Waldorf Quantum

wow, thats some early sh*t right there. I guess there are some surprises up ahead with this instrument…

1 Like

Rolf had mentioned audio over USB in one of the videos – as one of those not promised features.

I assume there is no hardware change (or at least nothing beyond component tweaks) so like putting front panel controls on for the two added effects. There is room on the front panel but i really don’t think it will happen. (Or the three hidden LFOs.) You can add that stuff with an external midi controller anyway and the extra USB connector is ready for that.

What other goodies would you consider? I would suppose that software upgrades are possible if the Q sells in any volume and ‘has legs’.

Some more sound demos (in case it wasn’t posted somewhere previously):

… still it somehow reminds me on a kind of giant midi-controller-ipad-dock …

There are three Synthmania demo videos – i like the sounds myself – but they’re painful to watch. The player is all thumbs! It’s 90% factory patches, just a little exploration outside that. Watch his awkward left hand – pick any random finger. If he’s ever played any musical instrument before in his life i’d be surprised! He likes the white keys in his right, plink plank, and D in his left. He also never touches a knob with his left hand either. Hint: the knobs on the left side are for the left hand. He has also never used a touch screen before quite obviously.

I did learn something i like from the videos. The touch screens really follow your actions. So you twist an envelope knob, and the envelope screen is right there. Same with any of the three oscillators, and other controls. The screens also looked to have a lot of information so you weren’t always having to go diving for stuff. From reading the manual i have the impression i’d learn where stuff is pretty quickly.

The Scope

I really like the dual channel scope on the Q’s display. You can “plug in” at a variety of places including external audio. It can be set as a one shot scope, or continuous, and there is a spectrum analyzer as well.

1 Like

Storage and Samples

The 4 GB that pulsefrequenz is referring to here is only for the internal flash storage on the Q. This doesn’t include the sample storage available from SD card – i wrote pulsefrequenz and we share the same understanding about this.

So how much storage space is on the Q?
SD cards go to 1 Terabyte (1000 Gigabyte) now, Sandisk sells them for instance. The Q requires that the SD card be formatted to FAT, but my understanding is that Microsoft exFAT allows for very large storage capacities. I haven’t seen detail on the maximum capacity of SD Cards for the Q in Waldorf documentation, so i’m not sure what the maximum storage is. (Anybody know?)

Load time for the Q will be slower from an SD card than from SSD storage in the X, or should be with all other things being equal. I’d love to see benchmarking done to compare the two. The ability to replace one SD card’s set of samples with another would be useful for a lot of situations.

pulsefrequenz in his informative post supposes that the X has “multiple samples across the keyboard.” I am pretty sure this is correct, i think that is what Gerry Basserman of DSI said in the Sonic State video.

The Q has this too, both with the Particle Generator (which is both a granular synth and a sample synth) and the Resonator – they both can use multi-samples that are mapped over the keyboard. This is talked about in the manual.

I’d also love to hear the Q played with some 8Dio libraries just for comparison. With the Q they could be used in the Particle Generator (samples or granular) and the Resonator, and in the Wavetable oscillators – or all three simultaneously mixed together.

I’ve been thinking of the range of possibilities with the Q, or the X for that matter eventually, with choice from a variety of content. The X shows again the possibilities available with high quality production samples. The same goes for the Q – regardless how good the Waldorf patches currently under production will eventually be, what else is possible?

Not sure how the X and the Q compare with the controls for the sample playback part?
Here are the controls on the front panel for an oscillator on the Q. There are more oscillator controls that are mappable on the Q as well, and there are also touchscreen controls.

And these are the Sample controls on the X. (Apologies for the quality of the image.)

It would also be interesting to compare sound, side by side the analog filters on the Q and the X with the same sample content. That’s one way to see if the dual analog filters on the Q add anything.
Dual analog filters with some resonance, moving separately under variable LFO control!

2 Likes

Two very recent sound demos from a beta test by Jürgen Driessen.

1 Like

Thanks! Look at the amount of knobs on that synth…lovely! :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

Waldorf HQ is just around the corner, I visited them once and had a peak at the Q which was in their workshop. Karsten told me to stay tuned because they got plans for the Q and maybe there will be a surprise regarding it (I wont spoil it, but some people on this thread would be very pleasantly surprised as well as me :))…

3 Likes

Multitimbrality added in a new OS? :slight_smile:

The Quantum is multitimbral already – 8 voices, two part multitimbral. Perhaps deeper multitimbrality?

A feature that was discussed as possible by Rolf is digital audio over USB. But what you’re hinting at jingo sounds like more than that.

To compete with the Prophet X they could add a sample package like 8Dio. Other things from the Prophet X could also be candidates.

Adding explicit FM synthesis is another option. (ADDED: Not that it’s really necessary, at least from my perspective.)

It’s also been said in the last couple months that Rolf has been adding to the code (probably the sound generators) in reaction to requests from the audio developers working on the sound library for the Q.

I counted 79 knobs! I love the way the color changes depending on how the patches you are playing are configured.

Plus the Q is also setup to work as a controller. I don’t know of any other controller anywhere that would compare.

From the last videos i really liked the look of the touch screen.

NEW VIDEO:


It’s a half hour long.
1 Like

I notice that there has been two firmware updates, 1.10 has several new things for the Wavetable synth.

Also there is a “new” manual as of June 2018.

Quantum download page.

1 Like

Three really good (imo) Particle synth creations from Andreas Cellura. For anyone who likes space music.

1 Like

they will remove the touch screen? Consider me interested

Nice one :wink:

Here is a nice video of the Q:

I am still not hearing anything that would remotely justify the price. If you watch the video and see the amazing instrument you might be interested but if you just let it play in the background and do something else and only listen to the sounds that are played the whole thing collapses.

1 Like

I think, but I dont know, that the Video only scratches the surface of all possibilities… anyway 4k€ is a whole lot of money, hands down… I hope that they do a Blofeld 2 Desktop version for a more affordable price tag :slight_smile:

3 Likes

I read this a lot alongside “we are still waiting for the new presets” and “it´s not finished!”. :slight_smile: