Waldorf Blofeld & XT Wavetable Deathmatch

suitandtieguy · Wavetable Deathmatch

"Microwave XTK in one channel, Blofeld in the other."

via Suit & Tie Guy:
"i had both of these instruments, the Waldorf Microwave XTk and the Blofeld, in my studio at the same time for a few days and decided to do a proper shootout of their pure wavetable sounds.

people can argue about their UIs, features, and filters until they're blue in the face for all i care. IMHO the Blofeld wins on all of these things, especially on filter quality, user samples, and actual playability of endless rotaries. however my issue was that what i want out of a PPG-derived wavetable synthesiser is the best current approximation of the raw 8-bit sound of the Wave Computer 340/360 instruments.

straight up i don't think either of these things totally nail it under scrutiny.

that said, comparing them to the old PPG stuff on pure wavetable terms is a bit like comparing the x0xb0x to a TB-303 ... yeah side-by-side you might be able to tell a difference but when it comes down to brass tacks they both sound great in a mix. i would definitely say there's more of a difference between these two wavetable synths than there is between the x0xb0x and the TB-303.

so anyway here's 38 minutes of rawdog wavetable madness, midi-synced for your pleasure. the first three and a half minutes are a patch i duplicated on the Blofeld based on a MWXTk patch i had made and liked. the rest of the time is spent blowing through wavetables on a single osc patch.

on the Blofeld i was able to completely bypass the filter. on the MWXTk i was not, i had to set the Fc high enough with not just the cutoff knob but also the envelope so that the filter had no effect on the sound. i was not happy about this, and i prefer the Blofeld's option to shut it off.

one channel is the Microwave XTk and the other is the Blofeld. no i'm not saying which is which for at least a week. please be my guest and make sweeping golden-ear generalisations about how one channel is garbage and the other is so perfect. that would be great.

full-res wav downloads are enabled on this. please take advantage if you're serious: http://soundcloud.com/suitandtieguy/wavetable-deathmatch-mix"

One thing to note is the Blofeld allows you to pick a separate wavetable for each oscillator, while on the XT they share the same selected wavetable; you can of course offset each oscillator independently on each synth.