cherry audio p-10 Team Test: Cherry Audio P-10

[Dave Bryce]

After taking the keyboard/synthesizer playing world by storm over the past few years, Cherry Audio has continued to amaze and delight us with their ever-expanding product line of extremely high-quality yet incredibly affordable software musical instruments - not just fan favorites and classics, but also hard to find and/or new and interesting offerings.

 

With that in mind, MPN is excited to take a look at CA's latest addition to their line - the P-10, based (of course) on Sequential Circuits iconic Prophet-10 synthesizer.

 

 

In the words of CA's marketing gurus:

 

As most of you probably recall, the Prophet-10 was essentially two Prophet-5s in one massive dual-manual case, with a sequencer. It could configured to play as two independent five-voice synths, a single ten-voice synth, dual-patch layered, or alternate between layers with each keystroke.

 

We’ve added some updates to modernize the user experience, including expanded 16-voice per layer polyphony, poly AT, a four-track sequencer, keyboard split, and a second panel featuring an arpeggiator and effects sections. The effects section includes an assignable independent LFO section as well as modulation of key parameters via aftertouch. 

 

 

 

 

A few of MPN's Advisory Board have gotten the opportunity to check this new beast out, and we are happy to present our initial findings and impressions.  We encourage you to download the demo from the product page and add your voice to this thread.

 

A few members of the Cherry Audio team have also kindly volunteered to offer insights and answer questions posted here.

 

Let's dig in! 

 

dB

 

 

 

 

[RABid]

This has me wondering if any of the features from the Prophet T-8 are covered in the Cherry Audio version of the P-10. I cannot remember a lot about it. The T-8 never stayed around very long. It was supposed to be the answer to the Chroma and Matrix 12, but it never caught on. I never got to see a P-10 in person, but I remember lusting for one.

[Anderton]

I have to admit I wasn’t that psyched about checking this out. Of course, Cherry Audio makes great synths and effects, so I knew they’d make a superb emulation of the Prophet 10. But the issue is I already have virtual analog synths, as well as real ones. Did I really want to spend the time learning yet another VI that I may not use very much?

 

Surprise—first of all, I didn’t have to spend time learning it, because it’s pretty much self-explanatory. But the bigger surprise was the more I played with it, the more I realized the P-10 had something not all virtual instruments have: workflow.

 

I never owned a Prophet-10, so I can’t really comment on whether or not it sounds like “the real thing.” But I definitely can comment on the workflow. I realize workflow is personal, but I found myself making better sounds, and more quickly, with the P-10 than with many other virtual instruments. Here’s why.

 

Layer Cake

 

The P-10 has two complete, independent layers. What worked so well for me was being able to focus on programming only one of the two layers. I’d start by working on the core of the sound until I felt it could stand by itself. Then, I’d add the other layer—it felt almost like overdubbing tracks, with the second layer either augmenting or complementing what the first layer did.

 

As a patch develops, it’s common to re-visit some settings as the sound becomes more finalized. During that process, I was using the P-10 almost like a mixer. Again, workflows are personal, but it seemed so easy to just switch to the other layer and make a tweak. It was very much like switching over to a mixer channel while mixing, and adjusting EQ. It’s also helpful that the two layers have the same controls in the same places, so no mental gymnastics are required.

 

The Effects

 

The effects augment the “self-contained mixer channel” vibe. Each P-10 layer has an arpeggio and a roster of excellent effects: delay, reverb, chorus, distortion, and phaser. They can really dress up a preset. Each layer also has a 3-band EQ, which often does what’s needed, without requiring more stages.

 

 

Here's what the FX section looks like - don't sleep on these! (Hey Cherry Audio, maybe make the effects available as an insert, like you do for the CA2600?)

 

There’s a story about the distortion effect. I received a beta version of the P-10 about a week before its release, and didn’t like the distortion. Hey, you can’t foist off bad distortion on a guitar player (even one who doubles on keyboards). So, I emailed Cherry Audio with unflattering opinions about the distortion. Instead of getting the usual “well other people like it, go away” type of answer, I received an email with profuse thanks. It turned out the sound was not as they had intended. Instead, there was a bug that hadn’t been caught. So, they fixed the bug in well under 24 hours, and the distortion took its rightful place with the other effects.

 

VI, or Channel Strip?

 

At this point, I don’t feel like I’m inserting a VI, but more like a channel strip. I rarely feel the need to add more effects or EQ. And when I create a preset, it’s not so much a point of departure to which I add other effects as a plug-and-play sound I can use in other projects. Between that and the easy programmability, the P-10 won’t sit neglected on a hard drive—I’ll be using it a lot.

