Sequential Trigon-6

[GovernorSilver]

https://cdm.link/2022/11/sequential-trigon-hands-on-new-polysynth/

 

"Sequential finishes out 2022 with something new: a deep polysynth with an architecture that draws on the legacy of the Prophet-6 and OB-6, but stands next to them as a third classic electronic instrument. It’s a beautiful testament to the ideas of the late Dave Smith."

 

 

[AUSSIEKEYS]

Great to see

 

Thanks for the headsup 

[Al Coda]

Why only ONE (1) LFO again ???

And would have been nice to see the SVF in addition.

 

 

A.C.

[GovernorSilver]

Perhaps the SVF was omitted because Dave was going more for a Memorymoog style in this design.   I can see why though mentioning the OB-6 in the article may lead to certain expectations/hopes, which are then dashed to pieces.  😄

 

Could also be a sign of respect for the OB-X8.

[AWkeys]

Enough of this 4-octave polysynth BS.

[CyberGene]

Wow, that's great! I started reading the Sequential page and managed to reach the middle of the first sentence:

 

"The Trigon-6 is Sequential’s polyphonic take on the classic, thick and creamy, 3-oscillator-plus-ladder-filter analog sound..."

 

At which point I stopped and screamed: Shut up and take my money! ❤️

[Stephen Fortner]

I'd guess that at least one of the voice oscillators also has a low-frequency range. As for the state-variable filter, well, there’s only so much you can pack into a four-octave form factor at a given price point. I think it has more to do, though, with what they’re going for. Before we had reissues of the bona fide Prophet-5 and 10 (and now the OB-X8), Sequential / DSI’s four-octave, six-voice platform was about recapturing the sounds of classic synths in something more compact and modern. The Prophet-6 was a redux of the Prophet-5, the OB-6 of the Oberheim OB series, and now the Trigon distills something that Sequential doesn’t have rights to and can’t name directly: the Memorymoog. Hence the ladder filter and the emphasis on it in their marketing.

 

Dave Smith saw the analog renaissance coming but was careful and shrewd about it. Each product beginning with the original Evolver was another progressive toe in the water; look at the chronology of synths through things like the Poly Evolver, MoPho, Tetra, Prophet ’08, etc., and you’ll see what I mean. “Oh, that did well? OK, let’s take another step in a purist direction.” If I’d asked Dave in, say, 2015 whether he’d ever consider a pure Prophet-5 reissue, he’d have looked at me like I had five heads. (In fact, when I asked Dave what he would say to hipsters who derided the Prophet-12’s digital front end, his answer was a grinning, gleeful “Fuck ’em!”) Now here we are.

 

So, it looks like we now have a Memorymoog-esque six-voice probably hitting around the same $3,000-ish price point as the Prophet-6 and OB-6. Shot across the bow of the Moog One? Not meant to be; the latter is way more expensive not to mention bigger and heavier.

[Franz Schiller]

Super cool! Love the name. Can't wait to hear original patches created with it.

[allan_evett]

21 minutes ago, Stephen Fortner said:

 ...and now the Trigon distills something that Sequential doesn’t have rights to and can’t name directly: the Memorymoog. Hence the ladder filter and the emphasis on it in their marketing.

 

 (In fact, when I asked Dave what he would say to hipsters who derided the Prophet-12’s digital front end, his answer was a grinning, gleeful “Fuck ’em!”) Now here we are.

Looks likely that the shrewd marketing is continuing.  Always liked the Memorymoog concept, though the original release was frought with bugginess (The tuning circuitry about made me eat bees, and after six months I traded up for a used OB-Xa 8).  Meanwhile this does look like a relatively affordable alternative for those put off by the Moog One's price.

 

Never quite got the hipster criticisms of Prophet-12.  I played one at Gearfest 2015 and happily got quite lost in it.  A used one at the right price is a constant temptation.

[GovernorSilver]

I'm on another forum where there is a somewhat small, but loyal contingent of Prophet 12 users.   One of the more vocal ones keeps buying other synths, then returning them upon realizing he preferred the same sorts of sounds on the P-12.

 

Presumably the new oscillator design will tune up more easily than the Memorymoog's,  yet can get loose depending on how the vintage knob is set.

[GovernorSilver]

Sequential engineers talking about the filter design, feedback circuit, etc.

 

 

[The Real MC]

3 hours ago, Al Coda said:

Why only ONE (1) LFO again ???

And would have been nice to see the SVF in addition.

I'm a Memorymoog owner.  Watching the video, I spotted "LO" octave setting and a keyboard disconnect button on VCO3.  Definitely Memorymoog territory as you can use VCO3 as an LFO, one per voice which gives you six more LFOs.  Those six LFOs are free-running which is a great tool when routing VCO3 to PWM or pitch of VCO2, the modulation of each voice is asynchronous.  It's one of my favorite tools on my Memorymoog.

