Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!auvm!LFCS!NICK From: nick@LFCS.ED.AC.UK (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.emusic-l Subject: Is this a Waldorf I see before me? Message-ID: <1049.9002211057@subnode.lfcs.ed.ac.uk> Date: 21 Feb 90 10:57:20 GMT Sender: Electronic Music Discussion List Reply-To: Electronic Music Discussion List Lines: 50 Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM.BITNET Gateway Via: UK.AC.ED.LFCS; 21 FEB 90 10:54:25 GMT In-Reply-To: METLAY@EARN.PITTVMS's message of Tue, 20 Feb 90 12:31:00 EST <8944.9002202305@lfcs.ed.ac.uk >It's interesting how individual tastes change. My friends >and I alway skip over "Kiew Mission" when we listen to >Exit, because we can't bear the "chipmunk choir" at the >end. Nice formants, but it really reminds me of Alvin, >Simon, and Theodore. ...whoever they are...? I don't want to spend the rest of my musical "career" making EEE/AAA/OOO/UUU noises with a Waldorf, but I want a machine which can do things as distinctive as that, as long as it has a decent amount of versatility to do other things, of course. I just got some mail from Alan Vymetalik, TD guru at large, who reckoned that the vocal sound might be sampled (Emulator). Apparently Edgar said in an interview at the time that they were doing things like making short sample loops of huge layers of instruments at weird frequencies, so that the harmonic characteristic of the played-back sample would change drastically at different playback pitches (presumably due to quirks in the Emulator's playback circuitry, or something). A little inside info: last night I went to an Ensoniq demo, and had a chance to talk to Paul Wiffen (session programmer who has worked with Jean-Michel Jarre, and who got his Synthex waterlogged at the Jarre Docklands concerts in '88, don't worry guys, Synthexes can swim), as well as another guy (whose name I forget) who programmed sounds for PPG in the early 80's, and is doing sounds for the Waldorf. It appears that Waldorf is just a money-spinner to keep Palm and Duren going while they get more involved with some of the new Steinberg Digital Audio stuff, like the Topaz Direct-to-Disk system. So, I don't know how much of a long-term affair Waldorf is, or whether there will be more MicroWave-like machines coming along. Wiffen claimed that they were selling in the US, but only to die-hard PPG owners who wanted to add some voices and get something a little more reliable. Technically, he claimed that the MicroWave has a problem in that the VCA's don't close down fully, so it would probably need to be gated. I shall check up on this. I now have a deposit down on the machine, and will be going to spend more time with it next week. The only other machine which seems even remotely comparable at the moment is the VFX, and to some extent the VFX/SD would be more useful for live work; as a performance instrument it seems pretty well thought out, and it has onboard sequencer, play while load, and so on. But, I think the VFX sounds boring. Nice sounds, nice architecture, nice performance features, but boring. My head says "save up for a VFX/SD, it's perfect for live use", my heart says go get a MicroWave. Nick.