I was a long time fan of the Virus. The closest thing to a wavetable synth I own is the Prophet12. I've tried comparing the Prophet 12 to the Virus when I had in my possession. I came to thinking that the Virus TI2 sounds like a MP3 file. Prophet 12 can sound any way you want it to. I love it's modern design/appearance as well. I'm own the desktop version of it now and I love it. Very unique, not something that can easily be replicated in software.


Anyway... I'm a fan of the Waldorf XT, still thinking about adding one to my setup.

https://modulatethis.com/2010/04/13/...ldorf-blofeld/

Ha, such a "list" Doesn't really tell us anything at all about the blofeld, it all sounds rather like a ten things i did in thailand Post, and one of the them was not talking to a local

I have a Blofeld and like it just fine. It's got a very clean shimmer to it all the time. If anything I would like to play a very PPG inspired set of sounds through it to see if I get enough of that flavor to avoid any temptation to get an actual PPG. Mostly I should have gotten a MW1 when I had a chance to get one much cheaper. So now I guess I'd like the Blofeld to do a bit of a poor mans PPG for me. Still seems weird to me, given the wavetables in the Blofeld, that a soundest largely based on the PPG sound isn't already out there. I'd love to take something like that for a spin.

I think that actually, in reality it's very hard to decide between all of these synths:

-Blofeld has brightness control but XT has extra aliasing grit
-XT has extra interesting filter types
-But blofeld has sample import, letting you use slightly longer waveforms to ringmod (Kawai K1/K4 territory) or sync (ESQ1/DSS1 territory) or FM (Yamaha EX5 territory), all these exotic sample treatments that are so unpredictable and insane that most manufacturers don't bother with them as they sound bad 90% of the time.

That other 10% though....

I heard a lot of very amazing sounds on the Blofeld. I think that for the money you really get a lot. I would have purchased one even if it had cost 3 times more. Not to brag about me having ****loads of money (I unfortunately don't) but to indicate I think it is a great little synth...

I respect anyone's opinion though.

.... gets kinda lost in the mix :-D

From a practical point of view the Blofeld is still in production,
so you would not have to search high and low for one.

I would love to have a Q, or an XTk, but these rare beasts
rarely migrate north to the frozen tundra of the 43rd latitude of Canada.

I think over hunting of these beasts resulting in their rarity,
and thus forced the Canadian Ministry of Rare and Sought Over Synths
to declare a moritorium on their (bad pun coming)....de-furred value!

The XT has External Audio in (not amazing to have but still a nice feature )

Wonder how the Audiothingies Micromonsta stacks up against a blofeld

Micromonsta to me sounds pretty cool, different, warmer, more vintage. Also sounds like you don't have to "fight" the engine in the way you sometimes need to with Blofeld (Jexus described it pretty well in his review, it's my experience as well - I love the Blo but you gotta watch out for that headroom).

Yes, and overload the digital filter or digital amplifier, and it screams like a banshee, and not in a good way. Like Jexus says, you have to fight your way through it to carve out the sound you like.....

Gain structure is critical too.
I run my System Volume at 90/127
My master Patch Volume at 90/127
and then Osc gain and filter drive are set according to patch.
Sine waves always seem to have to be lower, as that headroom is low!!!

Having said that you can come up with stuff like this:
-one oscillator
-filter fm only on unisono sidebands
-seperate lfo speed for left, right as opposed to centre channel.
-randomization control of filter (which is different for center and unisono sidebands)
-floating randomization of stereo pan!

https://soundcloud.com/markpigott-1/ode-to-blofeld

I agree with this. The Micromonsta sounds great and you can install the Waldorf wavetables in the user slots. It doesn't do all the tricks that the Blofeld does, but the audio engine sounds just as good to me. Different, but just as good. I swore off hardware all digital wavetable synths after the Snow, but the Micromonsta made me change my mind.

Micromonster, sold without power adapter, really???

There's something about the XT that I get that I don't feel I got from the Blofeld when I had one. The Blofeld was nice, but never felt as warm or full as the XT in my experience. I find the XT super warm but still nice and dark and dusty. Very BoC.

Never mind the far better UI of course. I probably wouldn't have sold the Blofeld if it had a better UI. I just didn't get on with the matrix control set up.

I love the wave modulation source on the XT for getting things really moving then tweaking away with the generous amount of knobs to control them, almost at random sometimes and getting all these nice results.

I'm very happy that UI is so important to most people, it means that for folks like me, where it has 0% impact, that fabulous sound engines are really cheap.

What hardware do you regard as having a fabulous sound engine and is also really cheap due to having a poor or minimal UI?

Just add it to cart on the same website, it's sold separately.

Well the Blofeld obviously. :D

That much was a given since I already mentioned it. Xander seemed to infer there are many cheap quality sound engines with poor/minimal UI he likes so I was wondering what else he rates.

Tetra maybe?

Everything digital made between 1991-1998, then many VA's (An1x etc) and later on, some workstations, and stuff like blofeld there's some cool sounds in there locked away, but many people can't keep the bigger picture of a patch in their head without a nice UI layout on the screen.

I often hear of the An1x, but have never used on.

It's not about having a nice UI layout on screen for me. In fact VST instruments, regardless of how good their UI is tend to not get me twiddling nearly as much as hardware UI's do.

Having hardware synths I can program physically rather than just use as a sound module is one of the main reasons I buy them.

A lack of quick/good UI can frustrate me with hardware though and lead to me just not using it as much as other knobbier synths.