The little villain grows up.
Not only on the outside did he gain weight, also his inner qualities have seen a remarkable step-up: besides the virtual-analog synthesis and the classic wavetables it now sports a whopping 60 megabytes of sample memory. Just imagine to add a vocal-like noise spectrum to a typical Wavetable pad, spice-up a virtual-analog solo sound with a strong attack sample or just process any other sample with the countless oscillator and filter modulations.
Play your sound creations on the high-quality keyboard with velocity and aftertouch. Pitchbend and modulation wheel are at your disposal and, as a matter of course, you can connect a sustain pedal. All this is packaged in a sleek metal enclosure with a big graphic display, endless stainless steel rotaries and an internal power supply. And although it comes for an unbeatable price tag, we add something very special. It comes: From Waldorf with Love!
Each of the three oscillators offers authentic circuit-models of analog waveforms: Pulse with variable pulse-width, sawtooth, triangle and, as found in relatively few analog synthesisers these days, sine wave.Furthermore, oscillators 1 and 2 feature the two wavetables that were introduced by the Waldorf Q and appeared shortly thereafter in the Micro Q series. Not only that, the Blofeld includes all ROM Wavetables from the mighty flagship Waldorf Wave as well as Microwave II/XT. Plus, lo and behold, the desperately requested "Upper Wavetable" from the good old PPG Wave! But, for the first time in the history of Waldorf and PPG, each of these two oscillators can have its own wavetable.
The Blofeld has two multimode filters per voice that can be routed in series or in parallel. Each Filter has its own Pan parameter for easy creation of stereo sounds. The selection of filter types includes low pass, band pass, high pass and notch (band reject), each with 12dB/oct or 24dB/oct slope. The filter models are based on several famous Waldorf filter algorithms found in all our products. They offer resonance up to self-oscillation as well as frequency modulation (filter FM).
The Blofeld has two effect slots with various types. In Multimode, the first effect slot is available per Part, while the second one is used for all 16 Parts (i.e. global) with controllable mix levels. Part 1 determines the settings of the second effect. The first effect slot offers such modulation effects as chorus, flanger as well as a combined type called "Triple FX". The latter gives you several effects at once, but with a reduced parameter set. The second effect slot offers all the same types as the first, but with the addition of delay, clocked delay and reverb.
Each envelope can be either polyphonic or single trigger. This is especially interesting with the monophonic voice allocation, as the filter envelope can be set to be triggered only by the first note(s) while the Amp Envelope is triggered anew (i.e. on each note). Think "organ percussion register", for instance.
Each of the three LFOs offers sine, triangle, square and sawtooth waveforms, plus sample & hold and random. LFOs can be synchronised to MIDI clock, they can be polyphonic or monophonic, reset on key trigger to a freely definable phase, and the speed can be scaled by MIDI note (key follow). There are separate delay and fade in/out parameters for e.g. delayed vibrato (positive Fade values) or a burst of vibrato at the start of each note (negative Fade values).
Okay, Blofeld's arpeggiator could very well become the biggest chapter of this page but let's try to keep it short... It features variable clock divisions from 1/64 triplets to more than 1000 bars, with variable swing/shuffle, a range of up to 10 octaves. Up, down and alternate figures, selectable play order from low to high note, low to high velocity, as played or reversed, variable note length, different velocity modes. And Hold or One-Shot, if you like.
Features
- Sturdy Metal Enclosure
- 7 endless stainless steel Dials
- Graphic Display 128 x 64 pixels, b/w, white background LED
- More than 1000 Sounds
- 3 Oscillators per voice
- Frequency Modulation between the Oscillators
- All Q Oscillator Models
- All Microwave II/XT/XTk Wavetables
- 2 independent Multi Mode Filters per voice
- Filter FM
- 2 Drive stages per voice with selectable Drive Curves
- 3 fast LFOs per voice
- 4 fast Envelopes per voice
- Powerful Arpeggiator
- Freely programmable Arpeggiator Pattern with up to 16 Steps per Sound