Waldorf Blofeld review

As promised, here's a little review of another new synth in my collection - the Waldorf Blofeld. It took me a while to get to work with this little synth but in short - this is a great little synth with a load of features for the price and its only let down by a user interface that isn't to my liking at all.

The Blofeld is available in two versions: a desktop one (which I have) and a keyboard one, which differs from the desktop one in that it has a sampling option readily available and also a freely definable extra button. For the rest the interface is identical. Owners of the desktop version can buy the sampling option (which I very much recommend) which doesn't require hardware modifications: the ram is already built in and the sampling option consists of a midi file which upgrades the OS to use the ram.

On the hardware front: this is a beautiful little synth with a sturdy metal case with metal knobs and a few buttons. Apart from the volume knob all knobs are rotary encoders. There's also a beautiful white lcd screen which is able to show graphic representations of things like, say, lfo form and speed.

So - how does it all work? You plug it in (MIDI IN only, or there's a PC USB connection for your midi communicational needs). Selecting presets and tweaking them is actually very easy: around the lcd display there's a knob that scrolls through the patches and two others that select bank and set a filter on the kind of sound you want: lead, pad, arp... The included patches are really very nice and there are A LOT of them. Tweaking of them is by means of the Walforf-typical matrix to the right of the synth in which you have to first select a row of four parameters after which you can edit these by means of the four encoders below them. And here's also where it gets more complicated because not all parameters fit on the matrix and for those that 'extend' further along the parameter row (places 5 and beyond) you have to employ the selection encoder to the left to get to these. For me, this places editing and selection a bit far apart but seeing what you get for the price of this unit I'm not complaining much. Also, you get used to it. What I can't get used to is a bizarre way of storing patches: a click on both the SHIFT and UTILITY buttons opens the store dialog, so you enter your name, select where to store and then, where you really want to say 'Ok - store now!' you have to SHIFT + UTILITY again and your patch is stored. Took me a while to figure this out. It does work, but it doesn't fill me with confidence since every time I have the feeling that I'm leaving the store dialog without saving my patch. All in all, this is not the friendliest user interface I've encountered but it does offer access to an amazing array of parameters and to be honest, now I'm working with it a bit more I can imagine getting used and actually very fast with it.

On the subject of the architecture, the Blofeld is polyphonic and multitimbral. Each voice has three oscillators, two of which can do the usual waveforms, wavetables and samples. The third one is still quite flexible but more useful in doubling the main sound with a saw/pulse/triangle or sine or as a suboscillator. Oh yes - and there's ring modulation and a noise generator in there! There are also two filters (parallel or serial), the usual suspects for envelopes and lfo's... Well - make that four envelopes and three lfo's! There's also an amazing modulation matrix which is actually quite easy to program. I was programming a sound the other day and I was really pleased to find that I could easily direct the mod wheel to the drive amount of the filter, and for a specific amount. Loads of modulation sources and destinations here! The internal effects work - but just about. No dreamy reverbs or creamy chorus here but again, maybe that would be a bit unfair for the price. There is a wonderful arpeggiator built in though. Very, very flexible and if you're testing this unit I recommend selecting the ARP filter and browsing through the presets for the arpeggiator as some of these are of the kind where you play one chord, rig the sustain pedal and zone out for half an hour.

One last note: Waldorf recently released the 'SPECTRE' sample tool for the Blofeld (they're really on a role with the Bond names here). It's quite simple to use and does allow you to import your own samples in the Blofeld. I've already imported some of my normal sounds to the Blofeld and it's really working! The Blofeld reads loop points in samples so aside from the fact that it's mono samples only and no multisamples you actually have a very handy sample player. You can overcome the mono-limitation by splitting the sample, I did this and set oscillator 1 to the left wave form and oscillator 2 to the right one. You then need to pan the oscillators hard left and right and you have a cool stereo reproducation of the original waveform and still the third oscillator left for a little bit of extra bass.

So in short, I like this one. The user interface could have been a bit more easy and I still keep hoping for a software editor, but all in all I'm very happy with it!