Digital Synthesizer
Reviews : Keyboard
In 2004 it looked like game over for
Waldorf, but the German company are back, and with a hardware synth that
more than lives up to their former reputation...
Photos: Mike Cameron
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Named after James Bond's pussy-fondling antagonist,
the Blofeld is the first product from a revitalised Waldorf Music GmbH.
Unlike Donald Pleasance's portrayal of the sinister Spectre overlord,
Waldorf's Blofeld is benign and refreshingly free of cat hairs, thus
should be welcome around your house, studio or secret base.
In 2004 Waldorf ceased trading and it seemed this
would be the end of the line for its distinctive brand of hard-sounding,
wavetable-grunging, bass-bin-shaking and often garishly-coloured
synthesizers. Then rumours began to circulate that all was not lost,
that something might be salvaged by the enthusiastic employees of this
quirky company. Ultimately, Joachim Flor, one of Waldorf's former sales
representatives, collected some people and some money to build a new
company with the same name and most of the key players of the previous
company. To cut to the chase, after a long gestation period, Waldorf are
shipping hardware once more!
Although judging good looks always involves a fair
measure of personal taste, the Blofeld's white, slimline, metal
exterior, shiny aluminium encoders and clear graphical screen won't fail
to impress anyone who appreciates quality workmanship and stylish
design. Internally, the Blofeld represents the ripest cherries plucked
from the Microwave 2 and the Q and Micro Q series. I should stress that
this synthesizer isn't simply a rehash of existing ideas; the Blofeld is
a new creature with a fresh identity — it even manages to surpass the
power of those classic instruments in some cases.
The Blofeld has three oscillators per voice, two of
which are capable of delivering wavetable synthesis or analogue
modelling, while the third is devoted to analogue emulation only. Each
oscillator may be routed freely through two filters; these are selected
from a diverse collection of filter types and topped off with filter
panning and drive options that take sonic mangling to another level.
Three fully-featured LFOs, four snappy envelopes and Waldorf's
ever-powerful modulation matrix are on hand for when you need controlled
complexity in your patches. Further delights include 16-part
multitimbrality, a programmable arpeggiator and more than 1000 sounds to
use or to overwrite. Polyphony can be up to 25 voices, depending on DSP
load. Oh, and did I mention that there are effects too? Clearly, this
would be an impressive synthesizer in any class but is all the more so
when you take a look the bottom line.
There are limits to Waldorf's generosity, of course,
and some of them become obvious when you take a look at the rear panel.
The presence of just two audio outputs is probably to be expected at
this price point, but it is the single MIDI port that caused me the most
immediate concern. The Blofeld has MIDI In only — there's no MIDI Out
and definitely no Thru. This means that if you wish to offload any of
your patches for external storage, you must use a computer and USB.
Fortunately the USB port provides full MIDI I/O, so if you are a PC or
Mac owner you do have options — but if your studio is hardware
MIDI-only, you'll have issues.
A headphone socket and connection for the external
power supply complete the rear-panel offerings — and I sincerely hope
the wall-wart supplied to UK buyers is different to the one I received.
I've really had my fill of perching Euro connections into wobbly shaver
adaptors — I thought there was some kind of law against this sort of
thing
Just for a change (no, not really!), my first job
prior to making any noises was to upgrade the Operating System and
factory sounds. Waldorf recommend Windows 98, Windows XP (or higher) or
Mac OSX 10.3.9 (or higher) as supported platforms. Upgrading the OS
proved perfectly straightforward: I connected the synth to my Windows XP
PC via USB, at which point the Blofeld was recognised as a generic USB
Audio device. This device appeared in the MIDI port list in my sequencer
program, making it a simple matter to send the appropriate MIDI file.
The whole OS updating process took about 11 seconds and probably left me
feeling rather over-confident about the prospect of updating the
factory sounds.
I needed to upgrade these because initial versions
of the soundset reportedly suffer from drastic variations in volume and I
wanted to start with a clean sheet. As it happened, this updating
procedure proved rather less painless than the first one. Firstly,
sending the data produced no indication that all the sounds had been
correctly loaded. There was an occasional message that SysEx was being
received but afterwards I could spot no obvious differences — my data
load had clearly not worked. I experienced a vague sense of déjà vu,
remembering similar issues with my Microwave XT, which at least offered
the clue that it was reorganising its memory during a receive, meaning
that you had to try again. Sometimes again and again, watching the damn
thing throughout! Anyway, in the end I completely re-initialised all
patches and reloaded from scratch, this time sending the MIDI file at a
very slow tempo. Thankfully, this appeared to work, although I thought
some patches still sounded a tad quiet. I can only hope that Waldorf
manage to improve the process in the future, perhaps providing some kind
of simple software application to do it via USB.
Something also worthy of note, if you have purchased
a Blofeld but are unable to find the latest soundset, is that the
printed 'Quick Start' manual points you to the wrong Waldorf web site —
the correct one is documented in the full manual to be found on the
supplied CD.
It was in 1996 that I first encountered a Waldorf
synthesizer that employed the matrix method of parameter access. This
was the powerful analogue monosynth they call the Pulse, and it used a
matrix instead of a panel of dedicated knobs. The system worked pretty
well, saving considerable cost by allowing just a few physical controls
to operate a wide array of parameters. Time passed, and further
refinements came along in the form of proper displays and continuous
encoders. The Microwave 2 possessed what I still regard as the fastest,
most intuitive variation on this theme.
