Thor vs. analog emulations?

[sellyoursoul]

I was thinking of picking up one of the analog emulation synths during upcoming holiday sales, and I got it into my brain that I might like to have a Prophet emulator, considering maybe Repro, Model 80, etc. Honestly though, I don't know what characteristics and features make each popular analog synth unique, having never owned any of them. After a little poking around on youtube I ran into a playlist going through each section of a Prophet 10, and I'm following along with Thor attempting to match what is demonstrated. So far, there isn't a hell of a lot in the differences, or at least not enough to care. Thor sounds close enough that I'm not seeing any point in owning a Prophet emulation.

I suppose that I'll finish stepping through that playlist to see what differences I might hear and also read a bit about Prophet's, such as filter type, etc. And if it still seems interesting, I might try to do the same for some other analog synths of personal interest. It should give me a decent view in what each synth can do, what I might be missing or not missing so much, and whether I would actually benefit from buying any analog emulations. I figure that it's time much better spent than passively watching more demos of analog synths and emulations and not arriving at anything more than vague impressions through someone else's sound design skills on a given synth. I mean, I already have vague impressions of the sounds of a Prophet 5/10, OB-X, Juno-60, MS-20, Moog. But what I don't have is any understanding of what makes up the sound character of each of those synths. And I don't yet know if Thor might pull off those sounds well enough not to care about differences, although my hunch is that it probably can.

If anyone gets the motivation to do some comparing of your own (or maybe you already have), I would be interested in your findings.