Waldorf Protein synthesiser

General

Several families of synths have appeared in history. Classic (analogue) synths were all about filtered sawtooths, square waves, triangles, noise and the like. FM was about a lot of different sounds, especially bells were a good match. Later, sample-players became more affordable, and so we got synths in which acoustic sounds were actually already ready-made and you could at most adjust some generalities. There is another form of synthesis that is perhaps sometimes forgotten: wavetable synthesis. And by this we don't mean the 'wavetable' sound cards of the 1990s, where Creative Labs, among others, simply used the term 'wavetable' and caused years of confusion. In the 80s we had the legendary PPG Wave, in the 90s Waldorf took over with the legendary (and expensive) Waldorf Wave, among others. Today, Waldorf is once again betting on this concept with the Protein, at a price that is very manageable!

Features of the Waldorf Protein

As already written in the previous paragraph, the term 'wavetable' has been somewhat diluted in commerce, where people claimed that wavetables were related to regular ROMplers. In reality, wavetable synthesis is about a collection of small waveforms that can move towards each other in all sorts of ways. That way, you can change the overtones of a sound (the timbre, that is) in a much more fundamental way than you could with a simple subtractive synth. So all this can also get very rough, but we have a filter (CEM modelling) for that to contain the fray. If you don't do that (only partially) then you have to deal with aliasing. With acoustic sounds you never want that, but with the type of sounds you make with the Protein this aliasing can provide an interesting extra timbre. Especially in combination with effects, it results in a nice timbre. Enough envelopes and LFOs are available to adjust the sound in a lively way. If you are looking for traditional pianos, flutes and violins: this is not it. But if you want to go back to '80s traditional sound-design, this is - especially for this price - a very attractive product!