A 5-
voice polyphonic analog synthesizer with a 61-note
keyboard, released in
1978. Being an "
essential"
vintage synth, it is still widely used.
The P5 features 2
VCO:s per voice, as well as a
white noise generator. Available
waveforms for the
oscillators are
square,
pulse,
triangle and
sawtooth.
The
filter is a
resonant low-pass
VCF. The
LFO can
modulate pulse width or
pitch. An
ADSR envelope generator is available for both the VCF and the
VCA. Furthermore, a
pink noise generation is included for
modulation.
The first
versions contained 40
user programmable patches. It was raised to 120 in
revision 3.3.
Although the P5 was
(and is) extremely
popular and
great sounding, it had its share of the usual analog synth problems. The
tuning was very
unstable in the early revisions, and there was no
MIDI support. Some users also believe that while swiching from
SSH to
CEM chips in revision 3
improved the general
functionality, it made the P5
sound inferior to the earlier versions due to
missing lower frequencies.
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