Synapse Audio Proxima is a new authentic emulation of the Sequential Prophet-600 analog Synthesizer from 1982 with added features.
With the Pro-800, Behringer offers an authentic reproduction of the Sequential Prophet-600 in collaboration with Gligli, featuring eight voices for an unbeatable price of 249€.
If you’d like to have the sound of the Pro-600 in your DAW and in multiple instances simultaneously, there’s a software alternative. Synapse Audio, known for DUNE 2 and The Legend HZ, today released Proxima, an emulation of this famous vintage synth.
Synapse Audio Proxima
Synth October is in full swing. After Omnisphere 3, Falcon 2026, and others, there’s now another Synthesizer from a well-known brand.
Synapse Audio Proxima is an authentic emulation of the Sequential Prophet-600 from 1982 —the first commercially available synth with MIDI. According to the developer, it uses analog modeling with up to 8x oversampling to accurately simulate the vintage synth’s circuitry.
Unlike the original Prophet-600, Proxima is a 12-voice polyphonic synth with full velocity, aftertouch, and MPE support.
But like the original, it has two analog-modeled oscillators with three selectable waveforms, each with coarse, fine, and pulse-width control. Plus, there is a white/pink noise generator with a lowpass and highpass filter to shape the tone.
Of course, you also have the beloved polymod function that can be used with the envelope or oscillator B to modulate the frequency of oscillator A or the cutoff filter, or both at the same time. With this, you can achieve all kinds of FM sounds.
From here, it goes into a mixer where you can mix all three signals. Then, you have a filter section with low- and bandpass with selectable 12dB and 24dB slopes. Cutoff and resonance knobs give you control over the filter.
On the modulation side, you have three ADSR envelopes (filter, amp, and mod) and two host-sycable multi-wave LFOs with various destinations. A 10-slot modulation matrix manages the mod engines and gives you a straightforward way to create modulations.
Effects & Arpeggiator/Sequencer
To refine your sounds, it features a multi-FX processor with distortion, EQ, phaser, chorus, two-mode reverb, and two-mode delay. Each effect offers a wide range that can be modified manually or via modulation.
Further, Synapse Audio Proxima features an advanced multimode arpeggiator and sequencer with up to 32 programmable steps, velocity, tie, and built-in sub-presets.
Neat—it also has four modulation lines in the modulation matrix, allowing you to modulate up to 4 parameters of the plugin. This is great for achieving more complex, evolving sounds.
Finally, it ships with a wide range of presets from professional sound designers, including Kevin Schroeder. It supports MTS (microtuning) and Native Instruments NKS.
First Impression
Proxima sounds like a very successful emulation of the Prophet-600. If you listen to the hardware vs. plugin demo, you can hardly hear any difference.
And Synapse Audio has recently demonstrated the quality of its plugins—the Legend HZ and Obsession are top-notch emulations. The only thing is the price, which is a bit high, in my opinion. I would have preferred a price of 89€ or 99€.
More information here: Synapse Audio
Available from my partner
It’s starting to feel like everyone is releasing copies of the 1983 Ford Fiesta, for no sane reason.
The Prophet 600 was a budget poly synth for people who couldn’t afford a Prophet 5. I can’t imagine a single soul declaring “Woe is me, I can’t afford software that emulates a Prophet 5, let me choose a software copy of it’s budget sibling instead.”
there are already enough Profit 5 Copies i guess 😂 even the yamaha cs 01 was Cloned. i love mine But as a Software? Not Sure about that.