Hello everyone. I have been going crazy with hardware purchases lately and really enjoyed the stuff that gave me a ton of knobs to tweak, but then I saw a double sale going on for the blofeld recently and after much researching, bought it. It's on back order until the 25th and is the tabletop unit, not keyboard unit. I always wanted a Q and I read this can do all Q sounds plus has wave table capability. I like the multimode arpeggiator action I saw in videos and the sound was great.

Just wondering how people are using it in multitimbral modes. I plan on opening several tracks on different midi channels to it to sequence it.

How has this worked for you. I also heard it can be "cold" sounding, whatever that means. I heard some real warmth in some of the examples I listened to, so would this be referring to the more brittle wave table type sounds?

Most importantly I like to build my own sounds. How difficult is it to navigate using the panel controls and LCD? I know there is a few editors out there, so which ones do you recommend? Not afraid to buy a good editor. Lastly, is the 60mb sample ability license worth getting?

Just opinions from those that own it or even previously owned it and sold for whatever reason.

I couldn't find much wrong in reviews other than it doesn't have that beautiful knob laden surface of the Q or microwave XT.

Thanks.

If you are thinking of buying it to use multitimbrally, just be aware that polyphony is limited but not fixed-you aren't guaranteed a certain number of voices, it will depend on fx, how many oscillators and filters are in use, etc.

I don't find it that hard to edit from the front panel. Once you learn the layout, it is easy to jump around. The mod matrix is really the only place where anything is more than a couple of button presses and knob turns away. I don't usually use editors, but just discovered I could plug my iPad straight into it with USB and use Lemur-there is a template that has almost every parameter. I've also used the free wavetable maker/loader, which is great.

It can definitely sound as warm,smooth or phat as any other VA out there, and also rough, digital, out of control, and any other adjective you can think of-it is really a versatile synth.

Thanks for the insider info. I'm looking forward to getting it whenever the back order comes in. Haven't decided whether I want to control it with my Venom 49 key or buy a smaller controller with more knobs and assign some knobs to the various functions.

I used to have one but sold it.
Polyphony was never a problem for me, but it's definitely possible to run out, especially if you use Unison mode. A bigger problem for me was the single stereo-out. It kind of defeated the purpose of using it in multi-timbral mode, since you had to record each track separately anyway for separate processing.
The biggest issue for me was tempo-synced LFO's and effects. It's possible to get some stepping and other glitches when syncing the unit to your DAW.

Editing from the front panel was no problem at all - easier and quicker than on the MS2000R, which is full of knobs and buttons. The big display, endless encoders and parameter matrix makes it amazingly quick considering you're only using 4 knobs. Absolutely no comparison to the Virus TI Snow, which is hopeless to program without the VST editor.

It sounds great IMO - not like a Moog of course. It has its own sound like all synths.

That does remind me- there are issues with the arps syncing up. It got better with firmware updates, and there has been a beta out for probably a year now that may improve them, I still haven't installed it.
I haven't had any problems with delays being in sync though.

I believe the current version of the os is 1.15

Any Blofeld users out there notice that the output seems to be kind of low? Meaning... not quite as hot as I'm used to.

1.16 is the public beta.

Yes, output can be low. There are various places to boost it, though it seems some presets are just quiet no matter what you do.

The only two modern synths I own are the Blofeld and Virus TI2 desktop models. The Blofeld has unbalanced outs which are generally rated quieter than balanced outs like on the Virus. I don't know which kinds out outputs are more common these days...

But I want to echo Aural Chaos' observation that the Blofeld presets do vary wildly in overall volume. The standard deviation in Blofeld preset patch loudness seems much greater than with my old Roland synths, and even the Virus to a degree.

Also, I never use the Blofeld multi-timbrally, because of the single pair of outs.

Thanks for everyone's comment as concerns the levels. It's good to know that there's nothing wrong with the unit itself.

This has always left me wondering.. What kind of music are people making where they need to track the tempo so accurately. Is it changing all the time or just on certain parts of a song, or how does this work?

Yes, the Blofeld is a great machine.
I use it multi-timbral mode sometimes, but not very often, as it takes quite some time to set up the multi program.
However, it is a killer drumsynth used that way
The sound is good, but i agree that the output is low. I run it through a stereo preamp, and it really gets some more punch and loudness.
The workflow is surprisingly great, considering there are few knobs and a zilliaton of parameters to tweak.

For me it tracked alright, but there's audible stepping in the LFO's. Tempo synced delay also glitched out, as the delay time was being constantly shifted by a few ms causing audible crackles and pops.

I've clocked mine from a variety of sources, some of which were not especially stable ( in that you can see the bpm wandering slightly on the screens of other devices in the chain) and I do not get any glitching at all of tempo synced delay.

Thanks for all the responses. My Blofeld just arrived today. Have to wait until tonight to setup. I'll let you guys know my thoughts on it after a few days playing with it.

Why are you then clocking it to the DAW? Wouldnt it run just fine with its own clock set to the same bpm as your DAW? It would drift after minutes.. but that shouldn't matter as you are triggering stuff way more often than that(the clock resets).