Waldorf Music

Waldorf Music AG is a German synthesizer company. It was founded on the 1st of January 2003 to take over the actual business of the Waldorf Electronics GmbH which had become insolvent. Waldorf is best known for its Microwave wavetable synthesizer and Q virtual analogue synthesizer lines.

History

Waldorf Electronics GmbH was founded 1988 by Wolfgang Düren. Before this Wolfgang Düren was the German distributor of PPG. The name of this company does not refer to Waldorf School but to the German town Waldorf (near to the former capital of West Germany: Bonn) where the company was founded. The company was headquartered in Schloss Ahrenthal.In Summer 2006 a new company Waldorf Music GmbH (GmbH = limited) was formed officially. The Management board: Kurt "Lu" Wangard (former employee of Waldorf distributor in Germany, TSI), Stefan Stenzel (former Waldorf director of research and development). The new company is not a legal successor for the old Waldorf company. But maybe some support will be offered later.

Personnel

* Wolfgang Düren, Managing Director

alphabetic order:
* Ralf Bächle
* Andy Busse (software R&D in the early days of Waldorf)
* Jürgen Fornoff (software)
* Wolfram Franke, developer
* Florian Gypser, production & quality management
* Axel Hartmann, industrial design and corporate identity
* Jörg Hüttner, product support (Freelancer)
* Chris Mercer
* Niels Moseley (did an internship and some small projects at Waldorf Electronics GmbH)
* Martin Neideck, central buying & organisation
* Frank Schneider, production manager
* Holger "Tsching" Steinbrink, Product Manager
* Stefan Stenzel, R&D Director

* and some freelancers working in and outside the castle:
** Claudius Brüse (product manager and manual of the WAVE)
** Albert Huitsing (software)
** Thomas Kircher (circuit design)
** Michael Marans (WAVE Manual Production and Design)

* Wolfgang Palm, designer of original PPG technology and the resulting "Waldorf ASIC" used in the Microwave and Wave synthesizers. Not an employee of Waldorf Music!
*Joachim Flor, sales

Products

1989

- Microwave. Rack wavetable synth. Built in two different hardware revisions: the first ones had a backlit LCD. The later ones a lit character display. They use a different Curtis CEM analog lowpass filter chips. Later called Microwave I due to the 1997 introduced Microwave II

- EQ-27. Compact (table top) programmable and Midi controllable stereo 7 band equalizer. [http://till-kopper.de/eq27.html]

1990

- Midibay MB-15. Rack Midi patchbay and merger [http://till-kopper.de/midibay.html]

1991

- Microwave Waveslave. 1 HE voice extension for the original Microwave (adding another 8 voices) [http://till-kopper.de/waveslave.html]

1993

- WAVE. A wavetable synthesizer. This was a deluxe extrapolation of Microwave technology, with additional features for wavetable creation and resynthesis. Available in 4 colours. 61 or 76 keys. 16, 32, or 48 voices. [http://unofficial.waldorf-wave.de]

- 4-pole. Table top analog filter box. [http://till-kopper.de/4pole.html]

1994

- Microwave I V2.0 ROM upgrade, which added additional wavetables, a facility to algorithmically create custom wavetables, a speech synthesizer, and numerous other improvements. The Waveslave was not compatible with this upgrade, but a trade-in program was offered where the user could upgrade to a full Microwave for a small fee.

- A limited edition Mean Green Machine was released at the same time as this upgrade, being a Microwave with a new "Nextel" rubberized finish in a green color, a certificate of authenticity, special cone-shaped metal feet, and comical silkscreening (the power switch was labeled Life, and the card slot was labeled Food.) Normal Microwave units from now on featured the Nextel finish in the usual blue color.

1995

- Gekko Chords & Gekko Trigger Very compact passive powered Midi tools

- Hohner Adam [http://www.till-kopper.de/hohner_adam.html]

- Pulse Monophonic analog rack synth

1997

- Gekko Arpeggiator. Very compact passive powered Midi tool [http://waldorf.synth.net/gekko.html]

- Microwave II. Motorola DSP driven wavetable rack synth, containing many features of the original Microwave with improved mixing, modulation, effects processing, and multimode filter.

