Trnsfrmr

Before I get into it, let me say that I don’t think the presets are as bad as I initially thought they were. There are a few that I like now. Now back to scheduled programming.

One cool thing I discovered as I was preparing for this post was that, the knobs always send a MIDI cc based on the context you use them in. As straight forward as this may be, a few synths I have had do not exhibit this behavior. This is pretty cool because you can record the entire journey it took you to arrive at particular sound. At this point I’ve noticed that even though everything gets recorded, the blofeld doesn’t necessarily respond to every control that I play back from Logic. Osc shape choice, osc octave setting and osc filter balance get updated but changes made to filter type do not.

I like the sound of the saw wave. Compared to the saw on my radias card, the blofeld is ever so slightly darker and has a slower attack as well. The difference in attack is barely discernible when compared to an initialized radias saw, however, push the punch level parameter on the radias to 127 and the difference is quite significant. I’m partial to softer sounds anyway so this isn’t a problem for me.

The Oscillator Octave parameter takes values ranging from 128 feet – 1/2 feet and even at 128 feet, you can still tune the pitch lower by another octave using the semitone parameter. Tuning by octaves isn’t as wonderful as the continuous tuning on the Virus but its fun nonetheless.

Unison allows the stacking of up to 6 voices per note and when the voices are detuned, the blofeld sounds a bit “Princey” or “Oberheimy” which I rather like. As I mentioned in a previous post, I likes me some glide. The blo doesn’t disappoint here with fingered and non fingered versions of portamento and glissando. In the fingered variations, you need to trigger the second note during the release phase of the first note in order to hear the gliss. There is no mention of this in the manual but that is how it sounds to me. You should note that the glide rate parameter is inversely proportional to the time it takes to glide between the notes. It isn’t a misnomer but it is still confusing anyway. I just wish all the synth manufactures would take a quick look at the Alesis micron get us out of 8-bit hell. If I ever see 0-127 again…. The micron uses real meaningful units for its parameters. You set attack & release times in milliseconds/seconds, filter frequency, resonance and lfo speed in Hertz etc.

Next up is FM. You can set the FM source to any of the oscillators, LFOs, envelopes and noise. Only benefit really is that you save your modulations slots. I’ve never been a big fun of FM but I must admit that setting the source to noise and the amount to about 20 adds a nice touch of “dirt” to the saw. Self modulation sounds a bit nasty and isn’t my cup of tea but for the industrial types out there, FM and filter distortion may just make you jizz in your pants. BTW I found a bug. Changing the filter’s drive curve doesn’t always work as it should. You get to see the new setting on the screen but the sound is never updated. This happens usually when you change the setting quickly.

I’ll be back with more soon so stay tuned.