OP-X Pro II vs....?

[ontol]

I have OP-X, Xils 4, and OBXD. I use OP-X the most of the three, but you should go with what sounds best to you.

You might try out the PolyKB III over at Xils too...

[Niowiad]

Just got the OP-X PRO-II... yeah I'm a little late :\ I've been using OB-Xd for a while.
Amazed by the sound, by the variety of features and fine tuning possibilities.

Only thing... probably needs a new GUI. I'm running everything on 1440x900 monitors and it's a little hard to read/watch.
And a lot of people are probably running that at 1080p. Possibly unusable on a 4k monitor.

[fluffy_little_something]

Yes, the GUI is pretty bad by modern standards.
I assume many potential customers have that problem and don't buy it because of that. But the developer doesn't seem to care...

[goldenanalog]

A well-deserved bump....

I revisited this software after years of ownership (January 2009) and was blown-away with the amount of work that has gone into breaking their various products' dependency on synthedit (vst3 sdk) - check out the Pro-II manual for yourself if you're interested:

http://www.sonicprojects.ch/opxpro2/man ... manual.pdf

This is crazy - talk about being on a mission to bring the most that they can to those looking for a flexible/controllable OBX emulation - wow.

[goldenanalog]

From page 78 of the ver 1.2 OPX-PRO II owner's manual (above link):

Explore the additional banks

Although the default factory bank is a collection of some of the best and most
useful sounds from all categories, all carefully selected in a time consuming
selection process, it's highly recommended to take the time to check out too all
the many (66) additional banks which are delivered with the synth and can be
loaded with BANK:LOAD. OP-X PRO-II is able to produce an incredibly wide
palette of sounds, probably more than you would suppose. It can sound like a
Jupiter-8, Prophet 5, Synthex, SH-2000, Minimoog - just check the dedicated
banks. Check the „Famous“ bank if you are out for all those famous 80ies
sounds. The library at this time offers a total of 66 banks including more than
2'500 sounds. The „Presetbase“ included in the 1.2 installer includes the 32
original factory banks as well as all banks released on the sound reloads page
(see link below - these banks can be found in the subfolder „Downloaded“) so
far, as well as some extra banks (in „Extrabanks“). If you're a former OP-X or
OP-X PRO or OP-X PLAYER user you even can download all original banks in
converted format (see „Former OP-X PRO libary“) on the sound reloads page,
which also in the future will be updated with new free reloads:
http://www.sonicprojects.ch/opxpro2/userarea.html

[W23]

I almost bought OP-X a while back after demoing it. The only thing that really held me back was around that same time Swan Audio put out a preset pack for Diva that focused on emulating the Obx, and the guy was pretty anal about the whole thing. I just realized that since I already owned Diva, I really didn’t need another emulation. Here’s a link to the website for the presets. It even comes with Obx themed skins.

http://swanaudio.co.uk/product/classic-ob-3/

Here’s a video
https://youtu.be/rSQ6vzKMaKQ

My only point here is that if you own Diva, you may be able to get by without buying another VST

[goldenanalog]

If I had the time, I'd love to put it up against some of the other softwares it purports to emulate - do a little apples to apples comparing. I know that versus the original OBX, it's one of the best games in town. But especially after a little skimming of the manual - it's pretty serious with it's attention to detail. Here's another 'tweak' that they did (Page 32):

A specially designed 12/24db low pass filter with an accompanying parallel
multimode filter, inspired by the famous SEM, offers lots of possibilities. The
SEM filter became famous with the beige SEM-Modules and the SEM based
Four- and Eightvoice. The OB-X was the last OB synth that was equipped with
this discrete design (but without multi mode). Later models, beginning with the
OB-Xa, used the standard Curtis chips. One of the special things of the SEM
filter is that in high resonance settings the sound remains as fat as in zero
resonance settings. This is a wonderful thing for pads and sweeps. The old
SEM filters had no self oscillation. In OP-X PRO-II you can switch it on if
needed either by pushing the 24dB-button (in the additional buttons section)
twice (the self oscillation lamp next to the modes display will shine now) or by
clicking twice on the lamp itself (which will remotely-switch the 24dB button).
Self oscillation can only be activated in 24dB mode. The classic SEM design
(continous blending from 12bB lowpass to highpass which results in notch
filtering in the 50/50 setting, with a separate fixed bandpass position) has been
enhanced with switchable 12/24 dB slope in LP mode (the 24 dB switch is in
the additional buttons section) and a continuously (!) adjustable multi-mode
pole (only high pass in the SEM) that lets you blend from high pass over band
pass to notch. Not enough with this the LP-multimode mix can be modulated
by the main LFO and the filter envelope. Finally the additional buttons section
has a button called DMP (p.40) which offers 4 different brightness modes

