Since Behringer‘s business and pricing model depends primarily on being able to purchase components in large quantities at a corresponding discount, synthesizer production has virtually ceased in recent years due to the shortage of components. Added to this were the delays in the supply chains; after all, manufacturing takes place in China. Now the machinery is slowly starting up again and we were able to secure one of the first freely available copies of the PRO-800, whose pre-announcement is now also a few years ago. Surprisingly, Behringer could not only keep the price of around 600 €, which was announced at that time, despite generally increased prices, but even lower it significantly: 389 € for an 8-voice analog synthesizer with memory and complete MIDI control is a statement!
Prophet-600
The PRO-800 is a desktop-sized replica of the Sequential Circuit‘s Prophet-600, which was released in 1982 and shares the fame of being the first MIDI-equipped synthesizer with the Roland Jupiter-6, but despite its rather moderate price it was always a bit overshadowed by the almighty Prophet-5. The Prophet-600 had one more voice (6-voice polyphonic), but it didn‘t sound quite as warm, round and classy as its big brother, and the envelopes weren‘t as crisp either. The latter was also due to the fact that the envelopes are not generated analog, but a somewhat lame digital processor was responsible