[Dave Bryce]

1 minute ago, RABid said:

This has me wondering if any of the features from the Prophet T-8 are covered in the Cherry Audio version of the P-10. I cannot remember a lot about it. The T-8 never stayed around very long. It was supposed to be the answer to the Chroma and Matrix 12, but it never caught on. I never got to see a P-10 in person, but I remember lusting for one.

 

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that the T-8 had more in common with the Prophet 600 than the P5/P10.

 

dB

[RABid]

My first impression. The sound is good. Cherry Audio instruments keep getting better with sound quality. I first noticed this with the PS-3300. The process of assigning different sounds to the two manuals is a bit confusing. (Sigh) I hate having to look something up in a manual. That goes against everything I know and believe. (I believe that I already know everything.)

[Dave Bryce]

3 minutes ago, RABid said:

(Sigh) I hate having to look something up in a manual. That goes against everything I know and believe. (I believe that I already know everything.)

 

 

dB

[cherryDan]

39 minutes ago, RABid said:

This has me wondering if any of the features from the Prophet T-8 are covered in the Cherry Audio version of the P-10. I cannot remember a lot about it. The T-8 never stayed around very long. It was supposed to be the answer to the Chroma and Matrix 12, but it never caught on. I never got to see a P-10 in person, but I remember lusting for one.

 

Excellent question! In fact we've included the full "Pressure Mod" section from the T-8, which supports routing polyphonic (and mono!) aftertouch to a bunch of different destinations. We love the poly aftertouch of the T-8, it's the T-8's best feature, and now it's part of the P-10!

 

- Dan @ Cherry Audio

[Jim Alfredson]

I was tickled to be asked to be a part of the 'beta testers' for lack of a better term. I am a stickler for authenticity when it comes to the sound of any emulation, so the first thing I did was go to the included factory patches and start comparing them to my hardware Prophet 10 rev4. The Cherry Audio P-10 contains all the factory sounds from both the original Prophet 5 and the Prophet 10. The Prophet 10 rev4 contains the original sounds from just the Prophet 5 rev 3.3.

I immediately noticed that the P-10 was much darker than the hardware rev4. I did some basic tweaks to the filter cutoff and it seemed much much closer. I mentioned this to the team and in a few days they had a new beta ready to go that fixed the issue. Evidently the hardware Prophets they were basing the presets on needed a bit of filter calibration! 

The original presets are now pretty much SPOT ON with my real Prophet 10 rev4. In a blind test, I don't think I could tell the difference. It's remarkable. While I don't currently have an operating vintage Prophet 5 to compare them to, the rev4 is itself spot-on when compared to the vintage units. I will hopefully soon have my Prophet 5 rev2 up and running so I can use that as a comparison as well.

Kudos to the team for this release. It really is a great sounding emulation.

 

[RABid]

I watched the Tim Shoebridge video and it answered my questions on how the patches work with the double keyboard setup. Tim always does a great job with his videos. I get to hear the sounds and as a bonuse, tips on special features. When you already have three software Profit's it is the special features that can set one apart. I'm already thinking about how I can use the alternate note/patch feature with two similar but discernible patches to create passages where the listener with notice something is going on, but yet, cannot quite identify it. It is this sort of thing that can give life to music. An alternative to the Oberheim 8 voice when you can do this with 8 different voices. If this works out, I'm hooked.

[David Emm]

I don't feel much need to comment on the results here. They're excellent, as we've learned to expect. CA is partially synth players like the rest of us. Of course they're going to be detail hounds!

 

My two cents: I got broken in on a friend's Prophet-5 and subsequently owned 2 P-600s and 2 Tetras. The sound here is spot-on. 👍 

 

Its intriguing that they included the 4-track sequencer, first seen on their ELKA-X, which I love. In a world of DAWs, that may seem a bit superfluous, but I came around as bass lines & effect patches folded neatly into my noodling. Smart addition, great instrument!

[Mike Martin]

I was also on the beta team, managed to get a few patches into the factory set as well. 

One of the very first things I did was a side by side with U-He Repro5 which has long been the "standard" of software emulations of the Prophet 5. While Repro5 does have an "under the hood" section where you can make some per-voice adjustments there wasn't anything about it that sounded better or more authentic to my ears compared to the P-10.  Cherry Audio's P-10 with layers, split keyboard and the sequencer is an instrument that is very compelling to spend time with. I absolutely love it. 

[mate stubb]

I've not spent the time with it yet that I need to. I just got hearing aids, and the world got suddenly a lot brighter than it used to. Need to recalibrate my ears a bit.

