Martinic Prodigy is an authentic emulation of the Moog Prodigy Synthesizer from 1979 with expanded features, including polyphony.
Everyone immediately associates the name Moog with the legendary Minimoog Synthesizer, on the market from 1970 to 1981 in its first generation. During that time, Moog also released other analog synths, including the Prodigy, a synth aimed at the low-cost market.
It was cheaper, sounded great, but offered fewer features than a Minimoog. Nevertheless, it made history and remains popular today. Often described as a very sweet-spotish synth. The Dutch company Martinic has now revived the Moog Prodigy as a plugin for your DAW, available at an intro price of 32€.
Martinic Prodigy
Prodigy, as the name suggests, is an authentic emulation of the Moog Prodigy analog Synthesizer from 1979 for macOS and Windows.
The original Moog Prodigy was a very simple monosynth that was even simpler than the Minimoog. It featured two VCOs, a filter, a single LFO, two ADS envelopes with switchable release, and a VCA. There weren’t any extras otherwise; oh yes, there was a keyboard.
Martinic’s software recreation builds on that and adds some neat enhancements. They’ve fully embraced the vintage interface design. It looks exactly like the original, only with the Martinic logo.
Alongside this vintage interface, Martinic Prodigy also has a more generic-looking, functional secondary panel where you can adjust more settings. Many of the additional non-original features are also located here, and there is also a dedicated preset browser page.
According to Martinic, they used their own proprietary ACE analog modeling technology to recreate the instrument’s original circuitry. The features show that this goes beyond the original.
Moog’s instrument was a 2-oscillator subtractive monosynth. The Dutch Prodigy also offers this but pushes it further with 8-voice polyphony and 6-voice unison. It also has an extended keyboard range, velocity response, panning, and voice detune.
Thanks, Martinic, for giving me a license in advance so I could check out the plugin more deeply.
Analog Modeled Prodigy With Extras
Like its analog model, the core consists of two straightforward oscillators with selectable sawtooth, triangle, and pulse (narrow/square) waveforms and an octave setting. Sync (hard) oscillator 2 to oscillator 1 is also onboard, along with the interval function on OSC2.
Unlike the original, the Martinic Prodigy comes with manual pulse width control and pulse-width modulation on both oscillators. This greatly expands the oscillator’s sonic spectrum. The original could do this too, but only via an unofficial mod.
The mixer allows you to mix the signals with great detail. In the advanced panel, you can work with a new sub-oscillator and pink/white noise generators, plus drive to enrich the signal before the filter. These extras bring more bottom end and character to the sound.
Talking of the filter. It’s a 24dB/octave ladder low-pass filter with added keyboard tracking, bass compensation, and a boost function. They’ve stuck with the low-pass filter, and thanks to the added bass compensation, which should be mandatory in every new ladder filter-based synth.
Moog Prodigy’s modulation was very simple, consisting of two ADS/ADR envelopes with a release option and an LFO. If you use the vintage interface, you’ll find all of these features again. Switching to the advanced interface reveals several welcome improvements.
This includes two full ADSR envelopes for the filter and amp, instead of switchable ADS/ADR, plus an extended LFO. The latter has multiple waveshapes, is synceable, and can be routed to more destinations, including both PWMs, noise, pan, and more.
More Options
The modulation has been significantly expanded, allowing for more flexible work with the Prodigy sound. You can make refinements in the master section. You can tune the whole sound, pan it, and add stereo width and space with a Moog 905-inspired spring reverb.
Another bonus of the Martinic Moog Prodigy emulation is a built-in synceable sequencer, or rather two. It has two 8-step chains that run in parallel or as a single 16-step sequence.
Pitch sequencing is one obvious option; the other, more creative one is parameter automation. You can modulate the oscillators, filters, pulse width, volume, and panning. Different trigger modes, retrigger, quantization, and glide give you plenty of ways to customize the sequences to your needs.
It also offers full MPE support, MIDI learn, program changes, sustain pedal, and volume pedal control. And what the original hardware didn’t have, but the emulation does, are presets.
It ships with plenty of sounds created by professional sound designers, including Daniel Stawczyk, Solidtrax, Johnny Rohrbeck, and Doctor Mix.
Martinic Prodigy First Impression
In the past, the Moog Prodigy’s price point was usually the key factor in buying it. Nowadays, authentic Prodigy and Minimoog emulations are on the market. So price no longer matters. Now, the love for the vintage unit and the sound play the main role.
Compared to the Minimoog, the Moog Prodigy sounded rougher and, thanks to sync, could also produce significantly more aggressive sounds. The Martinic does that too and has more options thanks to PWM, better overall modulation, and more.
I can’t say how authentic the Prodigy emulation is since I don’t own any original hardware. But based on my past in-person experiences with a Prodigy and YouTube demos, the Martinic plugin has a sonic character that goes strongly in that direction.
The additional features make sense, and with up to 8 voices, it’s now a Prodigy polyphonic synth that Moog never built.
Martinic Prodigy is available now at an introductory price of 34€ instead of 68€. It runs as a VST, VST3, and AU plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows. A free trial is out now.
More information here: Martinic
You should all subscribe to Solidtrax YouTube channel. He makes some great patches.
Wow!! This sounds seriously impressive! The emulation seems incredibly close to the original hardware. Huge kudos to the developers, you can really tell how much work and attention to detail went into this. The UI looks fantastic too, and the dual-interface concept is brilliant. Really exciting release! Thanks for sharing this!