torstai 14. elokuuta 2008

Waldorf Blofeld - First impressions


My Waldorf Blofeld finally arrived today after waiting for months to be able to get one shipped to me. Here's a photo of my Roland Fantom G and the new Blofeld sitting on top of the Fantom G screen. (If anyone of you who read this have a good idea about a better stand, please leave a comment! I have very limited space depth-wise in my little home studio room, so I would like to stack things) You can see a MS-20 in the background. These are pictures from my personal home studio where I do most of my songwriting.

I hooked it up to my Roland Fantom G that enables me to send multi-split keyboard via MIDI to the Blofeld multis really nicely - A perfect match with the Fantom G I'd say, just as I had hoped, both sonically sound wise and MIDI wise!

Nice sturdy design, the little thing is heavy and feels quite solid indeed, but I really think Waldorf should have included a physical MIDI OUT into the design. (There is only a physical MIDI IN, but the USB has both in and out)

I really have to send some standing ovations to Germany for how intuitive the blofeld is to use - I instantly understood how the Blofeld works.

There's a lot of nice presets included (1024 I think) , thank you for those, specially to the stars on the waldorf mailing-list who participated with some top class presets!

I think I will have a wonderful time with my Blofeld and that it is going to serve well for many years to come!

There's a few negatives with the current OS 1.02:
- Headphone amp unacceptably noisy as reported before.
- "crackling sound on phaser FX and PPG filter"
- Some patches have problems with the waveform 'clicking'
- The reverb algorithm is not pretty
- A multi-mode with smart features is needed.

In all I am very impressed with the Blofeld although that PPG filter crackling is really making me sad at the moment.

(since I wrote this the 1.03 update has fixed issues above)

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Here's a quickie demo I threw together in 15mis on day one.
http://rapidshare.com/files/137346915/jessej-FantomG_Blofeld_test01.mp3

Drums & one synth in the background are from the Fantom G, the 3 other synths are from the Blofeld.


- Jesse -

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