A Legend Returns

35 years ago we released our 1st instrument, the Microwave... Its vibrate and distinctive sound transported the early wavetable sounds of the 80s into the rising electronic dance music of the following decade. Massive bass lines, enigmatic wavetable modulations, brutal attacks and pads smooth as silk have inspired generations of musicians. The Microwave defined hybrid synthesis at its best with its unique interpretation of wavetable synthesis combined with analogue filters. Now we bring this magical instrument back to your digital workstation: Microwave 1 Plug-in.

Massive bass lines, enigmatic wavetable modulations, brutal attacks and pads smooth as silk have inspired generations of musicians. The Microwave defined hybrid synthesis at its best with its unique interpretation of wavetable synthesis combined with analogue filters. The Waldorf Microwave 1 Plug-in was painstakingly recreated from the original hardware with all its distinctive features and singularities. This multi-year project was a labour of love. Waldorf analysed and modelled the original instruments down to the finest sonic details of every aspect of the hardware. Its unique sound was based on proprietary digital and analogue designs long before the following generations of DSP-based instruments were conceived.

Only the 1st generation of the Microwave and also the Waldorf Wave were based on a custom developed integrated circuit called the Waldorf ASIC. In combination with the legendary Curtis filter chips and a very unique 68k CPU based controller software the ASIC defined a very special flavour of wavetable sound unparalleled to none. No one else than the inventor of Wavetable Synthesis of the eighties, Wolfgang Palm, helped to design this unique chip. Waldorf took a huge effort to analyze and recreate this integrated circuit within the plug-in.

Digital Section (ASIC)

• Internally running with 250 kHz sampling rate to match original ASIC sampling rate
• Modeling of digital-to-analog converters for each voice (DAC)
• Two oscillators based on same wavetable per multi instrument
• Unique digital noise generator based on ASIC technology
• Digital mixer of oscillators and noise based on original ASIC including overflow bug
• Faithful recreation of non-interpolated pitch generation

Wavetables

• All original wavetables of Microwave 1 based on the original coding and bit-identical to original
• Including algorithmic and speech wavetables
• Faithful recreation of 8-bit quantization and aliasing
• Easy to use wavetable editor based on internal control tables
• Full waveform catalogue of original instrument can be accessed
• User waveform editor

Filter

• Faithful modeling of revision A and B analogue filters
• Voice individual calibration of cutoff and resonance to model detuned hardware
• Cutoff and resonance modulations
• Frequency response graphic animated by live modulations

Amplifier

• Modeling of voltage controlled analogue amplifiers and panning section
• Faithful recreation of control voltage DACs including stepping effects

Modulators

• Recreation of unique envelope and LFO timings based of original 68k code
• Modeling of beautiful micro variations in timings due to limitations of the original hardware
• Filter envelope with ADSR and additional delay parameter
• Volume envelope with ADSR
• All filter and volume envelope timings and levels can be modulated
• Unique 8 stage wave envelope with variable key-off point and looping
• Wave envelope levels and timings can be modulated
• Attack-Decay envelope for LFO1 with additional delay
• 2 LFOs with various waveforms, symmetry and humanize parameters
• LFOs can be phase shifted to each other
• LFO1 with global option, rate & level modulation

Non-Standard Tunings

• 4 user tunings can be individually edited
• Will be stored into user presets

Multi-Mode

• Up to 8 instruments which can be layered and split or any combination of both
• Split by key zone and velocity range
• Multi instrument mixer with volume, panning, detuning, transpose and many more parameters
• Individual tuning per instrument possible
• Huge catalogue of all original multi sounds

Polyphony

• 8 voice polyphony like the original hardware
• Dynamic assignment of the voices to the multi instruments

Presets

• All factory single and multi presets included
• 5 additional original sound sets
• 2 new sound sets from contemporary sound designers
• Can import original .mid and .syx files with preset dumps including user tables and wavetables
• User presets store all additional data like user wavetables and tuning & velocity tables

Hardware Control

• Plug-in can be used to control original hard in single mode via MIDI interface
• Control optionally in live mode where each control is transferred automatically

Extras

• Configurable spectrum analyzer
• Resizable graphical user interface