Despite its small controls, the elegant front panel of NI's Pro Five is easy to use, and the keyboard can be retracted for a more compact display.
Pro Five is, in essence, a software emulation of the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 synthesizer. Like
Model E,
Pro Five is distributed worldwide by Steinberg, but this time is designed by Native Instruments, already well known for their
Generator and
Reaktor soft synths. They have used the same software engine to produce this VST Instrument, but since the elements of each voice are hard‑wired rather than modular, processor overhead is claimed to be significantly lower, and each section has been finely tweaked to closely emulate the sound of the original design.
The original featured two oscillators per voice, five polyphonic voices and a five‑octave keyboard. As with
Model E, velocity sensitivity is added to the original spec, and its maximum polyphony of 32 voices is also much greater, although I suspect once again that few musicians will dedicate the amount of processor power required to achieve this. Unlike
Model E, which simply demands that you occasionally insert your CD,
Pro Five's protection system gives you the option of installing a 50Mb file called Mystery on your hard drive. If you do this you will occasionally be asked for the original CD‑ROM to be inserted; if not you have to do this every time you start the program. NI are pleased that this system seems to stop Internet piracy, and most people won't grumble, but I hope I don't have to install too many more applications with huge protection files. The total install size is about 57Mb.
