PRISMA by Rob Papen

Preview of Prisma. Available April 2016. It was planned for March, but the MCP (Multi Control Page) did delay it a few weeks.
NOTE: this product will be part of the eXplorer-III bundle. But also customers that own not all instruments will be able to use it.

 

I own Predator...and Prisma soon

 

I actually agree. Never been a fan of Rob Papen synths, but thats mostly because im a huge UI guy, I think a good UI is almost as important as the sound itself, almost. And I have a hard time with UI of Rob Papens products and its UIs. Goes to show you how much of a difference Steve Jobs acutally did by being so picky about the UI and putting down alot of time on its design.

 

I agree @artic, although I will admit to liking the sound of Albino when it first came out, but it has been years and years since I even looked at it, I guess it was pretty good, pretty early on the soft synth train.... but his interfaces have lost me over the years to clearly better products...

 

I agree...but partly. Their GUIs are nothing special, not all ugly but not very pleasant...
...yes, presets management is a bit a pain-in-the-ass...but the Synthesizer BLUE 1 has impressed me
with very good sounds! Its *Cluster* sounds are top for Ambient music.

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While i have to admit that RP has made some interessting stuff, by that i mean the concepts of some of his plugs, i also found myself throwing out all of his synths from my system because i never was happy with the sounds from them. Be it selfprogrammed patches or the preset ones.
Albino was the only one i have really used for some tunes.
Now Prisma is for me of no use whatsoever even if i would use his synths, i would rather stack them inside S1. Way more flexible and you can combine any inst you like, unlike Prism wich may host only RP plugs i assume.

 

RP sounds so sht! I try to use blue 2 and predator some time ago but these sound so bad! low quality…

 

True, some of their plugins are a bit bland and don't sound particularly high quality unless you put a lot of effort in, but Punch-BD is one of the hugely underrated drum synths out there in my opinion.

 

Not too impressed by the sound of this one.
I will have to agree with the previous comments regarding the GUI.

 

papen stuff sounds pretty good, not the best- but i think a little underrated.
but they are just a chore to use

 

Last edited: Apr 11, 2016

I love both Blue and Predator. Couple of my favorites. You just have to learn how to use them right. Don't really see practical use of prisma tho. Unless Papen is trying to make a mini daw or something. If anyone needs some tips for Blue or Predator let me know. Been using them since 1.0 lol

 

I like the Idea of patching synth together in this kind of matrix. What I don't like that it is a) limited to Rob Papen Plugins and b) that it looks fugly as hell. ;) If it was like Blue Cat Audio's Patcher for any VSTi I'd be more interested.

The general issue I have with Papens Plugins is Preset Management as well as the Quality of the Presets for any other Genre than Techno/EDM. What Papen thinks about what a Hip-Hop Lead should sound like is pretty ridiculous. These Presets have no flavor at all. I bet that Predator is capable of doing good sounds, but I don't have the time nor patience to go from INIT to something that is good when I can just open up Serum and do it in half the time on a beautiful GUI and ease of use!

 

Last edited: May 27, 2016

Im not overly impressed as it just a layering tool right?
Like fusor..
I dont need a seperate vst to do that..
Unless ive missed something of course " coz ive just looked at the screen shots n read the on screen functions"

 

Agree also/ive all the rp releases and the only vst i constantly find myself coming back to time and again funnily enough is Albino!!
"only if im programming dnb tho"

 

That's because you can't program these synths properly.

 

Prisma is finally being released after a few years of being talked about and developed, on June the 2nd.

robpapen.com

It looks pretty interesting. I only found out about it a couple of weeks ago. Didn't realise it's been on the cards since 2013 (theres a thread on kvr about it but it is old and doesn't say much).

I'll be able to control Predator and Blue with it. It bypasses the fx sections of the synths to save on cpu while using the inbuilt fx.

There's a few videos here from Rob's channel explaining what Prisma is and does if you don't have your head around it yet.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBWOOO5zeHgdjEZebpRbIxAU-RXJijV8r

So only another week to go. It's free as well if you own any Papen synths. I'm curious whether it will load Albino, but I doubt that very much seeing as it has been discontinued.

Anyway, first post!! No, I'm not Rob ;-) Looking forward to this one.

 

ROB PAPEN isn't very happy, because 4k monitors are still too small, and he can only see 15% of the synth components.

He can't wait for 2025, when everybody will have 32k monitors. He will finally be able to display the 650 knobs, 800 sliders, 400 leds and 350 buttons, ALL AT ONCE, on the amazing 50'000 x 32'000px GUI.
and it will be a blast to preview sounds, on the amazing 100'000 presets browser, where it will be possible to display 128 soundbanks with 128 patches each, AT ONCE. It will never be so easy, to find a patch we like.

 

I'm a big fan of Papen's synths and also those from Linplug. So much so, I saved up, and ended up buying all the ones I use from both devs.

