Wolfgang Palm – founder of PPG (Palm Products GmbH) and pioneer of digital and hybrid synthesis approaches – has announced that he is retiring.
PPG synthesizers helped shape the sounds of many artists, including Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre and Depeche Mode.
In recent years, Palm has released a series of high-regarded synthesizers for iOS – including Wavemapper, Wavegenerator and Phonem – and then MacOS & Windows counterparts.
Palm announced his plans on his personal site:
Dear Customer,
after 50 years of creative work in the field of sound synthesis I decided to stop doing business. I’ve been thinking about this step for some time now, especially since I’ve turned 70 this year. Therefore, I am very happy to have found a competent company in Brainworx Audio GmbH that will take over and continue my products and ideas.
I would like to thank you for the support I’ve received over the last six years. PPG VST plug-ins and iOS apps are no longer available for purchase. We will continue to provide downloads of your previous plugin purchases until end of 2020.
However, we do not recommend updating the hosts or the operating systems, as we cannot guarantee that our products will still run perfectly.
Customers of PPG plugins will receive a mail from SendOwl, which gives more infos on how to connect to Brainworx.
The future of the iOS apps has not been decided yet.
Thank you again for your support.
March 2020, Wolfgang Palm
Palm is featured in a new interview at the Plugin Alliance site.
This makes me happy and sad at the same time. Wavetable synthesis is my absolute favorite synthesis and so I am very grateful to Wolfgang Palm. Although this is certainly not the end of wavetable synthesis, as so many others continue to carry on developing and utilizing the technology, I can’t help but feel this is the end of an era; and that gives me a sort of melancholy-ish feeling. But I do hope Mr. Palm finds some new and fun things to do and enjoys some time unbound from his work. I’m happy that he got to see his technology used by so many and now gets to take some time for himself.
Thank you Mr. Palm for developing one of my favorite sounding synthesis methods!
Keep on enjoying music Wolfgang! You have done much for it in your life. Lets hope the IOS apps live on to inspire a new generation
I remember the days when gear like the PPG Wave and Fairlight and Synclavier were only obtainable by the uber wealthy.
Such a wonderful innovator. Congrats on the retirement. Many thanks for mind-expanding sounds and approaches to sound.
Wolfgang made the awesome Big Blue Synthesizers with oceanic waves. Thanks a lot for this wonderfull wavetable synthesis and all your products.
Was Palm the guy who freelanced the blofeld design for Waldorf and wrote the initial firmware? Or was that some other guy? I remember saving an article about this guy who had done a bunch of classic synths but I can’t find that article. Might have been a former PPG employee. I can never remember what the exact connection is between Waldorf and PPG.
Axel Hartmann? https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2017/06/19/axel-hartmann-on-the-art-of-synth-design/
Hartmann was an industrial designer, not a synth designer. External design of product, not internals.
Korg or Roland (or even Yammie!) should release a minikey PPG as a tribute to Wolfgang’s amazing work.
There kind of is a minikey PPG out there already, and it’s the Novation Mininova. The Micromonsta also has harsh wavetables.
Also check out the Hydrasynth; it’s brilliant!
I remember seeing Wolfgang Palm at a NAMM show in Chicago showing a prototype instrument. I think it was called the Realizer. It emulated many other synthesizers and had a nice screen showing which instrument was currently running. One of the emulations was a Minimoog. This was a VERY long time before software emulations of hardware synthesizers started showing up from other companies. I can’t remember the exact year but it was in the 1980’s. A genius.
Good for Wolfgang! Better to retire earlier and enjoy the time left. I retired early and I’m glad I did.
Enjoy yourself Mr. Palm, you absolutely deserve to!
Just in time….
Damn, Brainworx??? If there was onw thing Wolfgang’s plugins needed (because they were superb), was a bit of cleaning up with the interface. Brainworx with those hardware lookalikes are the worst company I could imagine for that…
Well deserved!
Actually I’ve changed my mind now over this. Wolfgang you can’t retire! Old synth designers never retire…..we don’t allow it! We want to see you back at Namm or Musicmesse with Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim, Roger Linn…..there I’ve decided it for you now…..so back to workafter a nice holiday. 🙂
Here’s to hoping Brainworx will use the brand to produce circuit-modelled vsts of the Wave, the PPG modular and the 1002 & 1020! Or heck, even venture into hardware with modern clones!
True. Sadly the cost of developing the Realizer also put PPG out of buisness. I used to own the PPG Wave 2.2 back in the 80’s. Amazing machine at the time. Still missing it.
That’s a myth. According to Palm himself, he liquidated the company after he could not get any more PPG synths to sell due to marketing issues and samplers/fm synths winning the competition.
Waahaaa :(, a bit sad, I learnt my stuff on those machines in the picture. Tschö Wolfgang, es war super!