[goldenanalog]

I almost bought OP-X a while back after demoing it. The only thing that really held me back was around that same time Swan Audio put out a preset pack for Diva that focused on emulating the Obx, and the guy was pretty anal about the whole thing. I just realized that since I already owned Diva, I really didn’t need another emulation. Here’s a link to the website for the presets. It even comes with Obx themed skins.


My only point here is that if you own Diva, you may be able to get by without buying another VST

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'll take a look at those presets - thanks for sharing, W23!

[electro]

The OP-X engine is extremely precise emulating the OB-X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlmrnAk0oHU

[AdvancedFollower]

Yes, the GUI is pretty bad by modern standards.
I assume many potential customers have that problem and don't buy it because of that. But the developer doesn't seem to care...

It's available with multiple GUI sizes now. It's a separate installer and dll for each size (Normal, Large or Huge), which isn't ideal, but at least the developer cares.

[waltercruz]

It's now just the size.

Just read this part of the manual, that was posted some posts ago:

" One of the special things of the SEM filter is that in high resonance settings the sound remains as fat as in zero resonance settings. This is a wonderful thing for pads and sweeps. The old SEM filters had no self oscillation. In OP-X PRO-II you can switch it on if needed either by pushing the 24dB-button (in the additional buttons section) twice (the self oscillation lamp next to the modes display will shine now) or by clicking twice on the lamp itself (which will remotely-switch the 24dB button). Self oscillation can only be activated in 24dB mode."

He tries to keep the synth apparently simple and 'faithful' to the Oberheim Gui style, but it's full of things like that. IMHO, it would benefit of having more screen controls with less enigmatic options.

[Examigan]

It's now just the size.

There are different display sizes available now, unless I am not understanding what you mean...(?)

[waltercruz]

ouch, it was "it's not just the size" that bothers.

another example, from LFO section: click two times for this, click 3 times and watch for blue light for that, it seems just insane.

Two new waveforms, triangle and sawtooth, can be switched by different combinations of the three wave buttons. The mixed waveforms sine & square and square & s/h are still available. The rising sawtooth wave can be changed to falling sawtooth by inverting it in the „Lfo Phase“ section. S/H now can be turned into sampled vibrato by clicking on AMP two times (LED blue). In this mode the S/H input is fed by the lever LFO instead of noise, which leads to repeated patterns. The LFO now can be triggered by played notes on demand by clicking on „Lfo Phase: OSC“ two times (blue mode). The starting phase can be freely adjusted with the beat trimpot just above „CONTROL“. The LFO furthermore can be delayed and faded in triggered by notes by clicking two
times on „Lfo Phase: PW-FILT“. A third click will additionally invert LFO to PWFILT as in normal (orange) mode. The delay time can be regulated with the „Velo/Mode“ knob located on the right side of the voice mute buttons, the fading in time with the „Stp/Speed“ knob next to it. The fading in will start only after the delay.

It's an awesome sounding synth, but the GUI kinda keeps me away from it.

[AdvancedFollower]

Seems like he's trying to keep the GUI as faithful to the real OB-X as possible while also adding features that weren't in the original. It's bewildering at first but if you use the synth heavily for a few days you get used to it.
Maybe putting everything under an "Extras" tab would have satisfied some people, but probably upset others
At least the GUI is now readable on everything from low-end 720p screens up to 4K, which is more than can be said for e.g. the Korg Legacy Collection.

[goldenanalog]

Seems like he's trying to keep the GUI as faithful to the real OB-X as possible while also adding features that weren't in the original. It's bewildering at first but if you use the synth heavily for a few days you get used to it.
Maybe putting everything under an "Extras" tab would have satisfied some people, but probably upset others
At least the GUI is now readable on everything from low-end 720p screens up to 4K, which is more than can be said for e.g. the Korg Legacy Collection.

Def. some language translation issues going on to add confusion; I think that a lot of that could be remedied/aspects clarified if SP could do some videos hitting the finer points of what they're trying to explain throughout the manual.