Splitting Prophet 5/VS Into Two Separate Products? Shady!!

[artao]

What's up with this eh? Quite shady. Nothing but a marketing maneuver to make more money out of prior products. Any other reasons given are just excuses. 
The Prophet 5/VS was/is a rather unique instrument, being able to combine the 5 and VS like that. And it has been part of the V Collection since nearly the beginning. No longer tho eh? Lame. I'm quite disappointed in this decision, on a company level. Once again I find myself saying that this seems rather petty. 
I guess we can see how the future is going to go tho. Updates to the various engines, and not much else.
OH! And what about those folks who bought SQ-80, not knowing it'd be part of VC9 eh? Considering they paid full price for that, what sort of discount for them eh? I'm glad that's not me; besides which I was disappointed to see it wasn't part of VC8.
... Sidenote: Augmented Strings/Voices doesn't belong in V Collection any more then Pigments does. (It doesn't)
That feels more like a "Hey what else can we throw into V Collection 9 to make it seem like a better deal?"
Keep the V Collection with simply classic instrument emulations, not newly created stuff. The Vocoder verges on that but clearly has Moog roots. How about adding drum machine emulations, since you removed Spark 2. The V Collection is very much lacking in that department.

[Funtmaster]

Without getting all Machiavellian, I suspect the splitting of the Proper 5/VS allows for easier development of what are essentially two very different synths. Personally, I didn't like them being combined.

I did buy the SQ80 when it came out, but that, along with the other Arturia products I own, resulted in an upgrade of 150 euros. For that I got the two Augmented offerings, the MS20 (and I do have the Cherry Audio and Korg plugins - but this seems to have a certain bite to it) and the upgrades to the Pro5/VS and CS80. These latter two I have rediscovered as of this upgrade. The CS80 certainly sounds more interesting to my ears now. That, with a few hundred new patches and from my early testing, vastly improved patch loading times and what looks to be a reduced CPU hit in Pigments, I am not complaining.

I do agree that more drum machines would be nice. I love my SparkLE. While we are about it: how about a Yamaha CS15 or 30 Arturia?

[artao]

I am baffled as to why people like and/or want them split into two separate synths. But I seem to be in the minority here.
Could someone please explain why? I see zero benefit along with loss of functionality (i.e.- combining them in one patch)

I would add as well regarding v9 that instrument engine upgrades aren't even remotely the same as completely new instruments, and thus the upgrade price from version to version should be significantly cheaper.
V Collection is running out of new instruments to add tho, on the "classic synths" side of things.
Brand new stuff like Pigments and Augmented Strings/Voices should be part of a NEW instrument collection, not V Collection.

[sumo999]

Check out Arturia's video on the VS and then tell me it's just another walk in the park.  It's crazy deep.  Definitely it's own beast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyg6S6ojLck

[MajorFubar]

Brand new stuff like Pigments and Augmented Strings/Voices should be part of a NEW instrument collection, not V Collection.

FWIW I completely agree with that. I had hoped Arturia had given up modelling anything but synths after they abandoned Arturia Brass ten years ago.
I couldn't care less about modelled strings and modelled choirs. There are commercial sample libraries which wipe the floor with any physically-modelled strings and vox. But you can't sample synths (well you can, but they end up being nowhere near flexible enough), so it's synths which truly lend themselves to physical modelling. IMO Arturia should have stayed with just doing that. The definition of what V Collection actually is / was, is starting to blur really badly, which is no criticism of the quality of the actual products, but more a criticism of how Arturia have decided to market them.

I think the problem is many OEMs have their own official virtual synths now, and Arturia can't get licencing agreements like they could 15+ years ago when they were really the only ones in the game. I'm surprised we even got a Korg MS20. The kind of synths I'd love to see Arturia add, such as the Roland D50, have no hope of ever appearing, because Roland market their own D50 emulation via their perpetual-payment rent-a-synth Roland Cloud service, that I refuse to subscibe to on principle.

[MCMorrise]

+1 for all that's been said regarding the place of Augmented Strings and Augmented Voices.

Up to this point, the V Collection has been almost entirely emulations of existing hardware. The exception was Spark, which was a catch-all synth-and-sampling drum machine and groovebox that fit in because so much of the content was classic sounds. It's a damn shame we got AS and AV before we got Spark 2.

Pigments, these new engines, and any future Arturia originals ought to be in their own Originals Collection, not V Collection!

