Waldorf Microwave Is Back As Virtual Instrument For Mac + Windows
Waldorf has introduced Microwave plugin, a virtual instrument based on the original hardware Microwave from 1989.
The original is a classic hybrid design, combining wavetable oscillators and analog filters. It’s a rackmount module that built on the company’s PPG legacy.
Now Waldorf has brought the instrument back as a virtual instrument, and they say it has been “painstakingly recreated from the original hardware with all its idiosyncrasies and wonderful singularities”. But it also goes beyond the original, and features a user interface that’s much easier to program.
What they have to say about it:
“A multi-year effort and a labor of love which analyzed and modeled the original instruments down to the finest sonic details of every aspect of the hardware. Only the first generation of the Microwave and also the Waldorf Wave were based on a custom developed integrated circuit called the Waldorf ASIC. In combination with the legendary Curtis filter chips and a very unique 68k CPU based controller software the ASIC defined a very special flavor of wavetable sound unparalleled to none. No one else than the inventor of Wavetable Synthesis of the eighties, Wolfgang Palm, helped to design this unique chip.
Waldorf took a huge effort to analyze and recreate this integrated circuit within the plug-in. As the original, the plug-in runs the internal synthesis with the ultra high sampling rate of 250 kHz regardless of the DAW sampling rate. The recreated digital waveforms have been bit-by-bit compared with the original to be 100% identical.
Even the old-school digital-to-analogue converters of the original hardware were modeled with their non-linearities and tone shaping color which were leading into the two Curtis filter chips variants used for the revisions A and B of the original hardware. The plug-in allows further for artificially detuning and recalibrating of the analogue components. Brutal attacks, snappy decays and a plethora of wonderful transients define the sound of the first generation Microwave.
But the Microwave 1 Plug-In goes one step further: Its modern and inviting graphical user-interface reveals many aspects of the synthesis engine which were hidden before in the original hardware by its sparse hard to use interface.”
New features include:
- A fully scalable modern interface with readable high-contrast fonts
- Users can now easily edit existing wavetables and create new ones
- Additional randomization modes make wavetable editing fun and “sonically surprising”
- The plug-in UI allows now for quickly layering of single sounds to create the most complex and exciting sonic structures.
- Even the more exotic feature like tuning and velocity tables have been implemented and can be edited in the UI.
- Original MIDI and Sys-Ex dump files can be imported
- Moreover, the plug-in can be used to control the original hardware are a graphical editor.
- The Microwave 1 plug-in comes as VST, VST3, AU and AAX for macOS and Windows supporting the major digital audio workstations.
Microwave 1 plug-in is available now with an intro price of €119,00 (normally €149,00).
admin said
am August 26 2024 @ 4:31 pm
Sounds good! Fantastic work from the Waldorf team!