Waldorf Blofeld Review 2021
Glassy. Digital. Metallic. These are the most common words you’ll hear when asking about how the Blofeld sounds. And to those who don’t explore too deeply into it, that’s all the Blofeld will surrender. But for those with a more adventurous spirit, this synth will reveal treasures beyond their wildest dreams.
But first, a little history.
Back in 2004, the Waldorf company, manufacturer of such iconic synths as the Microwave, Pulse, Q, and their assorted iterations, had gone under. The company had gone belly up, and their engineers and staff were all left naked in the breeze. That is, until 2007, when Joachim Flor, a sales rep with a big idea, reassembled the team, gathered some funds, and relaunched Waldorf with a brand new synth. A Virtual Analog synth that would combine the best features of the best Waldorf synths, in a compact affordable unit bearing an elegant, minimalist look. And a sound that punched far above its 2.25 kg. It would go on to change their fortunes, and fuel their ascendancy back to the forefront of the industry.
And that brings us to 2021.
Amidst a sea of wavetable hardware and software synths, and with VSTs having progressed markedly since 2007, one could be forgiven for asking “Is the Blofeld even really worth the money now when I can just use Serum?”
To which I would say, Yes. Yes it is. Let’s go over why.
Oscillators
Off the bat, the Blofeld sports 3 oscillators, all of which have basic Analog Waveforms (Pulse, Saw, Triangle, Sine), and the first 2 also offer wavetables. With the SL License (pre-loaded on the keyboard, and costs extra for the desktop) you can load in your own custom wavetables and samples, and expand the possibilities of your synth. The analog waveforms are distinctly Waldorfy in character, which is to say, bright and a little glassy. If you need the sound to be sharper or more cutting, every oscillator also has a Brilliance setting that mimics the aliasing behavior of the older Waldorf synths, which for making Trance plucks or super dirty riddim basses, is perfect.
All that is fairly standard on any synth though.
What makes the Blofeld shine is the FM and PWM capabilities every oscillator has in its submenus. You can use a variety of FM sources per oscillator AND PWM on every oscillator without using up Mod Matrix slots, and it helps conserve a little DSP power. So without even leaving the Osc section, you can create insane ripping dubstep and electro sounds using just the analog waveforms!
Once you start diving into the wavetables, that’s where things get truly exciting. These wavetables are full bodied, and you can experiment with modulating their position, and even use other wavetables as FM sources, to create truly devastating Dubstep wobbles and snarls that put Massive to shame. And if all you want to do is make some simple Trance leads, a little quick detuning and some Brilliance boosts will give you a nice epic lead that’s ready to roll in your next anthem.
Filters
Here’s where things start to get really wild. The Blofeld comes with 2 filters, which each oscillator can be freely assigned to. Your basic 2 and 4 pole LPs and HPs are in there, as well as some bandpass, notch, and comb+ and - filters that really mutate the sound. For the old schoolers out there, the Blofeld even iincludes the classic PPG filter from Wolfgang Palmer’s original PPG Wave synth from the 80s. Vice vibes, anyone?
That’s not where the story ends, though.
Each filter has multiple submenus full of options including everything from Keytracking, to FM (yes, you can pick frequency modulation sources for the filter!), to filter drive, to even panning. For the moment let’s touch on the Filter Drive. This is where the Bass Music crowd will want to sit up and sharpen their pencils.
It contains multiple distortion types, which you can dial in for something as subtle as mild Tube saturation to a pluck, to dirty bitcrushing (the Overflow drive type) on a square lead, to sine folding a wavetable bass. And the filter drive can be modulated by just about any source in the Mod Matrix, so you have mountains of options for how much you want to destroy your sound.
Having covered that terrain, the big question is, does the filter itself sound nice? A lot of folks harp on about it because it doesn’t sound “analog” enough and doesn’t behave like a Moog ladder filter. And yes, they are correct. It’s not a Moog.
But it’s not supposed to be. The Blofeld is its own animal, and the real secret to getting nice tight sounds is to switch to the 24 dB Lopass filter, and then experiment with Filter Envelope settings until you dial it in (a decent touch of resonance doesn’t hurt either). The sounds may not be as creamy as what you’d get from a Minimoog, but you can make incredibly tight plucks that cut through a mix. Big Trance pads on the Blofeld also sound incredibly smooth, and with the right pan spread settings, rival anything a Virus or Rev2 can make. If you want your sounds to have that same bouncy roundness that true analog yields, you can apply mild filter saturation and some resonance to make the sound more analog in character.
