App Profile: Microwave 1

Waldorf's famous Microwave 1 synthesiser faithfully emulated in an iPad app including an AUv3 extension.

35 years ago Waldorf Music released its first instrument, the Microwave, which took the hearts of the leading musicians and producers of the nineties by storm. Its vibrate and distinctive sound transported the early wavetable sounds of the eighties into the rising electronic dance music of the following decade. Massive base lines, enigmatic wavetable modulations, brutal attacks and pads smooth like silk have been inspired generations of musicians. Microwave’s unique interpretation of wavetable synthesis combined with analogue filters defined what hybrid synthesis is at its best.

Now’s the time to bring back this magical instrument in a software form into the hands of producers and musicians world-wide. The Waldorf Microwave 1 app was painstakingly recreated from the original hardware with all its idiosyncrasies and wonderful singularities.

A multi-year effort and a labor of love which analyzed and modeled the original instruments down to the finest sonic details of every aspect of the hardware. Only the first 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 flavor 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 app. As the original, the app runs the internal synthesis with the ultra high sampling rate of 250 kHz regardless of the iPad's sampling rate. The recreated digital waveforms have been bit-by-bit compared with the original to be 100% identical.

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.

For more details visit www.waldorfmusic.com.