 

I never owned a Prophet but I'm using my old home brewed 8 voice poly with SSM chips as my benchmark.

 

Question for Dan - did you model CEM or SSM chipsets?

[Jim Alfredson]

1 hour ago, mate stubb said:

Question for Dan - did you model CEM or SSM chipsets?

I'm not Dan but since it's supposed to be an emulation of a Prophet 10, I'd say CEM. They only used SSM chips on the rev1 and rev2.

[Anderton]

If the synth works, then they used CEM chips 🤣

[cherryDan]

15 hours ago, mate stubb said:

Question for Dan - did you model CEM or SSM chipsets?

 

All original Prophet 10 dual-manual synthesizers use Curtis chips, so we modelled them with great precision. Our original design did have a CEM/SSM switch in the filter section, but after discussing this with our lead sound designer, we decided that two pretty-similar lowpass filters wasn't all that useful for sound design, so we opted instead to include a highpass filter option. With the dual layers, the highpass filter - still entirely derived from the Curtis filter design - allows a huge range of tone colors that goes well beyond the original Prophet-10. It's probably the least-noticed feature in P-10 so far, yet it opens up major sonic opportunities.

- Dan @ Cherry Audio

[AnotherScott]

I never owned an original, so I'll have to leave the comments about authenticity to others (my old analog synths were Korg, Moog, Roland, Yamaha, and EML), but it sounds great. Useful presets, and easy to design/manipulate with the simple minimoog-ish kind of interface. But while the 3D rendering looks very cool, personally, I'd like an option for a "flat" interface, for maximum readability (for example, the indicators around the knobs would always remain visible, which isn't the case as demonstrated by the image below). 

 

 

A fun little trick... with a 2-oscillator unison kind of sound, set pressure mod to change just one of the two frequencies to a fifth higher with aftertouch. Play the sound "normal" and then lean into it, you've got a quick approximation of the opening Hoedown sound. 🙂

 

ETA: I like that the online manual is available as a PDF, though an addition of table of contents and/or index would be helpful.

[Doerfler]

I have been playing around with this synth as time has allowed and have loved it since installation.  When I first opened up the program , I said "WOW" outloud and smiled as I played with the init patch.

Then switched to "80's Night Drivers" and was transported back to 80's nights. 

Myself, I love the GUI.  It is so cool on a 32" monitor.  If I had the space (I don't) I would buy a Crumar/GSI DMC-122 and have that as a dedicated controller for P-10.

One thing that has really helped me is the "FOCUS" botton, top right, next to "Hide Keyboard". This zooms in perfectly for my old eyes.

I don't have anything to compare it to, the last Prophet emulation I owned is the long discontinued NI PRO-53

For someone like me, who is now all "in the box", with the exception of my Hammond  A 100 organ and Kawai upright piano, this is a perfect addition to my VST arsonal.

Looking forward to spending time with it over the weekend and participating in this thread.

Cheers to all the developers, sound designers, and beta testers. 

[EscapeRocks]

I love Cherry Audio’s Focus button. 
It really helps me when I’m doing deep editing/programming 

[Robert Saint John]

Hello all, just a quick note about today's Build 73 update to P-10, by popular demand:

With this latest update, the sustain pedal can now trigger an infinite sustain (Hold) when the RELEASE button (upper right) is turned ON. When RELEASE is OFF, the sustain pedal turns on the release stage just as it does in the original hardware. But when RELEASE is ON, which is the default state, the sustain pedal now acts as a Hold. This gives everyone the best of both worlds -- authenticity to the original hardware, as well as the hold/drone feature that you expect from modern synthesizers. P-10 will automatically update to build 73 if Automatically Install Updates in Settings is checked off. Otherwise, you can manually check for and install the update, or update P-10 through our Sync app.

[Dave Bryce]

Nice!  Thank you, Robert!

 

The ability to easily (if not automatically) apply updates and/or new features is one of my favorite features of software instruments to be sure.

 

Props to the CA folks for listening to feedback and responding to it quickly.

 

Now, where’s my piano patch? 🤔😁

 

dB

[David Emm]

I give Cherry Audio added points for including high-pass filters. Those were unheard-of in early American synths. You had to go Japanese to get them. Now, you get high and low, so you can easily sculpt your own band-pass filters. I greatly enjoy that aspect of the GX-80. Seeing one on the P-10 is gratifying.  