Amplitude
We don’t need to devote a lot of time to this, as it comes with the standard ADSR envelope for Amp, Env3, and Env4. What IS special is that there’s a number of modifiable parameters for each that allow you to sculpt sounds in more complex and unique ways, to yield even more interesting sounds. Personally, I rarely use those extra features, as most Trance sounds don’t utilize that level of depth for sound design. But for modulating modifiers, the 3rd and 4th Envelopes are pretty cool, and allow for twisted sonic exploration when dabbling in dubstep and drum n bass sound design.
LFO
Now this is where things get exciting. The Blofeld has 3 LFOs that can be clocked or run freely, and they come in a multitude of oscillator types. Saw, Pulse, Triangle, Sine, Sample & Hold, and Random. So you can do everything from tremolos and vibratos to chaotic glitches, and even talking psytrance sounds (if you link the S&H lfo to the wavetable pulse width and then apply some crafty distortion).
Modulation
This here, this is what the Blofeld is most famous for. 6 Mod slots, that allow you to modulate almost any parameter on the synth. The options are deep, and it’s easy to get lost down a Mod Hole just messing with potential settings in here. This is why the Blofeld is a sound designer’s dream. The one thing you can’t modulate, and it’s the one thing holding the Blofeld back from being truly equal to the Virus TI2, is that you can’t modulate any of the FX. For certain types of sounds I like to use in my own productions, that’s a hassle, and it’s the one lacking feature that really bothers me. Besides that, there’s myriad possibilities, and for most sounds most commercial producers use, it’s more than enough (most of us record dry and use ITB FX anyway).
Effects
This is a somewhat divisive section in the Blofeld user community. Some folks love all of the FX, others hate them. It’s true, compared to the Virus, the effects on here are by and large not the best. With deep tweaking you can make most of the effects solid, but some are better than others. The Distortion for example, is excellent. In some ways it even surpasses the Virus’ onboard distortions. Plus, unlike the Virus, the Blofeld’s FX sections are independent of each other, so if you want to absolutely destroy an FM bass sound for maximum nastiness, you can pile on 2 different kinds of distortion plus add filter drive from one or both filters. And if you’re a fan of talking robot sounds, if you dive into the Triple FX effect, the S&H effect is a very good rate reducer. Sadly, it isn’t modulatable by internal parameters. So if you want to morph it, you have to do it manually.
The Chorus and Delay are good though, and the Phaser sounds great once you turn the Feedback and Spacing down.
Unison
And finally, we come to the Unison section. In here we find the Poly vs Mono Modes, the Unisono Voice count and spread section, the Ring Modulator, and the variable-color Noise generator. The Voices can be increased to 6, which for you SuperSaw junkies, is great news (although if you’re using all 3 oscillators, you probably won’t want to go higher than 3 on Unisono, so you don’t hit a voice-stealing wall).
You’ll want to be wary of increasing the Unisono too high while using wavetables - wavetables take extra DSP on their own, and the voicing reduces that amount further. With a little clever tweaking, you can make some monster trance pads that rival the Virus and Mininova in power. It doesn’t quite touch the JP8000’s sound, but it doesn’t really need to. Its own unique sound is quite exciting and it comes with the added benefit of being tonally neutral, so it won’t be prone to frequency creep that piles up a ton of white noise and sibilants that drown out your percussion like Virus and JP SuperSaws can do when the Treble EQ controls get turned up.
Conclusion
In all, the Blofeld is a powerful, incredibly flexible machine with a distinctive sound that can be both shimmery and ethereal, and dark and ferocious. It’s not a perfect synth, and the menu diving can be intimidating for new users, but the glitches that plagued early models have been largely ironed out, making it a worthy companion to any other synth in your studio.
14 years on, its sound is just as useful and relevant when it came out, and deploying one in your songs will give you a unique tone that stands apart from the rest. For those of you in the market for a hardware Serum that can manage glimmering sparkling Trance pads and leads equally as well as devastating DnB reeses and dubstep growls, this is the unit for you.
Still worthit today?
Absolutely.
Hear it in action: