Trnsfrmr

This is my second dance with the blofeld. The first time I bought it, I only kept it for a couple of weeks. I returned it not because I didn’t like it, but I felt I deserved a bit more bells and whistles for $800. Having the waldorf juxtaposed with N.I Komplete + Kore 2 intensified this nagging feeling that I had payed a tad much for a dinosaur. It had to go.

After a couple of weeks and a few soft synth crashes, my kore honeymoon comes to a screeching halt. So of I go looking on eBay and what do I find? A minty fresh reboxed blofeld for $575. nb: mail in $50 rebate forms.

First Impressions.

The blofeld has a certain austere elegance about it. It has 8 endless rotary knobs, 5 buttons, a very legible silk screened facia and a generous 6 line display. It is great to get visual feedback when you modify envelope or filter parameters. The rear sports a power input, stereo outs, headphone jack and a USB port. That is it. The unit ships with a power supply, a quick start manual and a coaster with the customary pdf manual and system backups. My second unit also had the Waldorf Edition LE bundle; a rather pleasant surprise if you ask me. Missing though, is a software editor. I’ve been informed by a Waldorfian that they have one planned for early next year. I’m also working OCTOPUSSY, my own OSX based editor. I don’t think it will be a wasted effort considering it presents an opportunity for me to sharpen my OSX development chops.

Presets

The blo comes with 8 banks of 128 presets. Not too shabby by any standard. You navigate the presets just by turning the knob to the immediate left of the screen. The left knob under the screen is for switching banks and the second is used to filter the presets by category. I’m yet to find out if the list of categories is editable.

My first run through all the presets left me rather disappointed. I enjoyed a few solo leads but overall, the sounds were reminiscent of a mediocre general MIDI rompler from a bygone era albeit with a glossy sheen. I owned a blue MicroQ eons ago and I recall a decent set of presets well you know what they say about expectations.

I get the sense that the sound designers were rushed because imho, a lot of the presets don’t take advantage of what the synth engine has to offer. It could also be that the part of my brain that determines how good a preset is, has been infected by the access Virus presets and has sustained irreversible damage.

I’ll tell you one good thing about bad presets, I didn’t hesitate when it came to saving my own patches. I felt free to experiment and overwrite all that crap. The blofeld is a wonderful synth indeed if you do not judge it by its presets.

Programming

This thing is a breeze to program. It feels like stepping into a soft pair of slightly worn Clarks. The matrix style interface is so effective and stays out of ones way. I find it much quicker to navigate the blofeld with 8 knobs than the Virus Polar with 32 knobs. My only gripe with the encoders is that they lag a bit. So what do you get to twiddle with these glorious knobs?

Oscillators

You get 3 oscillators, a noise generator with variable color and a ring mod. All 3 oscillators offer the standard regimen of saw, pulse, triangle and sine. The first 2 also add a staggering 68 wavetables with 64 waves per table. That is a lot of sonic variation and that is what makes the blofeld a Waldorf. The specs state that you get the Alt1 & Alt2 tables from the Waldorf Q and all the tables from the Microwave Series. I haven’t had any experience with those synths but I’m still planning to compare them based on their specs in a later post.

These tables aren’t like the DWGS tables you would find on a Korg synth like the ms2000, microKorg or Radias. Sweeping DWGS tables sound like changing radio stations to me but the waldorf tables tend to have crossfaded waves so sweeping them with a modulator like an envelope or an lfo can yield some really cool sounding transitions. The tables range from electric piano waves to formant vocal sweeps. Imagine what lies in between.

All 3 oscillators can be frequency modulated by each other, LFOS, envelopes and noise. Oscillator 2 can also be synchronized to the third oscillator.

One cool feature that I like about the oscillators is that you can set independent pitch bend range and direction for each one. Sounds cool to bend one oscillator up an fifth and another down a third at the same time. In addition to standard portamento and fingered portamento modes, the common glide setting for all oscillators also has glissando modes. Glissando is a huge deal for me and I’m surprised no one seems to talk about it. My micron had it but both the m3+radias and the Virus are missing this feature. I’m yet to figure out how to approximate glissando on the Virus. It is somewhat doable on the m3 by overlaying the pitch bend with a stepping modifier.

Next post, I’ll go into how the oscillators sound and maybe even post some sounds. I’ll also cover the filters and the modulators. The blofeld is one cunning kitty and packs a lot behind that unassuming facade.

To be continued…