The Blofeld's matrix is a two-tier system based
around seven perky encoders, a delightfully sharp graphical display and a
series of buttons and LEDs. At its simplest level, the menu system is
navigated via the four buttons for oscillators, filters, modulation and
so on. Where there are several options, multiple button-presses step
through them, the position at all times shown by an LED. The matrix rows
are labelled in a small neat font that my ageing eyes can just about
cope with, and having done your button pushing, you simply grab the
relevant encoder and tweak away. For most quick editing purposes, you
might never need to go much deeper.
The Bloefeld's rather spartan rear panel — and yes, that is just a single MIDI input port.
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Beneath the display are two encoders that line up
with items appearing on the display screen. These items don't
necessarily correspond to the current selection in the matrix, which
confused me occasionally; it is implemented in this way so that you can
use the matrix encoders independently of the display encoders.
When exploring the menu system further, the
selection dial is used to navigate through the edit pages. Knowing where
you are in this 'deeper' realm of the menu system is aided by the 'page
of pages' area of the display, in the top right-hand corner. You soon
learn that there are lots of these pages, many of which are populated by
excellent graphics, illustrating oscillator and LFO waveforms, envelope
shapes and so on. At any time you can return to play mode by hitting
the Play button, then use the selection dial to select patches and the
encoders beneath the display to change banks and perform category
searches. The latter is essential when you consider that there are eight
banks of 128 patches to choose from.
The selection encoder is notched for ease of use
(all other encoders are smooth in operation) and when initially clicking
through the preset banks I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of
patches, even though they are conveniently organised into 13 different
categories. There was no way I could meaningfully audition them all and
still get a review written, but I soon realised they represent the sort
of sounds I've grown to love from Waldorf — hard, biting basses, mad
sound effects, evolving wavetable pads, brassy leads and more. I also
thought I noticed a warmer, more fuzzy character than I am familiar
with, which was intriguing.
I decided to pitch in and program some patches
myself from scratch, perhaps using the ever-useful randomise function to
generate some starting points. The Utility menu contains patch store,
initialise, randomise, and various dump options. Some of the patches
thrown up by randomise were astonishing, although I concede that very
few would be classed as 'normal'. Randomise gave me strange, eerie and
downright unsettling tones, all ready to tweak and develop further if
necessary. I wanted to start overwriting many of those factory electric
pianos, organs, basses and soft, girly pads right away! Having concluded
that every synth should have randomise, I then pondered how much nicer
it would be if degrees of randomisation (or some other way of taming the
results) were offered for those times when you want to generate
something you can actually play.
To finish off, where would we be without effects? The Blofeld has two sets of effects for each program:
Effect 1 and Effect 2.
Effect 1 consists of either chorus, flanger, phaser,
overdrive or 'triple FX', the last a slightly simplified combination of
chorus, sample and hold and overdrive. Effect 2 adds delay, clocked
delay and reverb to the list. With its maximum delay time of 557ms, the
Blofeld can't produce delay lengths as long as the Q or even the Micro
Q, but at least it offers MIDI-clockable delays. These have a range
starting at a very fast 1/96 division right up to 10 bars, although
goodness knows how high your bpm would need to be to achieve that! I
also noticed a few audible clicks that occur when you adjust delay time
or feedback during play; I mention this because the manual specifically
claims it won't happen.
Finally, the reverb really doesn't sound too bad in
context. There are a number of tweakable parameters that help you get
more mileage from it, including diffusion, size, shape, decay and
damping, with the reverb's character further adjustable using low- and
high-pass filters. Overall it's a welcome, if unspectacular, inclusion.
Blofeld was 007's chameleon-like adversary and an
evil genius to boot, so finding holes in his fiendish schemes is no easy
task. In fact, most of the shortcomings I unearthed can probably be
attributed to cost saving. Admittedly, just two audio outputs isn't
ideal for a multitimbral synth, and the matrix method of parameter
access can never be as fast as a panel full of knobs, but I think this
latter issue is minimised due to the logical way the matrix has been
implemented. Given the Blofeld's size, there's a hell of a lot packed in
here yet at no time has either build or sound quality been compromised.
As you'd expect from Waldorf, extensive MIDI control is available, so
you can choose your favourite remote controller and program it
appropriately, at which point things start to look much more accessible.
Loss of MIDI ports I found slightly harder to
forgive, but I guess most of us probably have some USB devices kicking
around, so connecting up the Blofeld for the sake of saving our patches
shouldn't be an impossibility, even if it is occasionally inconvenient.
If, in future, Waldorf find a way to offer USB audio functionality as
well as MIDI, the Blofeld could make an irrisistible companion to a
laptop-based setup.
The current Multi mode is unfinished (see the
'Multitimbral Operation' box earlier in this article) but it is, at
least, usable, even if you can't save individual assignments yet. With
over 1000 patches supplied, you have a huge amount of exploring to keep
you busy until an update percolates through.
Sonically, although recognisable as distinctly
Waldorfian in character, the Blofeld is also capable of smoother, lusher
tones. It can do convincing analogue and wavetables at the same time —
quite a combination! In fact, the ability to mix these forms of
synthesis freely and route the results through some seriously good
filters (and, indeed, some seriously wacky ones) already puts the
Blofeld beyond most hardware synthesizers made today, let alone at this
price point. With that extensive modulation matrix, versatile
arpeggiator and built in effects too, I have to admit it's difficult to
do anything but gush. If any miniature super-villain is destined to rule
the world, Blofeld gets my vote!
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