[The Real MC]

3 hours ago, David Emm said:

I give Cherry Audio added points for including high-pass filters. Those were unheard-of in early American synths. You had to go Japanese to get them. Now, you get high and low, so you can easily sculpt your own band-pass filters. I greatly enjoy that aspect of the GX-80. Seeing one on the P-10 is gratifying.  

 

Early non-modular American synths with high pass filters:
Oberheim SEM

Oberheim two/four/eight polySEMs

ARP ProSoloist
ARP Odyssey

Moog Satellite/Minitmoog
Moog Polymoog
 

[Anderton]

I've now had a chance to use the P-10 start to finish on a project. If anything, this confirmed my initial thoughts about workflow. 

 

This synth sits in the sweet spot of being simple enough to come up with programs or edits quickly (which really matters to me), but deep enough to create useful, satisfying analog synth sounds that can be chameleonic if you work in multiple genres.

 

If I want a synth solo that cuts through a track, I still reach for the Miniverse because it can nail a solo sound I want in no time at all. But for something like a pad or texture, the P-10 simplifies the process of creating layered sounds thanks to the "channel strip" vibe mentioned previously. In one respect, it's actually more flexible than the average channel strip because the two layers can have their own effects chain. Given that I consider the effects a well-thought-out plus, being selective about which layer you want to process, and how you want to process it/them, is great.

 

I have quite a few soft synths. They fall into three categories: first-call synths that get used a lot in multiple contexts, synths that fulfill specific functions well, and synths that show up from time to time to do something only they can do. It didn't take long for the P-10 to join the first-call synths. I was somewhat surprised that it earned that position after just one project. Usually it takes me much longer than that to understand an instrument's gestalt well enough to know how it fits into my toolchest.

 

Oh, and does it sound like a P-10? Well, with no disrespect at all to the people who slaved over getting the sound exactly right, I honestly don't know and (sorry!!) don't really care. What I do know is that it does something I need, does it really well, sounds wonderful, puts a smile on my face, and makes my life easier.

 

Personally, the bar a synth has to exceed isn't whether it sounds just like a vintage synth, but whether it can further my way of making music. The P-10 absolutely exceeds that bar.

 

 

[Steve Nathan]

On 12/3/2024 at 10:16 PM, Anderton said:

does it sound like a P-10? Well, with no disrespect at all to the people who slaved over getting the sound exactly right, I honestly don't know and (sorry!!) don't really care.

I had to admit that as well.  I don't have one to compare and my memory is simply not sharp enough anymore to swear by it.  Is it a superior source of "Analog" Synth sound though? Absolutely!

[Dave Bryce]

I have the same reaction.

 

All I know is that I find it a really pleasurable instrument to play and tweak.  I’m especially pleased by the preset sounds in there - really great job of programming and curating them.  Shows the synth off very well.

 

dB

[jerrythek]

I’m a little late to the party, but I finally got some time to spend with the P-10. My first poly synth was a Rev. 2 Prophet 5 that I got in 1979, from Chuck Levin Music in Maryland, via a “friend deal” that an Ibanez rep buddy of mine helped me get. It cost me $3,800 including an Anvil case. I played it for nearly a decade before retiring it. I even had MIDI installed on it, thanks to J.L. Cooper, who never commercially released their mod, but did it for me. And I added a 4x memory expander.

 

So I know/knew the instrument very well. But time passes, and our sonic memory is not as good as it was. At least mine…

 

I have owned and played a number of software versions over the years, but not the U-He Repro 5 (before someone asks). So when I first opened the P-10 I was returning to an old friend. And just to get it out of the way right away, I think it sounds damn close to the real deal. I have no way of testing this, but to my ears it recreates the sonic footprint, the presets and such very well.

 

From today’s perspective, the voice architecture of the Prophet 5 is rather basic. Yes, the Poly-Mod section was unique in its day – looking at it today it is a quaint way of offering some type of modulation matrix. But it only had two sources: Filter Envelope and Freq of Osc B, and they could be routed to the frequency or Pulse Width of oscillator A, the Filter Cutoff or the Amp Level. Not a lot of possibilities, but it was powerful in its day. Similarly, the LFO/Noise generator could modulate the Frequency of Osc A and/or B, their Pulse Width and the Filter Cutoff. Cherry Audio added Amp Level to the destinations, the ability to sync to MIDI clock, and both Ramp and Random waveshapes.

 

Then they brought in the Pressure Mod section from the Prophet T8, which greatly enhances the expressivity of the instrument. And it supports both Mono/Channel Aftertouch and Poly-Pressure. This can control the Freq of Osc A and/or B, Pulse Width overall (why not each oscillator individually? Because that’s how the T8 did it.), Filter Cutoff, Amp Level, LFO Amount and/or LFO Frequency.