- Pulse+. Monophonic analog rack synth with additional audio in and Midi / CV interface

1998

- x-pole. Programmable stereo (in/out) analog filter in a 2HE rack module. With full MIDI, CV/Gate and ACM support.

- Microwave XT. Microwave II with 44 knobs and audio input, in 5HE package with bright orange color.

- Microwave XT Limited Edition. Microwave XT in charcoal gray/black color scheme, in a limited edition run of 666 units.

- d-pole. VST filter plug-in [http://waldorfmusic.de/en/products/d-pole]

- Terratec Microwave PC. Synth module for the TerraTec EWS sound cards, featuring a fully functional Microwave II in a drivebay package.

- Wavetable Oscillator for Creamware Modular

1999

- Q. DSP driven virtual analog synth. 58 knobs! Colours: bright yellow "sahara" and WAVE blue. [http://waldorfmusic.de/en/products/q_keyboard]

- XTk. The Microwave XT with a 49 key keyboard

- Q rack. Rack version of the Q synth. Less knobs. Only yellow.

2000

- PPG 2.V VST plug-in synthesizer to emulate the blue PPG. wave 2.x wavetable synthesizers [http://waldorfmusic.de/en/products/ppg_wave]

- microQ. Even more compact and afforable Q rack with only 7 knobs and different DSP. Differences: 25 potential voices compared to the original models, due to shared operation and effects chip. A 75 voice expansion is available. The upgrade must be done by Waldorf or licensed repair center. Typical usage depended upon complexity of patches, unlike the Q or Q Rack which feature 16 note polyphony, upgradable to 32 voices. The microQ did not include the step sequencer. [http://waldorfmusic.de/en/products/micro_q_rack]

2001

- Attack. VST drum-synth plug-in [http://waldorfmusic.de/en/products/attack]

- Color of the Q, Q rack & mQ changed to the classic (Microwave) blue

- microQ keyboard. 3 octave keyboard version of the mQ. Classic blue coloured

2002

- D-coder. A TC Powercore synth and vocoder Plug-In

- RackAttack. The VST in a microQ housing

- Q+ A ruby red Q featuring up to 100 dynamically allocated voices and 16 analog lowpass filters [http://waldorfmusic.de/en/products/q_plus]

- A1 VSTi software synth for Steinberg Cubase SX and Nuendo

- Waldorf Filter for Halion

2003

- AFB-16. 16 analog filters to be used via USB for VST instrument and effects. [http://waldorf.synth.net/afb.html]

2004

- on the 5th of February Waldorf Music had to declare insolvency at a German court.

2006

- as of April 2006, Waldorf seems to be back in business. According to their website, "The new Waldorf Music GmbH is currently being founded". [http://www.waldorf-music.de/] From August 2006, the website has experienced intermittent availability resulting in multiple pronouncements of its demise. The news items on the website have been updated regularly as late as November 2006 when the resurrection of the Waldof user mailing list/forum was announced.

2007

- Blofeld (released December 2007) - At the start of 2007, Waldorf announces their new line of synths and electric pianos. These include special editions of their famed Q and Micro Q line relabled as the Phoenix Edition and the introduction of brand new synths the Blofeld and the Stromberg. This is also the first time that Waldorf have ventured away from synths and produced and Electric Piano with the new Zarenbourg.

only distributed

- Emes Studio Monitors

done for Steinberg

- SMP 24 (for Atari ST)- SMP II (for Atari ST)- Midex+ (for Atari ST)- Topaz (Harddisk recording, Mr. Wolfgang Palm was involved too)

others

- Clack-Board a controller for a TV-game. Done in the early nineties. Not actually published? Maybe someone could give us more information on this soon.

See also

[http://www.waldorfmusic.de/] The new founded Waldorf Music GmbH Homepage

[http://www.waldorf-forum.com/] The new founded Waldorf Music's mailing list

[http://faq.waldorfian.info] Waldorf User FAQs (faq.waldorfian.info)

[http://waldorfmusic.de/en/archive] Contains manuals as PDF files as well as all public OS versions of their products.