Microwave 1 Plug-in

35 years ago Waldorf Music released its first instrument, the Microwave, which took the hearts of the leading musicians and producers of the nineties by storm. Its vibrate and distinctive sound transported the early wavetable sounds of the eighties into the rising electronic dance music of the following decade. Massive bass lines, enigmatic wavetable modulations, brutal attacks and pads smooth as silk have inspired generations of musicians. The Microwave defined hybrid synthesis at its best with its unique interpretation of wavetable synthesis combined with analogue filters. Now Waldorf Music brings this magical instrument back to digital workstations worldwide with the release of the Microwave 1 Plug-in.

Microwave Synthesizer released 35 years ago

The Waldorf Microwave 1 Plug-in was painstakingly recreated from the original hardware with all its distinctive features and singularities. This multi-year project was a labour of love. Waldorf Music analysed and modelled the original instruments down to the finest sonic details of every aspect of the hardware. Its unique sound was based on proprietary digital and analogue designs long before the following generations of DSP-based instruments were conceived..

Only the first generation of the Microwave and also the Waldorf Wave were based on a custom developed integrated circuit called the Waldorf ASIC. In combination with the legendary Curtis filter chips and a very unique 68k CPU based controller software the ASIC defined a very special flavor of wavetable sound unparalleled to none. No one else than the inventor of Wavetable Synthesis of the eighties, Wolfgang Palm, helped to design this unique chip. Waldorf Music took a huge effort to analyze and recreate this integrated circuit within the plug-in. As the original, the plug-in runs the internal synthesis with the ultra high sampling rate of 250 kHz regardless of the DAW sampling rate. The recreated digital waveforms have been bit-by-bit compared with the original to be 100% identical. The digital noise was rebuilt with all its wonderful artifacts.

Even the old-school digital-to-analogue converters of the original hardware were modeled with their non-linearities and tone shaping color which were leading into the two Curtis filter chips variants used for the revisions A and B of the original hardware. The plug-in also allows artificial detuning and recalibration of the analogue components.

Brutal attacks, snappy decays and a plethora of wonderful transients define the sound of the first generation Microwave. Its livelihood never sounding mechanical but always different was based on a very unique architecture to create the envelopes, LFOs and modulations which was painstakingly recreated by the plug-in down to the finest grains.

Microwave 1 Plug-in with fully scalable interface

But the Microwave 1 Plug-in goes one step further: Its modern and inviting graphical user-interface reveals many aspects of the synthesis engine which were hidden before in the original hardware by its sparse hard to use interface. A fully scalable modern interface with readable high-contrast fonts supports an intuitive sound editing process with many graphical representations of the wavetables, envelopes and filter response curves using animations for modulations and playing positions.

But Waldorf didn't stop there. For the first time, they've revealed the inner workings of the Microwave. The user can now easily edit existing wavetables and create new ones using the internal control tables. All the original wavetables are available with their control structures and the full original waveform catalogue. In addition to user wavetables, also user waveforms can be created within the plug-in. Additional randomization modes make wavetable editing fun and sonically surprising as experienced never before.

The multi-mode becomes now a weapon of its own for sound design. Originally hard to edit from the panel, the plug-in UI now allows a quickly layering of single sounds to create the most complex and exciting sonic structures. An easy to use mixer page enables precise adjustment of the sonic relationships. Even sophisticated functions, such as tuning and velocity tables, have been implemented and can be modified within the user interface.

All the original factory single and multi-mode sounds are contained in the plug-in in combination with new and modern sound presets. Original MIDI and Sys-Ex dump files can be imported. Moreover, the plug-in can be used to control the original hardware.

Specification

Digital Section (ASIC):

• Internally running with 250 kHz sampling rate to match original ASIC sampling rate.
• Modeling of digital-to-analog converters for each voice (DAC).
• Two oscillators based on same wavetable per multi instrument.
• Unique digital noise generator based on ASIC technology.
• Digital mixer of oscillators and noise based on original ASIC including overflow bug.
• Faithful recreation of non-interpolated pitch generation.

Wavetables:

• All original wavetables of Microwave 1 based on the original coding and bit-identical to original.
• Including algorithmic and speech wavetables.
• Faithful recreation of 8-bit quantization and aliasing.
• Easy to use wavetable editor based on internal control tables.
• Full waveform catalogue of original instrument can be accessed.
• User waveform editor.

Filter:

• Faithful modeling of revision A and B analogue filters.
• Voice individual calibration of cutoff and resonance to model detuned hardware.
• Cutoff and resonance modulations.
• Frequency response graphic animated by live modulations.

Amplifier:

• Modeling of voltage controlled analogue amplifiers and panning section.
• Faithful recreation of control voltage DACs including stepping effects.

Modulators:

• Recreation of unique envelope and LFO timings based of original 68k code.
• Modeling of beautiful micro variations in timings due to limitations of the original hardware.
• Filter envelope with ADSR and additional delay parameter.
• Volume envelope with ADSR.
• All filter and volume envelope timings and levels can be modulated.
• Unique 8 stage wave envelope with variable key-off point and looping.
• Wave envelope levels and timings can be modulated.
• Attack-Decay envelope for LFO1 with additional delay.
• 2 LFOs with various waveforms, symmetry and humanize parameters.
• LFOs can be phase shifted to each other.
• LFO1 with global option, rate & level modulation.
• Non-Standard Tunings.
• 4 user tunings can be individually edited.
• Will be stored into user presets.

Multi-Mode:

• Up to 8 instruments which can be layered and split or any combination of both.
• Split by key zone and velocity range.
• Multi instrument mixer with volume, panning, detuning, transpose and many more parameters.
• Individual tuning per instrument possible.
• Huge catalogue of all original multi sounds.

Polyphony:

• 8 voice polyphony like the original hardware.
• Dynamic assignment of the voices to the multi instruments.
• Presets.
• All factory single and multi presets included.
• 5 additional original sound sets.
• 2 new sound sets from contemporary sound designers.
• Can import original .mid and .syx files with preset dumps including user tables and wavetables.
• User presets store all additional data like user wavetables and tuning & velocity tables.

Hardware Control:

• Plug-in can be used to control original hard in single mode via MIDI interface.
• Control optionally in live mode where each control is transferred automatically.

Extras:

• Configurable spectrum analyzer.
• Resizable graphical user interface.

{See video at top of page}

YouTube.com/watch?v=-watx29Y3fo