It’s been a while since I had my MnM or Blofeld and although I preferred the overall sound of the Blofeld I didn’t at all like the interface.
I found the editing matrix slow and frustrating and felt personally it needed a computer editor that didn’t exist at the time.
I’ve been interested in the Blofeld again due to the numerous editors available now for the unit.
Don’t really like the Blofeld filters though. Don’t bite enough for my liking but the immense power of the rest of the unit justifies its potential purchase. It’s incredibly powerful but again accessing this power is tedious via the editing system imo.
Reckon it’s a unit you can love or hate, would be great if you could demo it first.
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And put it this way, for the same price its a nobrainer between this and the monobog, I mean monologue haha
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Thanks for the info! I appreciate it!
To me the real question would be, how much will you miss the MnM? The blofeld is a pretty good synth and can cover a ton of ground sonically.
To give some counterpoint to @psyclone001, I have never had any trouble editing it. It wasn’t my first waldorf synth though. It does have a matrix editing interface. However, the display on it is really pretty nice. For example, it displays an envelope graphically when you are editing it.
Also, waldorf, in previous products had some bugs regarding not handling some CCs that should supposedly work (e.g. FC, BC, having trouble remembering off the top of my head). Anyway, that got fixed on the blofeld. Paired with the OT, I tend to use 8 faders on my midi controller going to CC7, Aftertouch, W, X, Y, Z, FC, BC…
User wavetables don’t require the sample license. And the Immortal Waves and Oxford MnM packs can be turned into user wavetables.
I would be cautious about the hardware aspect. I would recommend buying from a reputable seller with a good return policy, given the history of encoder issues it has had. Mine has been fine, but there was a fair amount of folks early on reporting issues.
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Yes this wasn’t my first Waldorf either and precisely why I struggled with the interface on the Blofeld.
I had both a Microwave XT and a Q desktop previous to the Blofeld and imo they are much easier and enjoyable to edit with all their glorious knobs, particularly the XT.
Ideally I would recommend a Microwave XT, imo the best Waldorf synth released, but the price is much more than the Blofeld so you can’t really compare the two. Preferred the sound much more also.
The Blofeld is good but I struggle to recommend buying it without demoing it first.
Yes and to follow up on what @glaciertree said you need to be careful buying second hand. Definitely some known build quality issues along the way. The thing is so cheap its worth buying new anyway.
I have always wished that I could find/afford a MW2 or an XT. XT for the knobs, MW2 for the sound.
I guess the other thing I would mention @Ryan is that I would point out that you would lose the easy access to multiple ‘tracks’ and the sequencer on the MnM. I haven’t used multimode much on the blofeld, but it is definitely not going to be as immediate as the MnM.
Multi mode sucks, better off using patch mode, sequencing then sampling the mono sounds and just playing or sequencing pads etc!
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what’s worse about multi-mode?
Even if I were to control it with the OT midi channels? I would figure I’d still have the Elektron workflow just through Blofeld voices
I found it annoying to use. I don’t exactly remember tho, sorry.
But I did like I said, sequenced mono lines like bass, sampled them then did pads or poly synth stuff and kept those in the blofeld.
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Ah! I appreciate the heads up! Thanks!
I find it annoying to setup but once sorted it seems fine. Not tried to edit the individual part parameters from the OT though, so I wouldn’t know.
What I like about the Blofeld, apart from the monitor and the visualisation of waveforms, lfos and envelopes, it’s the sound, bright, very brilliant, can sound extremely aggressive and dirty or crystal clear.
And you can have 3 different distortions per voice if you need, one per filter plus one on the master…
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I’m assuming it shouldn’t be more than establishing channels for each multi-mode voice and then detailing each sound for the parameters I want to adjust per step? I’m also under the belief that there’s a blofeld editor ipad app if I wanted to design patches with more control than what’s on the console?
I really believe that I’m more in love with the digital flavor of the MnM than I am actually in love with the actual potential of the MnM. I have more satisfaction with the sounds I create from the OP-1 than I get from the MnM. And what I get from the MnM I love is basically just from the differences I get from the different P-Locks, which I could still get from controlling via OT.
So, I realize I might take a hit on the interface and a few things will not being as easily accessible as the MnM. But it seems like there’s more sound design potential of the blofeld?
Also…IT’S SO SMALL! I’ve got, like, FIVE Elektron boxes right now, which is actually much harder to manage than I had thought it would be.
I’ve heard the deeper capabilities of the Blofeld as far as sound design, but provided I can also get a good cheesy video game sound. I can’t see why this wouldn’t be an ideal course of action, barring other information I’m not aware of.
Thanks for the feedback! This is a tough decision solely out of the MnM being out of production.
If I’m not mistaken, you can actually save individual sounds on the Blofeld?
But probably not kits, right?
You can save both multis and patches BUT if you modify a patch it will also affect the multi where that patch is used as opposed to what happens with the latest Viruses
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Heh. Funny thing is that as I’m considering a general purpose poly (which is why I resurrected this thread to talk about Blofeld), one of the things I’m considering is offering to buy a friend’s MnM to use more in poly mode while my MnM does the 6 mono/fx/midi machines.
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Don’t even remember if I used multimode on the Blofeld. Probably not.
Apart from the Virus TI range I have found there are generally always compromises when using multimode over a single patch I.e. shared effects and reduced polyphony, but as @Automageddon pointed out the really annoying one so common with synths like this is when the patches are shared in different multis and you edit the patch it changes all the other associated multis containing this same patch.
Too bloody hard to keep track of what’s going on.
Again Virus TI is the only synth I run in multimode as everything is independant with no compromise. Earlier virus’s suffered this same compromise.
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Do these changes take place instantaneously? Or when a save is made?
Only when a save is made
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That can be worked around, I think