Waldorf Microwave, released in 1989, is coming to your DAW soon. And this isn’t just another plug-in emulation of vintage gear. Waldorf has gone to great lengths to reproduce both the analog and digital sides of the original – and even developed software that can act as an editor if you own the original hardware.
Let’s say you don’t know or care much about the original Microwave (also called Microwave 1 to distinguish it from the less popular Microwave II). That’s OK: think rich synth sounds and a combination of digital wavetables and analog filters.
The wavetable synthesizer as we know it today owes its existence to a large extent to PPG (Palm Products GmbH). Waldorf provided the staff and the technology, and the result was the Microwave.
The Microwave is a brilliant instrument trapped in an absolutely tragic interface design. Waldorf got exactly one thing right – a big, beautiful red button that makes the hardware distinctive (albeit in the same way that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is distinctive). But they also caught the worst trend of the time: they eliminated all onboard controls and made every instrument impossible to edit.
The Microwave 1 plug-in gives Waldorf a chance to put things right again. The software interface isn’t groundbreaking in itself, but it gives you access to all the parameters. And it’s not just rows of buttons: you get visualizations of wavetables, envelopes and filter response curves. You can even edit wavetables directly.
They’ve also been obsessive about authenticity. On the digital side, they run the internal synthesis engine at 250kHz, just like the original. They’ve also included exact 1:1 versions of the digital wavetables – which they should be able to do with that engine. And they say they’ve even recreated the “digital noise… with all its wonderful artifacts.”
Digital synths still use digital-to-analog converters. In this case, Waldorf says they’ve also accurately modeled the DACs “with their nonlinearities and timbre.” Then there are models of the Curtis analog filters as used in revisions A and B of the hardware. And they’ve added additional options for additional detuning and recalibration.
The level of detail is unusual in this era of replicas based on the motto “it looks like the original”:
- Full support for importing original MIDI and SysEx dump files
- Use the hardware as a graphical editor for the original hardware
- All original single and multimode sounds from the factory (plus lots of new presets)
- Editing the original wavetables
- Create your own user wavetables
Just like the original, there is no effects section – but since it’s a plug-in, you’ll probably find some effects.
And the team is also impressive – the design was created by Axel Hartmann, and the development was carried out by Rolf Woehrmann and Lucas Chaumeny. (Wolfgang Palm and Andreas Busse developed the original hardware.)
So even without effects, you get a full heads-up display, a wavetable section with 3D view (similar to recent Waldorf and Hartmann creations), a wavetable oscillator section, a filter section and a modulation section, and of course an on-screen recreation of the big red dial.
Extras include Revision A (CEM 3389) and Revision B (3387) switches for different filter characteristics, as well as a detailed calibration section for modeling the special characteristics of an individual hardware unit, as these may vary.
There’s also support for tuning tables. This isn’t what you’d find in a modern software plugin, but like the original, you get 4 user-programmable tuning tables that you can use to reproduce other tunings. (That said, yes, you could pick four maqam implementations and go there, after yesterday’s discussion!)
You also get multis, tons of options for how the synth responds to velocity and other inputs, options for stereo width (even when no effects are present), and much more.
And my goodness, Wolf, this shit sounds great.
No one would mistake this for a wavetable instrument from 2024, but the authenticity here looks fantastic and is fun to play, even if you’ve never used the real thing. (I… haven’t. But that makes it even more likeable to me.)
Honestly, for any fan of wavetable synthesizers, this purchase seems worthwhile just for the history lesson.
And my goodness, Wolf, this shit sounds great.
VST, VST3, AU, AAX, macOS, Windows. Introductory price 119 EUR (incl. VAT), then 149 EUR.
https://waldorfmusic.com/microwave/
