it is.
@@poofygoof Why don't you ask them these questions? Why don't you interview their director of engineering? Why are you asking me questions about their internal business matters from years ago? Using an embedded PC is foolish to me even though that same board was sold until September of 2023. The PC architecture was junk in 1981 and it's still junk today.
Further proof that Espen Kraft knows what he's talking about. Synth manufacturers should beware.
Makes me feel better about my Reface CS bricking.
Makes you want to produce in the box
Thanks for the warning 👍.
LOL, wanted to comment the Doom thingy, Saw that a hundred people had the same idea already... :D