Waldorf Music has introduced the Protein, an inexpensive, compact 8-voice polyphonic wavetable synthesizer, based on the original Microwave 1 ASIC oscillators and combined with modern features of Iridium heritage, including the arpeggiator, a step sequencer, chord mode, effects and more.
“The Protein goes back to the very beginnings of Waldorf’s instrument making,” they say, “interpreting the original ideas in a contemporary and innovating way.”
Features:
- Protein’s 8 voices can be organized in up to 4 layers, allowing for complex sonic layered arrangements, round-robin modes, or split by MIDI channels for poly timbral operation.
- With the Load Layer feature new sonic arrangements can be created in seconds by simply recombining existing layers from the extensive preset collection.
- It comes with 150 factory presets of huge variety and can store up to 250 user presets. Using the 4-layer concept, users can mix and match from the existing library and create new combinations with the Load Layer feature.
- Each layer features an eight-slot modulation matrix, offering a multitude of modulation possibilities for shaping sound.
- The Protein also supports polyphonic aftertouch modulation.
- A “Flavour knob” adds an extra layer of organic behavior, from tiny micro-fluctuations up to “sweet disturbances” to keep digital sound lively.
- Waldorf Music recreated the original gritty 8-bit quantized and aliased sound of the Microwave 1 ASIC oscillators, running at 250 kHz sample rate, just like the original.
Waldorf Protein Deep Dive Video:
Pricing and Availability:
The Waldorf Protein is available now, with an intro price of €.329,00 (normally 379,00).
But $500 if you’re in the USA thanks to Orange Tariff madness. It’s not even worth contemplating the thought of buying ANYTHING non-US made at this point if you live in USA. Totally ridiculous and pathetic
It’s a “Maybe” at this point
OK, someone call it a VST in a box and get it over with. At that price, it will probably get a lot of love. Having Poly AT gives it some added appeal. Nick Batt will be wearing two of them in holsters.
Yup. I think it’s a good idea by them to release this at this point. You see every brand, even Moog en Sequential offering affordable products. For many, disposable income isn’t as high as it was a couple of years ago.
Analog synths are just signal generators in a box, if you think about it.
It’s all a big game to sell us boxes with blinky lights and knobs for hundreds or thousands of eurobucks.
they are winning
They’ve been winning at my house since way back when I got my first Minimoog used for $700. I was born a synth wrangler and I’ll die a synth wrangler. Just look at my bathroom papered with Sweetwater reciepts.
I would gladly pay 1 € extra ..just to get a proper head-output and 2 x real midi sockets..
Cool but only for those who want that specific retro, low bit, wavetable, aliasing -sound.
If you are new to wavetables or want them to be high end, without aliasing, this is definately not for you.
Nothing new here in terms of synth, especially for that price — Waldorf is trying to grab a piece of the ‘affordable’ bracket of the market.. understandable. Not sure how long they’ll support this product though, judging on how they dealt with Kyra makes this one a solid pass.
They have been updating Iridium & Quantums each year with new features now for almost 8 years. I cannot see any other synth company doing this better. Similar for M. The Kyra was externally developed and needs to be updated by the original developer which isn’t doing it. You can of course blame Waldorf for it, but you shouldn’t give their own products the same judgement. All plugins also are getting regular maintenance and feature updates.
This looks super interesting and sounds good from the demos, but I can’t wrap my head around how they didn’t manage to include a set of ADSR env knobs – and “they” is Axel Hartmann, the world’s most prolific synth designer. I don’t want to call it a dealbreaker, but it’s tough to imagine having to menu dive every time you want to tweak the attack or release.
The Iridium Core also doesn’t include dedicated ADSR knobs. You don’t need them if you have a decent UI, and the Protein has three different ADSR envelope knobs (Wave, Filter and Amp) in the Envelopes section on the front panel. Selecting the envelope parameter is done with the Select knob beside the display, and a graphic representation of the envelope is shown. It’s really quite easy and avoids the need for 12 dedicated knobs.
and the Microwave 2 had a row of knobs that switched function as a group so these actions were easier. There is plenty of room here to do something similar and I would have preferred it is they had done it.
It might work quite well. What you typically want to do is get the interplay right between the filter attack and amp attack. It looks like that’s what happens: select attack with the edit knob and then the three envelope knobs alter the attack for those envelopes. Similarly for release etc..
Who is this product supposed to appeal to? Long-time synthesizer users already own more than enough to fill a room, and newcomers to the music world are just using the software built into Ableton Live.
Me.
Me