 

Expanding things further, CA added what they call Aux Mod, which they say came from the original P-10, where it was Pedal-Mod. Wisely, they allowed it to be used to route any MIDI controller to modulate Osc Freq, Filter Cutoff, Amp Level, or the amount of Mono Mod, which means the LFO. Put all this together and you have a much broader modulation matrix approach, and it helps to craft more complex and expressive sounds.

 

Other welcome additions are a high-pass filter, 3-band EQ, dedicated velocity control of the Amp and Filter Cutoff, Mono or Poly retriggering, and variable # of voices when using Unison, with variable detuning. Forgoing that rather limited 6-track sequencer found in the original P-10, Cherry Audio tacked on a 4-track 128 step-sequencer they first used in the Elka-X synth. Good stuff, and it is shown off nicely in the Presets.

 

There is an arpeggiator as well. A basic design with Up, Down, Up/Down and Random patterns, 4 octave possible range, clock sync and hold. I want to see more here. For example, the sequencer offers Note Gate adjustment, but why not the arp? I like to have the ability to not sound the notes when I play them, only “feed” the arpeggiator. Think of this like a Local Off for when driving the arpeggiator. Many of the Korg synths I worked on had this feature. Swing would be nice as well.

 

But wait, there’s… effects! Distortion, 4, 6 or 10-stage Phaser, Chorus/Flanger, multiple forms of Delay and multiple forms of Reverb. All good stuff, and they are enhanced by modulation from either a dedicated LFO, Pressure, and the Mono-Mod, which means the synth section’s LFO.  Effects can be global, or created separately for each of the two engines that make up the instrument.

 

There’s a great manual, so I’m going to stop explaining things that can be easily read.

 

I enjoyed playing through the presets – a LOT of good stuff there, and I learned some great programming ideas by studying them. Having owned a Prophet for so long I appreciated that the designers chose to emulate the original front panel design, and they fit a lot of extra stuff in with only two pages of parameters overall (not counting the things that are presented in the area above the synth graphics). If I had one niggle, it would be that when working on layered sounds you need to keep moving from the Layer Pan, Volume and Tune controls which are all the way to the right of the panel/screen back to the Panel View area far to the left. When working on these things you will be going back and forth between Layers a fair deal, and it made me wish for dedicated controls next to those three parameters to toggle Layer selection. Three more switches, perhaps?

 

I found it interesting to see MIDI channel assignment offered for each Layer (Upper/Lower). I recall discussing this same feature when reviewing the GX-80 and getting shot down by the team as being unnecessary. Just use another instance of the synth if needed, they told me. Happy to see that they reconsidered this for this release.

 

I have been trained by my design peers to check for oscillator aliasing in synths, and a good torture test is to go to a synced-oscillator sound and play up high. Then do some slow pitch bends. Trying this using preset 17 or 32 (the classic sync sounds) I heard a fair amount of “hash” and artifacts. Not at all uncommon in many synths. But going up to the top parameter bar above the panel and selecting the Q in a circle, which is the oversampling is the key. Defaulting to 1x, it offers 2, 3 and 4x oversampling, and going to the highest value cleaned up all the issues. So it’s a trade-off between processing power used and results delivered.

 

All-in-all I find this to be a great-sounding, well-thought-out instrument that I am having a blast playing around with. In general I think Cherry Audio does a great job with every release, and they are so damn prolific it makes me think they are a larger team than they are. Just very dedicated and sleep-deprived, I guess. And their pricing is so damn low one can buy on impulse and not hurt the bank too much. But no need, there’s 30-day demo versions available for most everything.

 

I’m happy to have this in my toolkit and I look forward to the next thing coming. I would also love to see Cherry Audio continue to design some more original things – their Harmonia and Sines synths are wonderful and very unique.

[jerrythek]

And my granddaughter loves it too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[David Emm]

You guys have to stop. I can't be looking at another synth when I'm about to take on a bigger Mac. I have to get my existing footing back in place first!

 

I once played 2 Prophet-600s, sometimes driven by a pair of Korg DW-8000s, but also as a stacked pair. I had all sorts of synth fun, tweezing a small array of pedals to give them added character. The P-10 is giving me a nostalgia jones, with its multiple play mode options and effects per-layer. Its taking me back. I haven't had a Prophet for a while, so I hear those sirens singin'.

 

I already have several Cherry Audio synths. Looks like I'm going to be adding another. Darn youse guys for your clarity and enthusiasm!