Waldorf Keys

Waldorf Blofeld Keys | Reviews
93
distortion can sound nasty or creamy
as desired.
Those that love Waldorf’s
Microwave and Q models will love the
fact that it incorporates their
wavetables into its vast palette, along
with good solid sounding virtual
analogue waves which include the
usual sawtooth, sine, triangle and
variable pulse, along with separate
PWM and FM sources for each
oscillator. The upper wavetables from
the legendary PPG wave are included
too. It still amazes me just how much
Waldorf have managed to cram into
the Blofeld engine.
One of the key features of the
Blofeld Keyboard is the inclusion of
60MB of on-board sample memory
(it’s an option for the original Blofeld
now too). There are 41 slots for
sampled waves on board and Waldorf
provide 41 of their own to kick things
off. Some of these are very useable,
some not so much but the acoustic
guitar, marimbas and strings are
worthy of note.
Regardless, you can load your own
samples into those slots over USB
anyway (see the Using Samples with
the Blofeld box for more info).
Finally, it seems that
manufacturers such as Waldorf (and
Clavia with their Wave) are grasping
the fact that users want to integrate
and mix their own samples with
onboard modulators, processing and
FX. This is a very welcome extension
to the already versatile Blofeld sound
palette and makes it very close to an
ideal all-in-one performance keyboard,
though maybe just a few more
hands-on controls would have been a
nice performance bonus.
Conclusion
So what to make of the new Blofeld
Keyboard? Well, I like it even more
than the module version. There’s a
great and vast array of sounds already
on board, and the perfect-sized
keyboard feels great to play.
While using a matrix system is
always slightly less intuitive than the
ideal one-knob-
per-function, the
Blofeld is still
great fun to use.
Nine times out of
10 it rewards
tweaking with
sonic gold.
Experimenting is
just as impressive as dialling through
the sounds on board.
There is truly little to fault about
this keyboard and I would love to buy
one myself (if my credit hadn’t been
crunched). As far as Waldorf go, they
have excelled themselves once again
– improving what was already a great
product and making it greater still.
The added sample memory and
keyboard really place this with the big
boys. It seems that once in a while,
the Villain is deservedly victorious!
Pretty much every parameter a
synth programmer could ever want
is somewhere under the hood
ALTERNATIVES
Waldorf Blofeld
Module
£299
If you don’t need the
keyboard and have less to
spend, this is the next best
thing. Very portable and
easy on the wallet too!
waldorfmusic.de
Clavia Nord Wave
£1,369
Probably the closest
competitor to the Blofeld
KB. Organic sounding and
similarly spec’d with
wavetables, simple FX, EQ
and amp simulator and
user sample upload/virtual
analogue synthesis.
clavia.se
Access Virus TI
£1,620
Beast of a synth featuring
VA, wavetable and
hypersaw oscillators,
Minimoog-type fi lter, 129
effects and appears as a
plug-in in your DAW.
access-music.de
VERDICT
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RESULTS
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With the new keyboard and
on-board memory, the Blofeld is a
thoroughly complete instrument
A USB software utility is
included (for both Mac
and PC) for editing and
archiving your Blofeld
sounds. And special
mention to a superb
multi-language manual
here too, that really lays
out what the ‘feld is
capable of and exactly
how to go about it. The
utility’s main event
however is for uploading
your digitised sound
content to the Blofeld
KB’s 60MB of built-in
fl ash memory. Samples
can be either in WAV or
AIFF format and at any
sample rate, with
resolutions from 8-bit to
32-bit fl oat accepted.
Stereo or mono samples
can be loaded into the
Blofeld quickly and easily
although presently any
stereo samples are
automatically converted to
mono. Sample patches
can consist of up to 128
single samples that can
be either looped or single
triggered (one-shot mode).
Using Samples with the Blofeld
The Blofeld KB adds
the all-important MIDI
Out port
MIDI In/Out
FMU211.rev_blofeld 93 3/2/09 6:46:54 pm