I love Prophet synths - the flavour of pads, unique phase effects and the how evolves its sounds. When I'm produced my latest album 'Million One' I used a my original Matrix 1000 rack for most of the the pads to achieve that classic Carpenter-scifi-soundtrack-like sound, but for bass sequences I used an original Prophet 6 (thanks to Goya Project).
In most situations I'm against software synths because of their weak sound quality (especially in modulation, transients and unnatural digital highs), but with a several modification some of them can be sound surprisingly good. For my latest album I was seeking for authentic 80s synth sounds and in some situations I used Arturia's Prophet synth as well. Here you can download my 80s sequenced bass preset here.
Recording enhancement trick
- The trick is simple: I'm always recording virtual instruments in 96 kHz /24 bit even if my project is in 48 kHz / 24 bit. The reason: virtual instruments have far more detail in their sounds in 96 kHz: the transiets gets clicky & poppy, the filter modulations are much more complex.
- Also I always turn off all of the virtual instrument's built-in effects (such as reverb or delay) durning recording. After the recording I'm dowgrading to the project's sample rate wich is mostly 48/24.
- I use a flat, surgical EQ to cut the unnatural highs of the virtual instrument sound recording: the best spot is from 10kHz with a 36 db/octave lowpass filter with an Oxford or Cambridge EQ. I recommend the UA version of these Oxford, because the vst / au versions are not always enough fast and they washing the transients of the sound. In a few situations it's also a good idea to boost +5dB at 60 or 100Hz with a coloring eq (like UAD's Pultec), than cutting out everything under 35Hz with a very shape surgical EQ at the end.
Here is a quick sound comparison of my upsampling / downsampling methods (download and check it on a good sound equipment to hear the difference better):