[marie_arturia]

Hello,
For the VC9 we rebuilt from scratch the Prophet-5, Prophet VS and CS-80, meaning they are brand new instruments with a completely new code. I suggest you to compare the old Prophet V3 with both the Prophet 5 and the VS to see the improvement gap, personally i'm very impressed by the sound of both, compared with the actual hardware !
Given the complexity of both synths, there was no interest of keeping them together, having a mix of both now would be too complicated for users. Also, as you stated in another post, in the Prophet V3 you could not search patches in the browser related to the 5 or VS only, and that was a pain.

Every user that bought the SQ80 has the buying price as a discount on the Vcollection 9, so it is not more expensive for them. If you own VCollection 8 your upgrade price should be 199, and if you own VCol 8 + SQ80 V it should be 149.

[jackn2mpu]

Hello,
For the VC9 we rebuilt from scratch the Prophet-5, Prophet VS and CS-80, meaning they are brand new instruments with a completely new code. I suggest you to compare the old Prophet V3 with both the Prophet 5 and the VS to see the improvement gap, personally i'm very impressed by the sound of both, compared with the actual hardware !
Given the complexity of both synths, there was no interest of keeping them together, having a mix of both now would be too complicated for users. Also, as you stated in another post, in the Prophet V3 you could not search patches in the browser related to the 5 or VS only, and that was a pain.

Every user that bought the SQ80 has the buying price as a discount on the Vcollection 9, so it is not more expensive for them. If you own VCollection 8 your upgrade price should be 199, and if you own VCol 8 + SQ80 V it should be 149.

I do NOT like what was done with the new Prophet 5. I see the gui has gotten away from what a real Prophet 5 looks like. You turned the patch selection area just above the keyboard into a sequencer control - not cool. Give us back the old gui. The upgrade price is crazy and I'll wait until it drops at the end of the year.

[artao]

Given the complexity of both synths, there was no interest of keeping them together, having a mix of both now would be too complicated for users. Also, as you stated in another post, in the Prophet V3 you could not search patches in the browser related to the 5 or VS only, and that was a pain.

More like you saw a potential for greater profit (no pun intended) and needed some way to flesh out V9 to make it seem more worth the upgrade price (NOTE: It isn't)

So you're saying that both synths are now more complex than they used to be, and as such your programmers simply can't hack it? (pun intended) It worked just fine before. And I don't see either instrument being more "complex" than they used to be.
Too complicated for users? LOLno. They have always been just fine together, for the last EIGHT versions of V Collection.
Um .... Yeaaahhhhhh .... I'm gonna hafta go with 100% skeptical on that.

As to not being able to browse patches by 5 or VS: That was a fault of programming. SUPER easy to do, considering you could do that in every single version prior to ... V6? When you did the first total overhaul of the preset browser. Yet somehow it couldn't be done in the newer preset browsers? I mean, COME ON! All it would take is simple tagging. Not difficult.
Anyhow, that's now moot since you split them up.

[sumo999]

Given the complexity of both synths, there was no interest of keeping them together, having a mix of both now would be too complicated for users. Also, as you stated in another post, in the Prophet V3 you could not search patches in the browser related to the 5 or VS only, and that was a pain.

More like you saw a potential for greater profit (no pun intended) and needed some way to flesh out V9 to make it seem more worth the upgrade price (NOTE: It isn't)

So you're saying that both synths are now more complex than they used to be, and as such your programmers simply can't hack it? (pun intended) It worked just fine before. And I don't see either instrument being more "complex" than they used to be.
Too complicated for users? LOLno. They have always been just fine together, for the last EIGHT versions of V Collection.
Um .... Yeaaahhhhhh .... I'm gonna hafta go with 100% skeptical on that.

As to not being able to browse patches by 5 or VS: That was a fault of programming. SUPER easy to do, considering you could do that in every single version prior to ... V6? When you did the first total overhaul of the preset browser. Yet somehow it couldn't be done in the newer preset browsers? I mean, COME ON! All it would take is simple tagging. Not difficult.
Anyhow, that's now moot since you split them up.

The most practical solution I would suggest is to sell your Arturia license on eBay and look elsewhere for a Prophet 5 emulation.  There are numerous free and paid alternatives out there.  No reason to continue with a product with which you are not satisfied.

[jackn2mpu]

For those that have done the 'upgrade' to the new Prophet 5 - do you still have the old one available for use or does it get replaced? If/when I do the upgrade to the new V Collection that's the way I'd get the newest version. I know that in years past when updating the V Collection to a new whole number the old synths were still available.

[Funtmaster]

I can confirm that after upgrading from V8 to V9 I still have the previous hybrid Prophet 5/VS available.

[jackn2mpu]

I can confirm that after upgrading from V8 to V9 I still have the previous hybrid Prophet 5/VS available.

Thanks for the info.