Waldorf M

[josker]

What is the waveterm stuff all about? I actually rarely have to throw my hands up at this point in my synth life, but I have zero clue. Drum samples?

[plusn]

@Tajnost

or Iridium controller keyboard!

Ahem…

This is called Quantum and can be already purchased…

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/QuantumKB--waldorf-quantum-8-voice-hybrid-synth

[plusn]

@DaGeek

The waldorf blofeld has the same wavetables and the sound is very similar,

Sorry, I had the Blofeld numerous times over the years, as Desktop and keyboard version in black and white, and i own the M now for several months…and they do not sound similar at all. M is fuller and richer, earthy sounding, while the Blo is rather thin, clinically German understated sounding, and hard. Check Jexus Blofeld videos on YT, he worked out the Blo character pretty good.

Iridium blows the M away in any department

True, but also the Iridium sounds much more Hi-Fi than M, and offers a lot of synthesis’s, while the M is focused on one thing, but that extremely well. I have both here, and they are not really much overlap soundwise, but add to each other. Waldorf is having a rum if you ask me. Check out my Bandcamp. I used the Iridium and M all over it in my past four releases.

[Mumdad]

Ha, the drum talk threw me too and made me realise the Waveterm is pretty much a total blind spot for me. I can remember briefly reading about it before but I know I’m definitely not fully grasping the possibilites for the M, all I know for sure is I’ve now got something to do with the folder of Waveterm stuff I have on my hard drive beyond loading them into Pigments and thinking ‘this really isn’t working’.

[plusn]

Whoa! Vlad packed a LOT of cool stuff in there! Bit reduction, transitions, different filter…whoa, whoa!

[DaGeek]

If they sounded identical I had 1400+ in my wallet now

The engine is different, the filter is different, the VCA is different. The price is different.

Anyway I recorded a demo with Ableton Live of some waveform from both Blofeld and M, for me they are very very very similar. Adding some VST’s to the blofeld, make it more similar to M.
In a track I think it is impossible to distinguish which one is which.

If you have money and if you’re looking for the microwave sound the M is better. I have the M.

[plusn]

I bought and sold the Blofeld like what…five times? along the years. I always wanted to like its sound and I literally never was able to create any track with. The sound always left me unsatisfied.
With the M….bam bam bam…I constantly come up with something I like. I think it’s more musical sounding, less analytical, although many people seem to like the Blo, and it’s still on the market, so why not spend less money, if one likes the sound?

[plusn]

@Mumdad

You can pretty much just mash your face into the knobs then mash your face into the keyboard and there’s a high chance it will sound good. And if it doesn’t sound good, it’ll sound interesting.

I think you nailed it here. M is one huge sweetspot, like a Moog or Sequential or Vermona synth. Excellent job done by Waldorf.

[plusn]

Any kind of sample! 22khz, 16 Bit Mono samples. Amazing feature! So basically we can now turn M into a fully customized synth. You can layer sounds in multimode, and still have Osc 1 fully available and use on each voice a different filter too. Bam! So cool!

[Mumdad]

Yeah, going back to the Waveterm stuff I have on my hard drive (from here, which Vlad also linked to in the release notes) they’re much more like conventional samples than wavetables as such, though I guess some of this approach is a little bit of a grey area between those two things at times.

Pretty huge possibilities though… First thing that came to mind for me was using the samples as attack transients combined with oscillator 1 doing it’s own thing to make some mad PPG/Roland D-50 hybrid but I’m sure that’s only the tip of the iceberg! Being able to loop and/or reverse the samples too… Man.

[bwo]

Damn now I need to study up on the new waveterm features, seems like a lot going on in the update :)… the new bit reduction mode in modern also sounds like it is going to be tasty.

[plusn]

Not to mention all the digital filter models…

Btw here are some pictures from inside the M. you can see there the red sockets for the future voicecard upgrade. (Scroll down) There are already five M with 16 voices out there, that are getting tested intensively at the moment, so Till told.

https://till-kopper.de/waldorf-m.html

[josker]

The waveterm stuff makes this even more dungeon synthy! I’m also pretty sure Legowelt has two. Fantastic stuff.

[bwo]

yeah the vocal/choral transient samples are great from the waveterm library… they very much remind me of the Akira soundtrack, I always heard people say they used D50 but really some of the waveterm sounds are very spot on.

[binaural]

@Mumdad

1.07 RC is available here featuring PPG Waveterm import for classic mode, faster/slower LFOs, envelope stages up to 95 minutes in modern mode, more Microwave 2 filters in modern mode, modern mode bit reduction (down as low as 2 bits) and more!

Hats off to the man, he’s doing wonderful work. Really liking that the modes are now very distinct from each other with very different possibilities. Fingers crossed he can squeeze the other MW2 filters in there for filter FM etc. before he finishes everything up.

Wow, that is huge! I’m closing in on trading my XT… I’m still not sure how more convenient the wavetable import is. It’s a pita on the xt.

[plusn]

It´s easier implemented on the M, but still not really simple click´n´drop like for the Arturia Microfreak. On GS is a great decription.

[Mumdad]

It doesn’t seem super fun on the M either from reading the GS thread, but it might just be a case of getting the exact format right once then you’re away and know how to do it again. Stuff like WaveEdit is all new to me but it’s something else that should be interesting to learn about.

Having said that I’m sort of in the mindset of ‘get to know the synth as it is then by the time I know what I want to add to it maybe someone will have made a convenient tool for the lazy’.

I managed to get a few minutes messing around with the other new features, it’s low-ish audio rates with the fast LFO but the VCFs sound wonderful being FM’d - so splatty!

What I really love is now you have all the beautiful sounds everyone fell for if you stick to the front panel and a whole other world of absolutely disgusting possibilities by going off the beaten track into the menu pages. Putting 2-bit waves into say, the sine-shaped digital filter which is being FM’d then catching that super gross resonance with the VCF which is also being FM’d and baby, you a stew goin’.

You can definitely get it to the point where it makes almost no difference what the actual wavetable part of the synth is doing.

There’s so much to explore here even before adding your own wavetables or thinking about the fact it’s now a gritty sampler. Absolutely in love with it.

[Volt_Thrower]

Anyone sequencing one of these with a Digitone? Anyone using one of these as a multitrack extension of a sequential sequencer? That’s my main idea behind getting an M but I want to see if there are any headaches or issues.

[v00d00ppl]

Pause

@waldorfmusic_official

Could it be an M keyboard version ?

[bwo]

Currently the multi mode does have a few workflow annoyances, like you needing to bounce into the regular mode to make permanent edits to a sound and having to make a duplicate of a slightly edited sound of you use it elsewhere but it sounds like vlad is going to try to work on that I would say buy it knowing currently the multi mode is a bit of an old school implementation though.