Waldorf M review // Embracing the past's flaws // + download
Added 2021-12-21 23:23:42 +0000 UTCHi there!
The M is Waldorf's attempt to throw its hat in the lo-fi ring. Hey, as long as people are bringing back vinyl, tape, lo-fi and analog, why not do their share and bring back 8-bit, aliasing wavetables? Oh and while we're at it, why not throw in a distorting ASIC bug from the original Microwave?
Hardware synths are all about focus, simplification and choices - plugins can do pretty much anything, but when designing a hardware synth, compromises need to be made. Iridium was Waldorf's attempt break that rule - putting pretty much every synth tech and idea under the sun in a desktop box.
With M, Waldorf went in the other direction - back to the basics: a simple wavetable synth, without any waveshaping, interpolation, FM and many other synth distractions - just a simple focus on surfing its classic wavetables.
M isn't cheap, probably to a large degree because it has 8 analog filters inside, so the question is, is it worth it? As usual, that's what I attempt to answer in my review.
The outro jam is attached to this post for those interested - and more coming soon!
All my best,
Ziv (claiming apparently that if a synth intentionally introduces aliasing it's no longer considered a "con" on a youtube channel called "loopop"...)
