Synth Legends Dave Smith & Marcus Ryle Interview at Superbooth 2022 

R.I.P. Dave! Your influence on music and synthesizers can't be understated.

God bless the eternal soul of a man who gave so much to the music world. ❤️🙏🏾☀️

Rest In Peace Dave. You will be missed

RIP Dave!! Thank you for all you did !! You will be sadly missed!! TRUE LEGEND !!!

RIP Dave, thank you for everything.

Damn, just watched this the other week. Had to come back today. Rip my friend ❤️❤️

He is still alive two weeks ago…it was a deep sadness we lost a legend. I’ll remember you forever Dave.

RIP Dave. Thanks for everything!

RIP Legend

RIP Dave Smith

R.I.P. Dave you was the inspire of Synthesists

Dave we are indebted to you and your incredible work. RIP.

Thank you, Dave! 😢

What the hell happened? He’s fit as a fiddle here 2 weeks ago, abroad. I’m shocked and the world lost one of the true great inventors, product man, innovator, engineer. Sales man. Consider he got dozens of disparate companies, many in Japan, to coalesce on a standard. No commercial motive, and the dude got ALL of these companies onboard instead of fielding competing proprietary tech. Long before open source was a thing. This guy set the standard and secured its universal adoption with all these competing companies. There are few on this earth who can marshal that kind of coalition. Incredible.

Great interview. I really like the way Dave explained how and why the digital dark ages came about. So dead on.

RIP Dave Smith 😔

Fantastic interview, true icons. Many thanks!

Fantastic interview. Great to get insight from both Marcus and Dave on the development of the OB-X8. Can’t wait to try the new capabilities, from having an OB-8!

RIP Dave Smith ...

Great interview, a very admirable effort of these designers to not only re-create but combine three designs. Hopefully there will be more collaborations of Dave Smith and Marcus Ryle in the future. Since it is never mentioned, i assume the discrete VCOs are doing a great job not only for the OB-X side, but also for the -Xa and OB-8 side (where they take over for the CEM 3340).

Great guys. True legends

Here is an interview of GIANTS. Ive played both the OBs and Prophets for many many years; own them as well. It is so refreshing to see a guy like Dave Smith wait patiently for his turn to talk amongst conversation about the "greatest" polyphonic synths of all time. Mr. Ryle is such a gentleman, he and Dave are such geniuses. I consider myself blessed to listen to history amongst these two giants. BTW, Ive got the Sequential / Oberheim OBX8 on order with downpayment sent at this time. A monstrous part of history. Thank you SOS for your continued excellent coverage of our ever evolvolving musical instrument industry.

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for this interview! Love hearing different perspectives and histories of the best synth makers and how they worked together on the OB-X8! Would love to have both OB-X8 and the Prophet 10!

Very good questions by Sam!

This is a great interview, thanks for putting it together. Hopefully, Dave's spirit and knowledge will be carried on and further by some young guns at Sequential/Oberheim/Novation. 10:23 You should give iZotope RX (Advanced) a try! A situation like this could really benefit from a restauration process with such a fantastic tool.

Quality, quality guys…take my money!

Dave

And of course in follow up comment, to you Mr. Tom Oberheim, I am an electrical engineer whom pales in the shadow of your greatness. Thank you from many many fans.....

Legends.

dos leyendas vivas que lujo por favor no puedo creer todavia la pedazo maquina que han creado posiblemente me haga con uno (OBX8) , solo por la historia y leyenda que hay detras de los creadores quiero tenerlo en mis aposentos, aunque me pase media vida pagandolo, pero el placer de levantarme por la mañana y verlo alli brillando no tiene precio xD

It's hard to believe that Dave died less than three weeks after this interview. Thank you, Dave. You left the world a better place than you found it.

Dave clarifies the feelings I have regarding VSTs and hardware, especially analog gear. The loss of tactile response and immediacy is not as pleasing or enjoyable as having the knobs and buttons of a real synth in front of you. I certainly appreciate the VSTs for their affordability, taking up zero studio space and making available vintage gear that has gone astronomically out of the average person’s budget, but after years of using Sonic Projects OP-X Pro II as my only Oberheim sound in my studio, I sooooo look forward to having the actual hardware gear (and all of the OB-n series sounds to boot) in my studio. That said, I also really want G-Force’s SEM 8-voice as well now that it has Tom Oberheim’s endorsement. It’s like there was an Oberheim sound famine that has suddenly turned to a magnificent feast. Edit: I also want to address a point Marcus made…there’s a few gripers I’ve seen who complain the OB-X8 doesn’t sound like an Oberheim. I think he makes the reason pretty clear. When they had the vintage units in hand to analyze, none of them were calibrated identically. The units coming off assembly’s calibration desk now obviously have the approval of Tom, Marcus and Dave, and that is certainly authentic enough for me.

Very nice tolk.

This is so sad to watch, even though it's a wonderful interview... can't believe it... I'm sobbing again...

No worries on the sound, ____ happens! Great interview! Thanks Sam and co

Would have been great to have interviewed them outside. Perhaps on a autobahn flyover! Content rules though. Love to hear these two guys. I'm curious as to why Marcus is overlaid by a gang of people on a building site!😂😅🤣

I want my OBX8!

This interview proves that minion followers are much more vindictive to each other about which instrument is "better" than the grand masters who create the instruments in the first place. Great to see those Two next to each other reflecting on technology and openly clarifying that advancements in tech allow us to enjoy products we have never had before. This must be one of the last interviews with Dave Smith - it hurts to realise he's not with us anymore.

Well, to me personally the late '80s and early '90s were THE innovative days. It's just hard to win a d***cratic election with the Yamaha VL1 learning all the keyboard and breath controller techniques, when on a subtractive synthesizer all you need to do is twiddle cutoff and resonance knobs and feel good about oneself, for however short time....

Great info love hardware digital and daws just sound so boring love analog

Yes, the Prophet 5 Rev.4, Prophet-10, and the OB-X8, are quite desirable instruments, even more so now, when the Prophet-6 and OB-6 prices went up to $3,499. Unless the Prophet-5/10 and OB-X8 prices are also going to jump up, because the Prophet-5 Rev.4 being only a $100 than the Prophet-6 right now is a no brainer to get the Prophet-5 Rev 4. But then there's the Fantom 8 right next to those for $3,999, which seems like a total bargain, except that the Fantoms are nowhere to be found in stock at this time. I am worried that the Fantom 8 prices will jump up to $5,499 when the are back. I might need to put some deposit right now to freeze the Fantom price at the $3,999. I mean, it's truly a bargain now.

Dave at 100% just a few days before the sadness - f'ed up

Next time the mic should be handed over to the interviewed persons

How do Sound On Sound have such terrible sound? Come on.