Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!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: <1262.9002221004@subnode.lfcs.ed.ac.uk> Date: 22 Feb 90 10:04:07 GMT Sender: Electronic Music Discussion List Reply-To: Electronic Music Discussion List Lines: 58 Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM.BITNET Gateway Via: UK.AC.ED.LFCS; 22 FEB 90 10:01:16 GMT > I'm a little puzzled by something you posted: you said that the >VFX sounds "nice" but "boring" and that your heart says go for the >MicroWave. But earlier, on your "first-encounter" posting, you said >(in effect) that the 'Dorf sounds really boring, or at least as far >as the presets show. Ok, lemme try and clarify that. The Waldorf has, as far as I can tell from spending a little time with it, a nice voice architecture; the filtering is nice, the wavetables are nice and smooth, and it has the warmth of an analogue synth with the animation of a wavetable machine. I played about with some rather wild modulation settings, and the sound never deteriorated into anything unmusical; the machine responded very nicely to the weird settings I put into it. Sounds like I'm describing a plane or something; that'll teach me to read A Gift of Wings over breakfast... The Waldorf is crippled by its factory presets. They are a complete turn-off. A $500 Juno will blow it away in terms of preset strings, brass, bass. As as result, I am a little unsure of how far the Waldorf can be stretched; can it do that wonderful formant-swept vocal sound? I dunno. The fact that it claims to be a PPG incarnate has a lot to do with its appeal, and that seems to be what's selling it in the US; but that's largely a marketing claim (even though the Waldorf shares the same wavetables and similar architecture), so it maybe something to be wary of. Regarding the VFX: very impressive voice and *performance* architecture. I like the fact that the filters, even though not resonant, can be switched to combinations of high- and low-pass, and that each "partial" (in D-50 parlance) has dedicated filter and LFO settings. But, I find that Ensoniq stuff sounds boring. I've no idea why. The ESQ-1 sounded boring. The VFX sounds boring. Even the VFX wavetable sweep sounds sound boring. It's as if every other instrument I own can paint in a selection of colours, whereas the VFX has an incredibly flexible and programmable command of all the shades of grey. I'll be spending some more time with the Waldorf and a VFX over the next week or two. Meanwhile, I'm in a quandary. My heart says go for the Waldorf, because it has the potential (as far as I can tell) of sounding gorgeous. My head says try and get some more money scraped up and go for the VFX/SD. We need some kind of performance sequencing set-up fairly soon, and the VFX/SD would seem to deliver, as well as providing another keyboard and some more effects. Also, my colleague has a plain VFX already. (important question: can you address 16 external MIDI channels *as well as* the internal programs of the VFX?) Perhaps I should ignore the fact that the VFX sounds boring to me; what's important is the music, and how we capture our ideas in a live performance, in which case I might be able to justify a VFX/SD more than a Waldorf, even if the latter sounds better. What are the US prices of the VFX and /SD? (I need both so I can scale up the plain VFX price to Europe levels and work out the local /SD price.) I don't know if there are any decent dedicated MIDI sequencers (> 16 channels) available for the SD/Waldorf price difference. Nick.