Microwave’s wavetable synthesis with unique, snappy envelopes and idiosyncratic filter and converters now comes to the iPad. That could make an ideal way to play the Microwave on the go – especially with AUv3 support.
Listen, here’s a really short review of Microwave 1: it’s fantastic. There are plenty of wavetable synths with more features, to be sure – even from Waldorf and Wolfgang Palm alone. But the Microwave 1 is just full of character. There’s the combination of ultra-high sample rate digital wavetables (250 kHz) and Curtis filters, of course – and that’s all modeled here. But don’t forget the particularities of the digital-to-analog conversion and Curtis voltage-controlled amplifiers. Waldorf says they modeled those, too. Whatever they did, it’s sheer magic – I put this into action on percussion sound design as well as basslines and leads.
Funny enough, the desktop UI makes almost more sense on iPadOS as on desktop. It feels like the hardware interface the original Waldorf never had.
The nice thing about Apple building what was just recently desktop-class performance into a tablet is that you get the same experience on iPadOS as you do on macOS and Windows. And that opens up several ways to use this:
- Use this as a standalone synth.
- Use it as a sound module – plug in a controller and go.
- Build presets on the go and bring them back to the plug-ins – there’s full cross-platform patch compatibility. (Or go the other way around, but I like having extra presets when I get to making music.)
It basically is the desktop version, with a touch-ready UI:
- On-screen playing surface (chromatic or constrained to scale)
- Core MIDI for USB and MIDI devices (and you can use our own cubit duo as an interface, by the way)
- AUv3 support, so you can use this as a plug-in in tools like Logic, Cubasis, AUM, apeMatrix, and so on
- Preset sharing via Files
Intro price is US$14.99; it’ll be $29.99 after November 3.