Waldorf MicroWave as a plugin?

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Microwave 1 Plug-in$165.00Buy

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knowix wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 7:01 am So maybe it is just Xenia and all the talk of accuracy is there to handwave over the resource usage.

Certainly the only other Dev out there known for that kind of painstaking digital chip emulation is Plogue and they seem too busy to me, to be assisting other companies.
Certainly not.

The Microwave 1 predates any Motorola-driven synth by a nearly a decade. The digital part was a custom ASIC that Wolfgang Palm developed after his PPG company folded. It was proposed by Michael Boddicker, who had approached PPG with a demand for a PPG in 19" rack format. Waldorf choosed this idea for their first project.

Xenia is a Microwave II/XT which is a completely different beast. Not only is it completely digital (no analog filters like the MW1), it's digital part is in fact DSP. This generation of Waldorf synths was developed mainly by Stefan Stenzel.

Both Microwave generations have technically nothing to do with each other!

As far as "painstaking emulation" goes, the original developers are still alive and can be asked for the original code. There is no need to reverse-engineer that stuff like Plogue does. The digital part of a MW II/XT is also different from what the ASIC in the MW 1 does, so there is no point in using the code from Xenia.

Waldorf also has the code for M, which actually is a port of the ASIC of the MW 1 to an ARM-processor. Reusing that makes much more sense. The only thing they really have to put a lot of work in, is the emulation of the analog stuff, especially the filter chips. It will be very interesting to see if they nailed it, as they have NOT with their PPG-plugin. But these days we have an increasing number of developers who know how to code filters and have experience with ZDF-algorithms.

To me it is not unlikely they nailed it with this plugin.

....now finally bring out that darned thing :wink:

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These are the kind of Information, I would love to see more on Kvr. Many thanks for the Input. :hug:
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El°HYM wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2024 10:41 pm With that said; its two more days or so until the release.
Release on a Friday? I never understood why some companies release something on a Friday. If something goes wrong or there is some bug there will be a whole long weekend with negative chatter before anyone gets to it.
Neon City for u-he Repro - 80s pop & Synthwave soundbank
HARDWARE SAMPLER FANATIC - Akai S1100/S950/Z8 - Casio FZ20m - Emu Emax I - Ensoniq ASR10/EPS

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Why does the Microwave 1 Plug-In has 8 voices only?
This is due to authenticity. The 68K chip in the original hardware had the typical restriction of old micro processors of the 1980s and 1990s: less calculation speed. The allocation of the voices, the attack of envelopes or the calculation of LFOs in conjunction with incoming MIDI notes had to be cleverly calculated. This resulted is a unique sound interaction and behavior that cannot be found in modern plug-ins with dozens of voices. However, we wanted to reproduce this behavior 1:1 – and that was only possible by exactly reproducing the restrictions of the old hardware.
All the Best from Germany,

Holger Steinbrink
------------------
www.audio-workshop.net

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tsching wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 2:27 pm Why does the Microwave 1 Plug-In has 8 voices only?
This is due to authenticity. The 68K chip in the original hardware had the typical restriction of old micro processors of the 1980s and 1990s: less calculation speed. The allocation of the voices, the attack of envelopes or the calculation of LFOs in conjunction with incoming MIDI notes had to be cleverly calculated. This resulted is a unique sound interaction and behavior that cannot be found in modern plug-ins with dozens of voices. However, we wanted to reproduce this behavior 1:1 – and that was only possible by exactly reproducing the restrictions of the old hardware.
I have an old Memorymoog, and when using the arpeggiator the note stealing is absolutely musical. Any plugin version of it that didn't have this "limitation" would be disappointing.

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Garrincha wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 9:39 am...
As far as "painstaking emulation" goes, the original developers are still alive and can be asked for the original code.
...
Not 100% right.
Andreas Busse died several years ago. He was also mentioned for his work in the Waldorf M manual.
keep on turning these knobs

Till "Qwave" Kopper

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Waldorf posted a new video on their page last night.

https://www.facebook.com/WaldorfMusic/v ... K-R!%3Av-R

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LOL Holger and Till have entered the chat.. The real Waldorf experts are here now!!

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mothra wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 8:23 pm LOL Holger and Till have entered the chat.. The real Waldorf experts are here now!!
I just bought myself a microWave again last week (pure coincident! A friend sold his for a nice price in very good condition) after 10 years without owning one (I sold my 32 voice system made from a MW and three waveSlaves to gain some room and cash). And I added a Stereoping Programmer for a knob twisting UI this time.

But as I did not used a DAW for 20+ years (except some beta tests long ago), I won‘t use the new microWave plugin here.

I wonder, if the virtual MW will be able to read original MW sysex like the Waldorf M? But I don‘t have high hopes that it will feature a way to export sounds from the plugin to be imported into the vintage MW via sysex.

And I do wonder about the digital filters. Will they sound good enough for the microWave Rev. A fans?

So the circle is closing: Waldorf is back to their very first synth product, but this time it is already virtually.
keep on turning these knobs

Till "Qwave" Kopper

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The prices on those things have gone up so much since the days of the old mailing list!! But then again my XT has tripled in value since I bought it too, so I cant complain!

I'll probably pick it up regardless, I'm a sucker for those big red knobs!! :D

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qwave wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 8:40 pm I wonder, if the virtual MW will be able to read original MW sysex like the Waldorf M?
If it does, I'll compare it with the samples I made from my old Rev. A.

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Garrincha wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 9:39 am
Waldorf also has the code for M, which actually is a port of the ASIC of the MW 1 to an ARM-processor. Reusing that makes much more sense. The only thing they really have to put a lot of work in, is the emulation of the analog stuff, especially the filter chips. It will be very interesting to see if they nailed it, as they have NOT with their PPG-plugin. But these days we have an increasing number of developers who know how to code filters and have experience with ZDF-algorithms.

To me it is not unlikely they nailed it with this plugin.

....now finally bring out that darned thing :wink:
As I said before, the other part they need to nail is the, as they put it in the marketing copy, "Faithful recreation of non-interpolated pitch generation." which (or something extremely similar) has been tackled by Vember Audio, Tal and Arturia so far to whatever degrees of success. The former implementation lives on as open source even.

Likewise designs extremely similar to the filters they're using there have been implemented in plugins before.

But again no real reason to believe that was outside of their capability. It's very likely that shortcomings of PPG Wave plugin were a consequence of having to cut corners to meet performance demands of computers from the era as much as were a consequence of the state of the art regarding dsp filters.

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If they get the sound close to what my Waldorf M sounded like, this will be an instant buy for me. I miss it 😩
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If it's true that you can create Multis with it - then this thing will be a monster. For for sound and CPU. Far too few synths lets you stack sounds internally.
Neon City for u-he Repro - 80s pop & Synthwave soundbank
HARDWARE SAMPLER FANATIC - Akai S1100/S950/Z8 - Casio FZ20m - Emu Emax I - Ensoniq ASR10/EPS

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qwave wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 8:40 pm I wonder, if the virtual MW will be able to read original MW sysex like the Waldorf M? But I don‘t have high hopes that it will feature a way to export sounds from the plugin to be imported into the vintage MW via sysex.
The plug-in can import original .mid and .syx files with preset dumps including user tables and wavetables.
All the Best from Germany,

Holger Steinbrink
------------------
www.audio-workshop.net

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