General
The regular Sledge 2.0 has been around for some time now in light orange and loaded with controls, with a highly versatile sound engine. Still, some users have found the acidic orange colour not particularly to their liking. Lo and behold, the Studiologic Sledge 2.0 Black Edition Synthesizer was born. Not only is the housing finished in, but so are the keys. The only orange accents on this synth are found on two rotary knobs and the legend for the connections on the far left.
Properties of the Studiologic Sledge 2.0 Black Edition Synthesizer
This virtual analogue synthesizer offers a rich array of features, including three oscillators, PWM, sync, FM, LFOs, envelopes, a multi-filter and an effects section. Besides the Waldorf engine, it also enables you to play samples. That's really what makes this such a timeless instrument, the Sledge can sound different every time you play it, which can be a huge benefit as opposed to other synths. Add the 24-voice polyphony, and you've got a beast of a synth that can hold its own.
The Sledge 2.0 and Samples
The sample engine applies to oscillator 1 and you have 60 MB of flash memory for sample material at your disposal. There aren't too many hardware synthesizers that allow you to load samples, and definitely not at this price, which makes the Sledge 2.0 hard to beat. Use Spectre, the Sledge's free software, to manage your samples on your Mac or PC, which is a lot easier when dealing with large operations than via a compact display.
Advantages of Samples
This black beast is interesting for live applications in particular. Do you play in a (small) combo or orchestra? With the Sledge 2.0, you can load in an entire choir, a grand piano, a series of sound effects, or anything else you could possibly think of. Essentially, you can provide the sound of any instrument you want with this device that weighs just under 9 kilos, with all its controls and a keyboard with aftertouch. With regular synthesizers, these kinds of sounds need to be kept small (a few MB at the most), to save room for all the other sounds in the library. With the Sledge 2.0, Studiologic has opted to allocate more memory to each individual sound for an audible difference in quality.