Waldorf Pulse 2

I'm surprised how nice this thing sounds.





Hopefully Nick gets a new shirt for Christmas.

Yeah I was curious about this. There doesn't seem to be much interest in it. im gonna peep the video though.

I just bought the blofeld and for being a va it songs pretty Damn sweet

psr wrote:Yeah I was curious about this. There doesn't seem to be much interest in it.

I think it got lost in the Mini/microbrute and BassStation2 hype, probably not as immediate and exciting without the keyboard and knob/slider per function.

Seems to be getting good reviews though, some thinking it is the pick of 2013 analogue synths.

Yep! Check out this review here of Pulse 2... also interesting interview with the builders...

This thing is small! Looking forward to digging in...

Looks better than the first impressions I had gotten.

E.g. the screen actually doesn't look too bad, some early pics of didn't look backlit, and even looked like a crappy LCD-digital-clock type screen, not a graphical LCD. (e.g.:


The paraphonic mode is a huge plus in my book.
the matrix, multi-function knobs, is not, but I've never used it, so I suppose I can't really immediately criticize it.

And coz, looks great next to the OP-1. Those two would make a sweet pair alone, if only the OP-1 could do MIDI with the pulse (without having a computer in-between)

sciguy wrote:The paraphonic mode is a huge plus in my book.
the matrix, multi-function knobs, is not, but I've never used it, so I suppose I can't really immediately criticize it.

The matrix editing will either win me over or leave me cold. The software editor should ease the pain if I don't get on with it though. I just bought it purely for how great it sounds.

sciguy wrote:if only the OP-1 could do MIDI with the pulse (without having a computer in-between)

I think it can. I just need to get the right cable.

Coz wrote:
I think it can. I just need to get the right cable.

that would be fantastic. I had spent 2seconds looking it up, and it didn't seem like the OP-1 could do MIDI that way, but I could be wrong.

It's got a controller mode so I'm assuming it can. I just need to get a micro USB to type B cable or an adaptor. Fingers crossed that it works.

Coz wrote:It's got a controller mode so I'm assuming it can. I just need to get a micro USB to type B cable or an adaptor. Fingers crossed that it works.

hmm I'm skeptical about that. Would require one of the two devices to do a USB host connection (you need designated host and slave devices with USB), which I would doubt they do (first hint at that would be the plugs—B mini and B, which as a standard, are for slave connections).
I would guess the controller mode is made for connecting to a DAW.

I think you're right.

Kenton makes a USB MIDI host that's known to work, but it's a bit too pricey. Thankfully I didn't have high hopes of pairing them together (just took the photo for the family album ), although it'd be nice to eventually get them hooked up.

A portable keyboard with standard MIDI connections would be ideal for when I'm at the girlfriend's house. I could just noodle around and record everything with my little digital recorder. Gotta love modern gear for power and portability.

Man, I adore Waldorf but I've never actually owned anything of theirs. The Blofeld ALWAYS catches my eye, I think the thing is absolutely sexy looking, matrix-editing and all!

The Pulse 2 sounds much better than it looks, in my opinion. I'm not a huge fan of the color scheme chosen and the screen seems a bit backwards to me. The selected patch is HUGE while your tweaked parameters are rather small. Not a huge deal but that was always one of the more attractive things about the Blofeld, the screen just makes sense.

All my tiny lil' nags aside, this thing sounds f*cking awesome! I'd pat Waldorf on it's back if I could, or I could just buy their synths.

Peace out 2014 savings!

I wonder how it sounds compared to Pulse 1?

medearis wrote:The selected patch is HUGE while your tweaked parameters are rather small. Not a huge deal but that was always one of the more attractive things about the Blofeld, the screen just makes sense.

I'm sure eventually they'll tweak the OS so that all the settings are shown for each row of the matrix. It's not too bad as it is to program, but it's not intuitive having to tweak a parameter just to show its value. A more pressing concern at the minute is the screen itself. I seem to have ended up with one from the first batch, and it's working its way loose. It's not about to drop off, but with a bit of light pressure it's easy to push it into the casing slightly. I'd rather not get lumbered with a defective unit, so it's getting swapped as soon as I can arrange it.

Sonically it's all over the place - warm, fat, cold, clinical, bizarre, metallic, distorted. It's hard to pin down. I've already created a bunch of patches that I like a lot, and I've been hammering the patch randomiser. If anything, I wish it was a bit more random because it keeps coming up with similar sounding patches!

So yeah, it's a very nice sounding synth on the whole. It's a shame I've got to piss around getting it changed, but that's the way it goes sometimes.