How nice would it have been IF … Well, IF in 1980 Sequential Circuits would have continued license fee payments for the Prophet-5 (E-MU patents on keyboard scanning, SSM circuits) and thus wouldn’t have stopped the wonderful E-MU AUDITY project.
That 16-voice E-MU synthesizer would have become the most powerful polyphonic synthesizer of all time. At an astronomical price, of course: the AUDITY should have cost approx. 60,000 USD (or more). A sum that only few musicians worldwide would have been able to afford.
This massive synth had been shown at the 1980 AES show and was planned to go into full production. SCI, however, pulled the plug on the royalties, and the whole AUDITY project was shelved.
The only AUDITY in existence is currently exhibited at the National Music Centre in Calgary, Canada. The 5-octave-keyboard that comes with the synth is an adapted polyphonic 4060 keyboard of the E-MU modular system.
Furher info / links:
- http://collections.nmc.ca
- http://www.vintagesynth.com
x - The Prophet From Silicon Valley
“The Lawsuit” – Sequential contra E-MU, page 61-63 - The A-Z of Analogue Synthesisers (Part One: A-M)
E-MU Audity, page 127