Wolfram Franke Interview on Sonik Matter

Note this is an old interview from 2001. I just never posted it before. Thanks goes to Mark Pulver for sending this over to the Waldorf mailing list. Wolfram Franke is the product specialist and a coder for Waldorf, the old Waldorf and new. He is one of the core influentials at Waldorf.

According to the interview, the first synthesizer he programmed on was the Wersi MK1 in 1986: "Wersi and it is called MK1 (Series III). It was a 20 voice, 8 part multitimbral additive synth with up to 32 harmonics, an integrated chorus/ensemble effect and only one VCF, but that one was a copy of the Moog 24dB VCF plus a good-sounding overdrive."

Some interesting snips on his time with Waldorf:
"The Pulse was the first synthesizer where I helped working on the basic concept, i.e. sound parameters, UI layout and overall sound character.

The concept of the Microwave II was done almost completely by me and half a year later, I started to write down the controls I would like to see on an extended version of the Microwave II. You know the result, it became the Microwave XT!"

Regarding the Q being modeled after the Pulse:
"Oscillators - those are real models of analog oscillators, resulting in a very fat bass sound even when you listen to them without filters or effects. They behave exactly like their analog counterparts and they were modelled after the analog oscillators of our Waldorf Pulse synthesizer.

Filters - those are also real models, not only algorithms as found in almost all other VAs. This means that they can self-oscillate and allow FM. They are modelled after something in-between the Curtis filters from the Microwave 1 and our discretely built Waldorf Pulse four-pole filter."

Note the above is just a small fraction of what you will find the full interview. Do check it out. It is fascinating and it is one of the rare interviews that primarily focuses on synthesis.

Note you can find all interviews featuring Wolfram Franke here.