zerocrossing wrote:
Fair enough. Then I'd suggest totally forgetting the Blofeld (though from what I gather it's matrix style of UI isn't all that bad) and look into one of it's knobby ancestors or a Prophet 12. What about the Nord Wave? Every demo I ever heard of that synth sounded great to me. The Blofeld, good as it it, was trying to come down in a certain price point and that means corners were cut. Of course no instrument is "no compromise" but the Blofeld seemed to have a fair amount of compromise built into it's design. That's why I like Largo, but I'm also the guy who rarely touches his Prophet 08 because I have the software editor. To me, the Prophet... and actually all my hardware synths, could be black boxes with power and USB in and out and if they had a decent software editor I'd be fine. To me I buy hardware because it has a unique or high quality sound that software doesn't quite reach, though that's getting hard to find in digital synth world.
You hit it on the head as to why I like the Blofeld. Being that it has a nice big screen, even though it has 6 knobs for tweaking parameters, makes it very nice to visualize what's going on, instead of a small typical LCD screen. The fact that you can control the Blofeld via USB is a big plus. You have the option of programming with the hardware interface or with a software editor. MonstrumMedia is coming out with a Blofeld editor this month: http://www.monstrummedia.com
I actually prefer editing hardware synth with software editors, because it's usually easier on the arms and hands. Heck I have a Poly Evolver Keyboard that I like using SoundTower's editor with it to edit things, even though I consider the PEK's hardware interface to be one of the best out there. It's less effort that twisting a bunch of knobs. I prefer using a trackpad and keeping my hand in one place to edit everything. Even still, I'm excited to try out Waldorf's hardware interface they have in the Blofeld as it looks quite intuitive.
Though I don't see Waldorf making many compromises in the Blofeld with it's synthesis engine. The only thing I can think of is maybe the FX section, though I like having the bit reducer and it's just a bonus to be able to apply internal fx, which seem to be the same/similar to the Q fx. So I'm not sure what corners were cut in the Blofeld. The Blofeld combines all the Osc from the Q with all the wavetables from the XT with the synthesis section of the Q.
I tried the Largo demo and while I liked it, I still felt like it had a 'software' sound to it and I didn't like the interface so much. From what I've heard, I've liked stuff from the Blofeld more than Largo. Though I will say that I haven't listened to a bunch of Largo demos. But it will be nice to have DACs be able to add something extra to the sound with the Blofeld.