Waldorf Blofeld in 2022?

[Arpangel]

Thanks, sounds like it could fit the bill, analogue, brass, strings, all I need.
I’ll check out the effects, but from what you say, doesn’t look promising, are they bad bad, or potentially bad but interesting?

Not interesting at all, just bad. It drops the volume of the sound and makes it sound thin as soon as the master efx knob is turned up and any of the 4 slots have efx loaded and active. I have to wonder if there's something going on like phase cancellation. Not sure if this applies to the 5s. If you get your hands on one, immediately reach up and turn the master efx knob off and see what happens.

Thanks I’m in London today, I may try and track one down, try it,

[Martin Walker]

I'm now so disillusioned - I've on several occasions wondered about buying a Blofeld for its unique sounds, but after all these negative comments I'll definitely give it a miss

Probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs but most of the sounds without the pain: https://waldorfmusic.com/en/largo-overview

Impressive - thanks for the linkBobTheDog!

Currently listening to the Soundcloud demos and loving these sounds

Martin

[Djberwick]

I forgot to mention, looks like you still need to pay a fee to Waldorf to unlock the Blofeld and have access to load your own samples/presets? About a 100 quid I think!

[BillB]

That's correct for the module, yes. Unless you find a secondhand unit with it already loaded. The keyboard blofeld comes wiht SL built-in.

https://waldorfmusic.com/en/license-sl-sample-option

[Djberwick]

Cheers, it's certainly a lot less appetising with that additional cost...

[BillB]

It depends how much you are likely to want to import samples (noting that it is import only - no onboard sampling capability).

Of the 18 soundpacks here, 9 require the SL extension:
https://waldorfmusic.com/en/blofeld-software

But you can get a world of music out of the Blofeld without using samples. Think of it as an optional plus (at a cost) rather than a negative.

[resistorman]

I paid extra for the SL expansion and could never get it to work with my own samples, but I never tried an expansion pack. As old as this thing is and with only 60 megabytes available I'm surprised they still charge extra for it. Especially since Wavestate, Modwave etc. give you access to 4 gigabytes of memory for free.

[Djberwick]

I'm surprised as well - either they have given up on it or are just confident it will still sell....or maybe both

I'm not massively fussed about loading my own samples, but would like to load 3rd party patches (ones that don't use new samples)....

If it was £200 it would be a no-brainer, but there's just so much competition around now at a slightly higher price...

[Bob Bickerton]

Bit late coming to this, but I'm on my second Blofeld - this time a keyboard version.

For what I do, I really like it. I have a couple of sound sets which I use more than the presets that were shipped. I do use samples on it, but for quite specific (and fairly non-synth) patches. Agreed not a great device for tweaking and also the onboard effects are not great - but if you have wonderful outboard effects, why would you use the internals anyway?

Bob

[BillB]

And for anyone struggling with importing samples, Bob kindly provided a how-to guide for working with Spectre and Blofeld:

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... hp?t=79285

[hcv242]

I like my blofeld very much. So much that i did a GM sound bank using its multisampling capabilities.

Promotional/advertising link removed -- ED.

[zaphod betamax]

I was brave and deleted all the factory content on my all my Blofelds
and replaced with INIT patches.

Even back then in 2013 I felt the presets were "too young sounding"
and I had just turned 50 then.

It gave me the ability to roll my own 1024 patches.

YMMV.