MATRIXSYNTH: A Mini Waldorf Largo Review and Samples


Tuesday, May 05, 2009

A Mini Waldorf Largo Review and Samples

via Boele of SCD on the Waldorf list, posted here with permission.

"Yes, Largo is approaching :D

Largo looks like Blofeld/uQ in terms of parameters, but it can sound quite different and has some very fine additional features.

First of all, it has all the wavetables Blofeld has, including the Upperwavetable, the matrix, the 4 envelopes, 3 LFOs, 2 filters, FXs etc. all known from Blofeld/uQ. Also the arpeggiator is there.

In addition, the first two oscillators have a sub-oscillator with selectable foot and level settings.

The phaser FX has been improved a lot. It sounds *way* better than the one on the Blofeld (personal opinion).

There is an added Fuzz FX in the FX section which also sound pretty good.

My personal favorit: the step LFO (only LFO3). you can set a value for each of the maximum of 16 steps and you can also smooth out the steps a little if wanted. Last but not least, you can set any number of steps while the LFO speed is maintained.
Now when you sync the LFO to MIDI clock you can imagine the funny things you can do. I really love this feature and hope to see it back one day in Blofeld.

The delay has gotten extended delay time up to three seconds. Very usable for ambient sounds :)

There is a global equalizer and also a bass boost knob to finetune the overall sound of Largo.

You can create four layers of sounds and send them to various outputs if wanted. Waldorf also developed some smart bank/preset loading/saving routines. (maybe some other betatester can spread a bit more light on this? I didn't use it yet).

All in all, I started to like this piece of software a lot. Not bad for a hardware guy :) 90% of the parameters are approachable by MIDI CCs so with a good controller it feels like hardware anyway.

Is there nothing to complain about? Well, maybe only the missing PPG filter. Not sure if Waldorf intends to add this in a future release. But even without it Largo gives so much sound fun.

The above is just my own personal view on Largo, developed during testing. It will hit the market in the very near future as far as I know.

Check it out!

Boele"

And via Stefan Trippler:
"If it's of any help, the Largo demos I already posted on the list were made
on a Pentium Dual Core 2,4 GHz

http://www.trippler.net/files/mp3/tanzindenmai.mp3
http://www.trippler.net/files/mp3/messie.mp3
http://www.trippler.net/files/mp3/lullaby.mp3
http://www.trippler.net/files/mp3/murmur.mp3

In terms of the sound character: when I made these demos I had only my own weird sounds available that always have a little too much overdrive, FM or modulations of any kind. The Largo can also make nice sounds ;)"

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