I agree somewhat about the interfaces re: Papen's synths though. They look good on first glance in a kind of eye candy way, but unless you have a suitable screen and perfect eyesight, they are, what was that word that someone used?, a 'chore'. You can do it but it could be easier.

I also have a few of Papen's FX units. Even though I love the sound of them, and I've paid good money for them as well, I tend to find myself not using them so much as other plugs. I thought it was just me, really, and my aging eyesight.

I bought Predator not so long back, and I must say, the fact you can size it to take up the entire screen (I'm on 1080 here) really makes a difference. As for the UX of the design, well that could probably be better as well, but a synth like Predator is a nice little bread and butter synth, used mainly for its range of presets that are easy enough to tweak. I have already dozens of VSTs that cover very similar bases, but I demo'd it and like the sound of it.

I played a track I made a year or so ago, last night, and it was mainly made up of my Linplug synths. For me, Linplug has a sound also - quite raw actually. Some of those synths are over a decade old now, and I'm not sure how 'sweet' the filters are on them compared to the modern designs of today. But they work in the context of a track and its nothing a little judicious use of FX can't cure. They can also be programmed from scratch if needs be.

I tried doing some patches from Init on the Papen stuff, but yes, the patch management needs a 3 week course in nightschool to be able to comprehend. Then you need a refresher course every six months just so you don't forget.

Funnily enough, the great thing about the track I found last night was a little render I had done from Diva. I don't own any U-he synths at all. I have them all, demoing, and I render them out if I like a lick. But I wouldn't buy any of them. I'm just not a big fan of the sound. I know that sounds stupid. I know how excellent and well regarded they are, but I have my tools now, I just don't need them. Ironically, the sound that Diva was doing was a 303 like static squelchy thing. But it fitted perfectly. If I had loads of money I would probably buy Zebra or Hive, but I don't feel deprived by the generous demo setup of U-he's synths. I drop them into a midi track and see if they fit, tweak the patch a bit, then render it down. No noise bursts or dropouts or whatever. I don't use them that much though, and so far they've worked fine for me like this.

Back to Papen's synths. I downloaded an 'alternative' copy of Blue due to the excessive copy protection, to use on new machines I'm building. You only get two authorizations as well which is pretty lame. I'm looking forward to trying the new version.

I have all the synths I want from Papen now. Nothing he has done recently really interests me, as like some of you have mentioned 'I have all those synths that do that sound'. I'm interested to see what Linplug come up with though, after buying Spectral and liking it a lot. I really like Peter a lot as well, he's been a great help to me on many occasions. One of the advantages of buying a synth, perhaps the greatest advantage of all maybe.

The computer I'm running my synths on is pretty underpowered. I have more powerful machines but don't always work on them. I resort to using my version of Blue LE most of the time. It's a stripped down Blue and does most of what is needed. Plus you don't need to beg for authorizations for it. It's also a bit more lightweight than the big brother.

Very often I can't even run one instance of Blue II on my machine as it's too cpu hungry (see, it is an old machine), so goddess knows how I'm going to run 2 x Blues and 2 x Predators say. There's gonna be a whole lotta freezing goin' on, when that happens!

Like I said, I only found out about this Prisma thing a little while back and it looked interesting, and free! I'll probably do what I always do - play about a bit, do a nice patch, put it in a track, move on, forget about it till the next novelty comes along. But I do this in parallel with all the bread and butter synths I've been using for over the last decade, that aren't that exciting probably compared to today's new offerings, but they work for me, and familiarity and reliability count for a lot when you just want to crack on and get your head down and make a track.

Still surprised not many people talking about this though. I suppose there will be a fuss in a few days when someone makes a thread on one of the 'big two' forums about it. I just find it odd that this was announced three years ago and it's only coming to fruition now. They must have been busy with all that other stuff.

I'm happy to buy and pay for the software I use from these people, but it's a shame about the copy protection used and the silly limit on the amount of installs you get with regard to Papen. As if I'm going to go buying the thing three times, because that is what I would need to do for all my computers set up as DAWs (not including VMs), when it is only physically possible for a single man to use one at any one time. It's not like I'm Teleporting or Vienna'ing two or more computers together, so that point is moot.

I'm going to play about with this (Prisma) as it looks like it might be fun. It's a shame it won't run my Albino or my Blue LE though (I'm assuming). So that's just Blue and Predator. Oh, I have a copy of RGMuted CM, but again, I will be doubtful of that being compatible as well. This program is probably to push people to use full versions for it to work, so as they buy extra licenses. We'll see.

I doubt companies like Papen and Linplug want to go outside of their comfort zones now, but I think they should at least try it. The whole VST market is about to change radically over the next few years, and they will become even more irrelevant if they don't at least try to keep up with the times.

Prisma is a semi-novel idea. How well it is executed we are about to find out. It's not going to cost anything to try out, and who knows, there will hopefully be a bit of synergy going down with it all.