The ladder filter is switchable between 2 and 4 pole response.  Useful but don't expect the 2 pole mode to sound like a SEM SVF.

Browsing the spec, all the Memorymoog features are there.  Heck, even the panel layout is similar to the Memorymoog.

First the OB-X8, then this Trigon-6.  We are living in great times.

[David Emm]

In another life, I was a Prophet-12 owner, building new planets and scaring the kids. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with K-series Kurzweils, in my view. An utterly modular creature internally, where the Trigon is WYSIWYG. 

 

This is a real beauty with no meaningful lacks. I could wish for a P-12-like utility section with a highpass filter, but that's not in the proper corral for a Minimoog tribute. (I became a highpass acolyte once I took on a few Rolands.) I feel as if I'm getting a proper Moog flavor from the demos. Its on the mark. 

 

Do a mere 4 octaves bug me? Maybe ergonomically, but less so musically, especially w/analog. A lot of sounds fit 4 octaves just fine, whereas the top and bottom ones of 5 or even 6 will screech or honk. My JX-10 had numerous octaves that were god-like, but 2 up or down, they became monstrous and unplayable. I also played a stack of 2 or 3 synths for years, so having a different hand on two is old school for me.

 

This one has "top synth" hovering over it in a hologram. Above a digital piano, it'll be striking. With the ongoing Moog madness still firmly in place, I predict that this one will grab a lot of players who weren't going to aim for a Moog One anyway. It'll be the centerpiece for many a table full of lesser beings.

 

Its Dave's Final Sweet Spot.

[Jim Alfredson]

Wow it sounds great. But I do love my P12. And my P5 rev4. And my PX. And my Pro2. I think I am a Dave Smith fanboy.

[marino]

I love Sequential, and I love to see a new synth from them, especially one that was conceived by Dave. However, I am a bit disappointed to see the limited dotation of features. If the Trigon is going to cost about $3000, I say that I'd paid 1000 more to have at least three lfos, three envelopes (lfos and envs are all software today, it shouldn't be so hard!), and especially all three filters from the Pro-3, perhaps with the possibility to use 2 at the same time, in series or parallel. Not enough space for all those analog circuit? Well, make it 5-octave, and you'll have gained quite a bit of internal room.
In fact, they could make it 8-voice at that point...

 

16 hours ago, Stephen Fortner said:

Shot across the bow of the Moog One? Not meant to be; the latter is way more expensive not to mention bigger and heavier.

 

Yes - *and* it has more voices, more filters, more envelopes, more lfos, more effects, a big screen, a stereo signal path, it's multitimbral, etc. etc.

[Al Coda]

3 hours ago, marino said:

I am a bit disappointed to see the limited dotation of features. If the Trigon is going to cost about $3000, I say that I'd paid 1000 more to have at least three lfos, three envelopes (lfos and envs are all software today, it shouldn't be so hard!), and especially all three filters from the Pro-3, perhaps with the possibility to use 2 at the same time, in series or parallel. Not enough space for all those analog circuit? Well, make it 5-octave, and you have regained quite a bit of internal room.
In fact, they could make it 8-voice at that point...

 

I agree,- but ...

 

as a compromize, I´d be satisfied w/ a dedicated "Vibrato" LFO w/ sine, tri and square (for trills) like it existed in some Oberheims and in addition to the multi-waveform LFO and OSC-3 "LOW" (no kbd track) option.

A 3rd ENV would be nice,- but I´d prefer an alternative routing of "Filter cutoff expression pedal input" (and MIDI CC#4) to "Slave (follower)-OSC´s pitch" when in Hard Sync mode,- just to get that pedal controlled sync sweep effect.

 

I always disliked the VCF-ENV or Mod-Wheel alone controlling hard-sync because I wanted sync sweep and mod-wheel controlled vibrato simultaneously.

And filter envelope controlling slave OSC frequency AND filter simultaneously was much too static, triggering the ENV w/ every key pressure.

 

My now called "vintage" Prophet-5 was modified to work like that w/ the connected "filter-pedal" alternately,- and the only Prophet-5 software emulation doing that is Memorymoon "Messiah" and because I wanted (thx GunnarE !).

 

3 hours ago, marino said:

MOOG One ... it has more voices, more filters, more envelopes, more lfos, more effects, a big screen, it's multitimbral, etc. etc.

 

Exactly.

But it has a price too.

 

With just only a 4-oct keyboard action,- I´m fine w/ 6 voices on the T6.

