13. Waldorf Quantum
May the new Waldorf Synthesizer already be called the best granular workstation of 2018? I think yes! The Waldorf Quantum is a 8 voice polyphonic digital Synthesizer that features different high-end synthesis technologies: Waldorf-style wavetables, classic Synthesizer waveforms, granular sampler and resonator. The most exciting thing about the Quantum is certainly the complete engine. Here you can combine all synthesis forms or even use only three granular sample oscillators at the same time. Here you are free how you use the engine.
The granular engine is called here particles and can be a sampler in a traditional way, granular mode with multi-samples or as a live granular sampler.
It features a 4 GB of internal flash memory for recording own samples and for saving them. With the help of a SD card, users can also import own samples in a very easy way. This massive engine is supported by two analog lowpass filters per voice, a digital former filter, 6 LFO’s, 6 loopable envelopes and much more.
Even if the Quantum is a huge Synthesizer, the Waldorf team has managed to solve the operation very easily. The most important parameters are operable with the knobs, but if you want to go deeper you have a large touch screen available on the interface.
The Waldorf Quantum Synthesizer and the Perucssa SSP shows well what is possible today with digital technology in hardware. Especially interesting is probably the Quantum for sound designers and soundtrack composers which can exploit the complete variety of possibilities of this flagship Synthesizer.
For a price of 3999 €, the Waldorf Quantum is the most expensive and powerful full-sized keys granular Synthesizer on the market so far.
More information here: Waldorf
Technically, Symbolic sound Kyma should be in it
Yes! A pacarana or paca are still the most powerful granular synthesizers on this planet. And the symbolic sound implementation of granular synthesis sounds very good because of the technical background they have and how the algorithms are implemented on a real DSP plattform.
What about Critter and Guitari Organelle?
Maybe a good time to update this overview
Lemondrop (1010music) is a small but powerful hardware grainsynth
yes, sorry the list is from 2018 🙂