In 1978, Dave Smith and Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5 — the first synthesizer that let you dial in a sound, save it, and instantly recall it later. Before that, getting a sound back meant physically writing down every knob position and resetting them all by hand. That one idea, programmable memory, changed how synthesizers were used from that point on, and the warm, slightly imperfect analog tone underneath it became a sound in its own right.

The Prophet-5 went on to show up everywhere. Gary Numan built his signature sound around it. Nick Rhodes used it across Duran Duran's early records. Joe Zawinul made it a core voice in Weather Report. Phil Collins leaned on it through his early solo albums, and it turns up across records by Peter Gabriel, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Vangelis, Depeche Mode, Hall & Oates, a-ha, Radiohead, and Taylor Swift, among plenty of others. Close to fifty years on, it's still one of the most recognisable synth tones in popular music.

Native Instruments built their own software version of it, the Pro-Five, then refined it into the Pro-52 in 2000 and, in late 2002, the Pro-53 — widely regarded at the time as one of the best software recreations of a classic analog synth available, right down to the quirks of the original circuit. Its sync lead preset even became a familiar voice in the Portal 2 soundtrack. NI discontinued the Pro-53 in 2020, and for a few years it simply wasn't available to buy or download anywhere.

It's a very special plugin to me — the original Pro-52 and then Pro-53, I've been using since they were released. While I've been lucky to keep using them thanks to Bitwig's 32-bit legacy plugin support, I've always wanted an up-to-date, 64-bit compatible version, and the possibility of adding some other features I've always wanted to see in the plugin. Thanks to the kind work of Native Instruments and Cmajor, I'm really excited to be able to give you a free and open-source (under GPL) CLAP and VST3 version of the plugin.