Waldorf Quantum

The Lounge Other Gear
#87

Yeah definitely, I remember being out years ago and had a go on the Q in a shop and I loved it. Since then I’ve had a soft spot the Waldorf gear.
I’ve sort of stolen/adopted my brother’s XT but it’s not working at the moment, will have to send it away to a tech.

I mentioned earlier but I’d love to see some kind of drum synth again from Waldorf. The rack attack was brilliant but now with Nord Drums it’s not as attractive anymore.

The Quantum does look very spacious and clean, sound wise it’s early days but the specs do all the talking anyway. The techniques inside will no doubt lead to some great new timbres.
It’s like the Q mated with a Vsynth-XT and Nueron in some kind of electro-threesome!
Hope the price comes down a little but I doubt it!

#88

thats a shame, many who have both the Q and XTk prefer the latter, i’ve only played one in passing…
Fer sure you are going to pay a lot, i’ve always tried/hoped/wanted to stay “current” with synths and that means paying the price, tho living where i now live has made that much harder
the Q has a drum mode and i used S/W attack quite a bit a long time ago, you can get similar results.

these days I can only use gear with good or great interfaces, the Q has that, seems the Quantum does too.

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#89

Eeeghhhh… a bit harsh.

Do we need to link to the campaign to Make Elektronauts British Again?!?!

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#91

Lol, okidoki Realman TM

#93

What

#94

Like a virtual world, I think he is saying he doesn’t play much 2ndLife

#96

How about we all talk about the Quantum and get this subject back on track.

Granular sounds fun. I hope they offer a rack version.

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#97

A post was split to a new topic: Off topic bickering 3/8/17

#98

A post was merged into an existing topic: Off topic bickering 3/8/17

#99

But is it $3,000 worth of fun?

#100

Does it look to have 8 outs? I didn’t watch the complete video but it didn’t look like it. That’s in no way some kind of deal breaker as this thing looks killer but it pokes holes in the multi mode if there is just a single stereo out. The blofeld multi was always fun but was kind of tedious if you were trying to run/record different patches that weren’t drum based.

#101

2 part multi, 2 stereo out pairs.
Don’t see the problem.

2 Likes
#102

I would say no … not 3k$

Internally the Quantum offers much, which we can get as VST-plug-ins already. From a technological point, I guess, it should not require more CPU power then a System-8, which does this ACB stuff.

If I compare the Quantum to my Virus TI2, which has a 16 multi-timbral structure, more outputs, and was introduced, I think, 2009, and if we consider that digital electronics get cheaper by every year and is more powerfull today then in the past … just thinking … :wink:

The interface with all those little LEDs is a “nice to have”, which I could pretty much live without. The touch-screen might be a little costy, but could be useful for wavetable synthesis and the other synthesis methods.

Again … I don’t think its worth 3k$ compared to other digital technology on the market today.

This said …

One intersting feature, which I remember from one of the videos is that we can import user samples and use them in the granular synthesis. To have this kind of synthesis outside of a computer is very appealing to me. I will wait until the first models are out to be reviewed and better sound examples are availabe. The sounds of the videos have not been much convincing yet, too harsh and cold, but this could be the recording only. I expect better or more telling sound examples, after the synth is more finished and refined.

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#103

Has there been any mentions about fx?

#104

Cool, thanks! That makes sense. Similar tomthe prophet 12 in that respect then.

#105

Granular synthesis is a computer-only domain so far. It kind of worked with the V-Synth but the results never came close to Reaktor or Omnisphere 2. They got my attention even though I am afraid that Quantum will share Stromberg´s fate. This is a huge project and “Q4 this year” will NEVER happen. The design is the best I saw from Waldorf (since the relaunch).

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#106

FX are digital, but they seem to have some pretty wild routing options. Not sure if it was mentioned which one specifically are available, but I guess that looking at the Blofeld/Nave/Largo would give a pretty good idea.

I am not on top of all the DSP technology that is out there, but in the German video above it is mentioned that the Quantum has internally a 16 channel audio interface, as each voice is DAed, then sent to the analog filters and then ADed back into the digital signal path. All this with apparently 3ms latency. Rolf from Waldorf mentions this in reply to the question if they will support audio out via USB, where he states that it depends if they have enough CPU cycles available to do that as they are focussing on immediacy and responsiveness of the instrument. In this context he says that such short latency (DAAD in 3ms) is not achievable with any DAW/audio interface combo in the market right now - I have absolutely now way of either verifying or falsifying that statement.

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#107

Was there any information, what is used inside? DSP or embedded computer, Linux or Windows? If they say that this internal DA/AD interfacing costs so much CPU time that they can’t afford a digital audio interface too, I assume, there might be a CPU working inside, rather than dedicated or even de-centralised DSPs. At least there seems to be a performance bottle-neck. AFAIK Roland uses spedific DSP processors to do the ACB calculations.

I am a little surprised about Waldorf to be proud of a very short latency - and I believe that Rolf is saying the truth - and missing out to have a digital audio interface at the same time. This is like having a modern synthesizer and just telling everybody … no, there will be no midi :wink:

Maybe I don’t get it, but wasn’t the problem with long latencies that we have too much time gap between a DAW controlling the instrument and the instrument returning audio via a digital interface? If that’s the case, it seems to me that this low latency does not have a practical advantage between DAW and instrument. So why is it that this low latency is so great?

Would be interesting to know, what is under the hood. If everything is processed by a single CPU, I could understand a shortage of CPU time. Maybe Waldorf transfered their codebase, which originally has been coded for Mac/PC to an embedded system? But this is all speculation, we just don’t know :wink:

I hope that Waldorf considers at least to offer some kind of extension board to get a digital interface as option. Others like Modal Electronics (Modal 008 etc.) do it.

At the end of the day we will judge the sound and usability of this new synthesizer. Those synthesis and the wealth of modulation capability provided as stand-alone instrument is absolutely interesting.

#108

My thunderbolt interface has a round trip latency all the way through a computer and realtime plugins of 2.6ms at 48 sample rate or 1.1ms at 96. Using the interfaces internal ad/da mixer not running through the computer is .6ms…

#109

I would say that the osc part with granular mayhem is digital. To send this to analog filters you need a very quick DA converter.
These two things being very fast is rather good news and I bet there are some technical challenges behind that this guy is proud to have overcome :smiley:

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