8 voices would be better though.

 

 

A.C.

 

 

 

[marino]

Al, this sounds like a direct teasing! I love oscillator sync, especially with analog oscs. I'm not a big pedal user, though - that's why I need as many lfos and envs as possible. Not the same - just a different approach.

 

Unfortunately, on many modern digital synths and soft synths, they tend to incorporate a single "sync" parameter, meaning that there's a slave oscillator inside the main one. This allows you to save an oscillator for detuning and other stuff, but they usually "forget" to give a choice for slave waveform and modulation index; so on Surge for example, an otherwise fantastic synthesizer, the Sync control increases the pitch of the slave *and* mod index at the same time, which is absurd. And you don't get to change - or know - the waveform of the slave; it's not even mentioned in the manual.

 

Some of the things I like to do with osc sync:
Having the pitch of the slave controlled by an envelope (separate from the Filter env), with intensity, attack and decay controlled by velocity; same target controlled by a random lfo (smoothed S&H); mod index controlled directly by velocity. On most synths, mod index is the level of the slave oscillator in the oscillator mix.

A more sophisticated approach, useful to create pseudo-vocal sounds, can be used when you can have *two* slaves, like in the Alesis Ion. Here you can use the second slave as a formant maker, disengaging it from keyboard control. Better have a rich waveform for this slave, like a very narrow pulse.

 

Oops. Very OT, sorry... It's all Al's fault.

Please erase it if necessary.

 

[Al Coda]

12 minutes ago, marino said:

Al, this sounds like a direct teasing! I love oscillator sync, especially with analog oscs. I'm not a big pedal user, though - that's why I need as many lfos and envs as possible. Not the same - just a different approach.

 

That´s what I understood !

Ideally, we cannot get enough modifiers in a synth, but in this case, they don´t exist unfortunally.

NonethelessI hope, a vibrato LFO and the pedal routing I mentioned above, might be realizable by firmware update and, if necessary, a small hardware mod.

 

16 minutes ago, marino said:

Unfortunately, on many modern digital synths and soft synths, they tend to incorporate a single "sync" parameter, meaning that there's a slave oscillator inside the main one. This allows you to save an oscillator for detuning and other stuff, but they usually "forget" to give a choice for slave waveform and modulation index; so on Surge for example, an otherwise fantastic synthesizer, the Sync control increases the pitch of the slave *and* mod index at the same time, which is absurd. And you don't get to change - or know - the waveform of the slave; it's not even mentioned in the manual.

 

Sync on plugins/VIs is way behind analog synths and tends to alias soon unfortunately.

Rules for digital synths too,- even I got it tamed dlose to none in my Kurz PC361,- for the price of

some sonic compromizes by nature.

But, in Kurz world, master- (leader) and slave- (follower) Osc - algorithms are independent from each other,- consumate 3 DSP blocks and have to be placed each in a separate layer of a program, resulting in a cascaded chain of layers as "master" > "slave" > filter > amp,- each layer offering it´s dedicated DSP modulation inputs,- a big plus.

 

29 minutes ago, marino said:

Some of the things I like to do with osc sync:
Having the pitch of the slave controlled by an envelope (separate from the Filter env), with intensity, attack and decay controlled by velocity; same target controlled by a random lfo (smoothed S&H); mod index controlled directly by velocity. On most synths, mod index is the level of the slave oscillator in the oscillator mix.

 

Yes. a dedicated 3rd envelope would be great,- but on the original vintage Prophet-5, there wasn´t any velocity available unfortunately.

So, the filter-pedal routing mod was a way better solution than using the filter envelope.

 

B.t.w, what you describe above is doable w/ the Kurz !

 

 

35 minutes ago, marino said:

A more sophisticated approach, useful to create pseudo-vocal sounds, can be used when you can have *two* slaves, like in the Alesis Ion. Here you can use the second slave as a formant maker, disengaging it from keyboard control. Better have a rich waveform for this slave, like a very narrow pulse.

 

Interesting, never thought about a 2nd slave.

Have to try on the Kurz,- when there´s an algorithm available allowing cascading that way.

I possibly can make my own routing algo,- let´s see.

 

38 minutes ago, marino said:

Oops. Very OT, sorry... It's all Al's fault.

Please erase it if necessary.

 

LOL,- too late !

And yes, it´s my fault ... who cares ?

 

A.C.

[CyberGene]

My initial reaction was of course huge GAS. Then I saw the price at Thomann: €4000. It’s an OK price for a high quality instrument that is basically a Memorymoog and is made by Sequential. I really would love having one! But then, frankly speaking, I already have it: U-He Diva 😀 And a Hydrasynth 😛 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know! But still… 🧐

[Al Coda]

9 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

My initial reaction was of course huge GAS. Then I saw the price at Thomann: €4000. It’s an OK price for a high quality instrument that is basically a Memorymoog and is made by Sequential. I really would love having one! But then, frankly speaking, I already have it: U-He Diva 😀 And a Hydrasynth 😛 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know! But still… 🧐

 

Yeah that´s a problem ...

In EURO land it´s always much more expensive and now, w/ galloping inflation and insanely rising price for electricity,- it´s worth thinking about buying (more) hardware twice.

EUR 0.40 and more for a KWh is insane and it won´t stop for the next decade I fear.

 

It´s sad, because I love hardware,- but it becomes uneconomic, last but not least because Covid alone already rendered music biz a desaster.

 

 

A.C.

[AWkeys]

19 hours ago, AWkeys said:

Enough of this 4-octave polysynth BS.

EDIT: The 4-octave thing annoys me a lot, but I too am always happy to see a great company like Sequential come out with another fantastic synth. The amount of choices that are available to us...it's an embarrassment of riches. And the fact that while these are still expensive in today's money, you don't have to mortgage your house to own them like people did with the original beasts is also pretty amazing!

 

Just wanted to add some positivity to my original negative post. Must have been in a mood yesterday. Need to fire up my synths!

[ProfD]

2 hours ago, AWkeys said:

EDIT: The 4-octave thing annoys me a lot..

 

Just wanted to add some positivity to my original negative post.

Your post wasn't negative.  I agree....the 4 octave thing needs to stop.

 

I *understand* the 49 keys or less from a synth playing perspective but still...61 keys means less octave shifting.

 

While I'm wishing, I think a poly synth should have 8 voices at minimum.  Enough of this 4,5 and 6 voice polyphony sh8t.😁😎

[Al Coda]

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

Enough of this 4,5 and 6 voice polyphony sh8t

 

I´d prefer 4.5 over 6.

Less is more,- especially more creative !

 

 

A.C.

 

[ProfD]

52 minutes ago, Al Coda said:

 

I´d prefer 4.5 over 6.

Less is more,- especially more creative !

 

 

A.C.

 

I get it but some of us play chords with both hands.😁😎

[CyberGene]

25 minutes ago, ProfD said:

I get it but some of us play chords with both hands.

I even press two keys with one fingers sometimes. Not kidding, I’m serious! Like the following voicing of Am7/11, bottom to top:

Left hand: A E B

Right hand: (C D) G A B D

 

The C and D in the parentheses are both pressed by my right thumb. I hear you saying that’s a lot of repeating tones but just try the Lyle Mays-ey sizzle you get from the thick voicing in the upper part, especially the doubled 11th and 9th to accentuate these extensions more 😉 It requires 9 voices. 
 

P.S. one can even play it like:

Left hand: A E (B C)

Right hand: (D E) G A B D

 

for even thicker 10-voiced madness 😀

 

Sometimes even 8-voices require double-keyed thumb voicing, e.g. F#m7/11 due to black and white keys and inability to stretch fingers:

Left hand: F# C# G#

Right hand: (A B) E G# B

[Mark Schmieder]

I see it's already being listed for pre-order, around $3500 or thereabouts.

 

I checked my Pro-3 specs just now, as I couldn't recall if it had a full 3 oscillators or not. It doesn't, so I guess this is Sequential's first 3-osc synth?

[ProfD]

2 hours ago, CyberGene said:

I even press two keys with one fingers sometimes.

 

The C and D in the parentheses are both pressed by my right thumb.

 

for even thicker 10-voiced madness 😀

 

Sometimes even 8-voices require double-keyed thumb voicing...

Yep.  Been using the thumb to play 2-3 notes for several decades now even on synth sounds. 

 

Thick chord voicings are a requirement around these parts.  Play big or stay home.

 

I'm sure the Trigon 6 will have the Sequential mojo and sound just fine even if it means some combination of shell voicings and/or triads in both hands.😁😎

[nursers]

One thing I noticed, with is superficial but strange - why is the term Trigon 6 not appearing anywhere on the board?

[GovernorSilver]

27 minutes ago, Dr Nursers said:

One thing I noticed, with is superficial but strange - why is the term Trigon 6 not appearing anywhere on the board?

on the back of the housing

[Phil Aiken]

3 hours ago, Mark Schmieder said:

I see it's already being listed for pre-order, around $3500 or thereabouts.

 

I checked my Pro-3 specs just now, as I couldn't recall if it had a full 3 oscillators or not. It doesn't, so I guess this is Sequential's first 3-osc synth?

The Pro-3 does have 3 oscillators. 2 Analog and 1 Wavetable.