Waldorf Quantum

probably? :slight_smile:

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If @Open_Mike is right, than this internal latency of 3ms of the Quantum seems not to be spectacular, if his internal thunderbolt converters are 0.6ms … and even the round trip time of the thunderbolt/computer seems to be shorter. But I might have misunderstood something :wink:

Fair enough, but this isn’t quite the same as digital signal --> analog filter --> digital signal, or have I misunderstood your post?

I’m reporting stats of an apogee ensemble thunderbolt, they are definitely correct, round trip is from gearslutz posted by Don from Apogee, verified on my machine. AD/DA mixer stat is from apogee web page. I haven’t been in too deep on your conversation, just noticed the question about latency so giving some input. Analog signals flow at nearly instantaneous speeds approaching the speed of light so a filter in the middle should not matter.
I play guitar through plugins at 96K with 1.8 ms at 64 buffer, 1.1ms at 32 buffer…

As a guitar player, latency starts bugging me at about 8ms, 3ms is acceptable and will play just fine…

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I appreciate it! I am just wondering if we are talking about the same signal path here? If I understand it correctly, what comes into play here is an additive effect of the latency introduced by the two conversion steps, and they try to keep this as short as possible. I don’t have any more technical details on what kind of components they use, but Rolf refers to “extremely high-quality convertors”. Now, looking at the price of the Apogee ($2500 on their website, edit: if that is the one you are talking about?), that’s already more than 50% of the anticipated total price of the synth…

And that’s a single voice, being processed by a probably fairly beefy CPU (I assume?). If the Quantum uses a single CPU it certainly won’t be running an i7 as that would just be too expensive, probably blow their TDP budget and also introduces a lot of interference which needs to be dealt with.

I’m running a 2012 MacBook Pro I7 2.7ghz.
It seems you are talking about DAAD, the stats I gave were for ADDA which is the same just backwards. The ensemble using its internal mixer does a ADDA in .6ms, 1.1ms through computer. I could put my guitar through a bunch of analog filter pedals before it hits that and it would not increase the latency. I’m not trying to pick this to pieces, just giving stats for you all to interpret. I would not worry about the 3ms latency unless you notice it when playing…

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Exactly this … it’s only sad that the Quantum does not support digital audio recording … it’s a digital synth after all :wink:

Seems like there must be another D/A after the DAAD if it’s going to end up an audio signal at an output…
Edit: I said this in regards to maybe that’s why the latency is a little longer…

Seems the moral of the story is that when playing the Quantum the time between hitting a key and then hearing the noise coming out your speakers will be negligible.
Now when’s that next demo comin Waldorf?

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Yep … the DA/AD is only to pass the sound through analog filters and this takes another DA converter to send the sound to other studio equipment.

What I don’t understand is, why is it that I have other digital gear, multi-timbral even, and all have digital outputs too. I am not an expert, but where is the problem to send digital information, which is ready to go through a DA converter to an USB audio channel too? Maybe I am too naive, but wouldn’t a additional digital circuit and an USB socket just do it?

Good question, actually. I am asking myself the same thing right now. Going by what was said by Waldorf in that YT video, it apparently isn’t…

Yes this is what annoys me so much about the Octatrack, or any other 100% digital device for that matter - NO DIGITAL OUTPUT
Why on earth build a digital unit and not throw a digital out on it?
Forcing us to use its onboard D/A (sometimes rubbish), to then go to an interface A/D is completely unnecessary and only degrades the signal. Keep it digital the whole way through where possible for maximum audio quality.
And yes not sure if it was the OT audio processing, or its converters used for both A/D D/A that gave it its subtle grainy output. Always present unfortunately, and I always wondered how much better it may have sounded with a digital direct output?
Elektron, OT2 must have digital out please :+1:
Finally Elektron decided to put a digital out on their analog devices via OB/USB, though ironically to use these the now analog signal must pass through an onboard A/D converter to hit the USB output.
Thankfully the new converters on the analog units sound really good to my ears, massive improvement from the previous generations.

It can record samples and wavetables, so I’m not quite sure what you mean here.

I’m under the assumption that it’s never as easy as us end users may think. Converting audio to usb is a whole separate deal than a/d d/a. One thing that comes to mind is drivers. Usb is not specifically designed for realtime audio and it takes lots of optimization to get really low multitrack latency. Advanced coding along with internal component decisions are required and then the software side must be updated to work with new versions of os’s… I imagine it might take its own little team of programmers even…

We have been discussing that the Quantum has no digital audio interface (only analog), which would be required to record the instrument directly into a DAW, like the Elektron boxes or other digital instruments, which have such interfaces :wink:

Next month? https://www.thomann.de/gb/waldorf_quantum.htm

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Maybe … maybe not. This is the status since more then one or two weeks. It’s not even on the Waldorf web-site in the “hardware” section. We have to stay tuned … :wink:

I can split layers on my P12, it has two separate stereo out. (6 plus 6 Voices) Each on its own midi channel, it can also do keyboard split, but with each on their own midi channel, its like having two synth at once.


This.

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