Waldorf Edition: PPG Wave 2.V

edited 10/21/02...

This and the Pro 52 are the first VSTi plugins I purchased and still one of my favorites. The PPG 2.3 was a deep and expensive synth that happened to be important in defining a new kind of sound and form of synthesis. It is digital yet has subtractive controls and a gritty but pleasantly warm filter.

The plugin is faithful to the synthesizer with a few improvements for making programming easier. Still this is a complex synth and while the manual tells you what every control does it doesn't explain how to program the PPG Wave 2.v.

Having 8 channel polyphony is fantastic and was one of the first VSTis to do this.

You have heard the sound of this synth if you were listening to pop music in the 80's, watching TV or film as the PPG sound was frequently used.

The sounds are excellent at what they do. Some may miss the point based on the stock presets. Try to get past them. The PPG 2.v can do fantastic pads, weird FX sounds, solid leads and bases too. The idea of working with wavetables, literally many different waves strung together as a 8 bit sample is a bit different from traditional synthesis, it was one of the first synths to use sample data. This is also the reason the PPG Wave 2.v is so capable of unique sounds.

There was an article about the making of the PPG Wave 2.v. It detailed how the actual synth was tested against the VSTi along with users who participated in beta testing the VSTi against their PPG 2.3 synths. The beta team agreed the PPG Wave 2.v was a software clone. So it is safe to say you will not get much close than this to a groundbreaking synth from the past, one that literally changed how designers thought about synthesis. In the same sense the PPG Wave 2.v did the same for VST instrument plugins as did the Pro 52.

There is much to learn which isn't addressed in the manual. That the PPG Wave 2.v is still popular after 2 years, a small eternity for software, tells you how fresh a 20 year old design can sound.Read Review