Waldorf Music
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Waldorf Music AG is a now insolvent german synthesizer company. It was founded on the 1st of January 2003 to take over the actual business of the Waldorf Electronics GmbH (also insolvent). The CEO used to be Wolfgang Düren.
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[edit] 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 TSI employee (TSI = Waldorf distributer in Germany)), Stefan Stenzel (former Waldorf employees). The new company is not responsible for the old Waldorf company. But maybe some support will be offered later.
[edit] 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 (Freelancer)
- 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!
[edit] Products
[edit] 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 controlable stereo 7 band equalizer. [1]
[edit] 1990
- Midibay MB-15. rack Midi patchbay and merger [2]
[edit] 1991
- Microwave Waveslave. 1 HE voice extension for the original Microwave (adding another 8 voices) [3]
[edit] 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. [4]
- 4-pole. Table top analog filter box. [5]
[edit] 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 rubber 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.
[edit] 1995
- Gekko Chords & Gekko Trigger Very compact passive powered Midi tools
- Pulse Monophonic analog rack synth
[edit] 1997
- Gekko Arpeggiator. Very compact passive powered Midi tool [7]
- 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
[edit] 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 [8]
- 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
[edit] 1999
- Q. DSP driven virtual analog synth. 58 knobs! Colours: bright yellow "sahara" and WAVE blue. [9]
- XTk. The Microwave XT with a 49 key keyboard
- Q rack. Rack version of the Q synth. Less knobs. Only yellow.
[edit] 2000
- PPG 2.V VST plug-in synthesizer to emulate the blue PPG. wave 2.x wavetable synthesizers [10]
- microQ. Even more compact and afforable Q rack with only 7 knobs and different DSP. [11]
[edit] 2001
- Attack. VST drum-synth plug-in [12]
- 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
[edit] 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 [13]
- A1 VSTi software synth
- Waldorf Filter for Halion
[edit] 2003
- AFB-16. 16 analog filters to be used via USB for VST instrument and effects. [14]
[edit] 2004
- on the 5th of February Waldorf Music had to declare insolvency at a German court.
[edit] 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". [15] 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.
[edit] only distributed
- Emes Monitors
[edit] done for Steinberg
- SMP 24 - SMP II - Midex und Midex+ - Midex - Topaz (Harddisk recording, Mr. Wolfgang Palm was involved too)
[edit] 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.
[edit] See also
[16] The new founded Waldorf Music GmbH Homepage
[17] The new founded Waldorf Music's mailing list
[18] Waldorf User FAQs (faq.waldorfian.info)
[19] Contains manuals as PDF files as well as all public OS versions of their products.
