What a nice sound, perfectly airy, round, delicate and sturdy, all at once. It's like listening to very polished steel blades. Waldorf knows what they do.
True story: I ordered my Pulse 2 online while in an intensive care unit due to high blood pressure. They told I was the first patient to be able to use a laptop while there.
I’m glad you pointed out how hilariously weird it is that the screen constantly shows you in huge characters which program you’re on but very little of that large display shows you any useful feedback.
Ah, hell yeah, another one of my bad gear won the badgear badge - that's the 7th 🤣 It really gives me a sense of pride and accomplishment. Never stop, AudioPilz, you are the best.🤟
@@AudioPilz I'm still waiting to see my much loved Volca Bass show up here lol. Collecting Bad Gear Volca vids is almost as much fun as collecting Volca Synths themselves.
@@AudioPilz I have it at work. It. Sounds. Amazing. I almost cried when I first turned it on and flipped on a sequence and tweaked knobs. However it deserves to be on bad gear simply to acknowledge the shift function hell that you are partially submerged in, in order to get to deeper settings. Usually I don't mind but Roland made it unintuitive to find out naturally or without a manual. Their manual could be better as well. But.. every bit of frustration is worth it. Fantastic sequencer perfect for people who don't know chords but want to design a good progression. You'll see what I mean.
Great as always, thanks! I really do look forward to your weekly Nick Batt memes… love watching him and Sonicstate for so many years now. They always crack me up in a good hearted way.
The Saw one and the lil Batt one - hahahahaha, I love how that turned into a thing, and gave us so many memes. Nick seems to have embraced it, as well, which is cool
Today I was watching another episode, the one about the Blofeld, and I was wondering “How come there’s none on Pulse2?” Like they say: be careful what you wish for 😂
I sold my Pulse 2 for gas money, but I never understood why this synth got widely ignored. It could make some brilliant sounds. Not as complex or versatile as the Blofeld, but it sounded big and made great 'classic' electronic sounds.
Ok but cost aside, I loved every sound you made with this synth. Really makes me wonder why we don't have Waldorf burned into our collective memories alongside Roland, Korg, Moog and Yamaha. They make some absolutely killer gear but always come as an afterthought like "oh yeah, I remember those guys... I think they made some pretty goood synths. I just can't remember which ones"
@@AudioPilz I think they get so frustratingly close to perfection and then just fumble the bag at the last minute leaving you screaming “WHYYYY?” … like not putting a delay or filter section on the Streichfett.
We do, the Micro Q, Q, Microwave, Rack Attack and Pulse are legendary devices, but where also over engineered heavy indestructible enclosures and very expensive, but the current Waldorf company is not the same company, it went bust and some investors came along.
Its because they have issues, Blofeld was the worst purchase I have ever made. A real fuckin lemon. But at least it forced me to look for something else, a Virus TI Snow. Shits all over it
Finally, one of my favourite pieces of gear gets featured on your show. I was starting to feel a little left out.. Love this little clanky metal box, and it's my favourite thing to track in a increasingly DAW dominated world. Gives me a sense of being the last man standing, on the bridge of USS Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with wobbly metal nobs 😬
I wonder if the Deepmind 6/12 would be a fit for this channel. Roland snobs in particular seem to despise it because it lifted the filter circuitry from the juno 106 etc. Tho to me it still takes very much it's own path. It has a control sequencer which you can route to pretty much anything in fact you can internally route everything to each other as long as you don't go over the 6 modulation slot limit you, you can also modulate anything in the FX section, it has 2 LFOs built in aftertouch, a generous display (which can show you the slider placement settings for the patch you loaded in so you can adjust the knobs to to where they should be for the patch. It also does not just have midi in and out.. but also thru. Generally it just seems (and feels) like a great package, even if it's behringer. It's one of their only unique pieces of gear and i just wish they'd do something like that again
I had to look through all his vids because I keep suggesting gear he already has made a video about. This is a good suggestion. I also own a ghetto-juno module and I really like it. Way more powerful than it gets credit for. The uno pro is quite powerful too, but herr Florian already did that piece.
@@jjrusy7438 i once suggested the Roland Gaia SH-01. A few weeks later, guess what synth he made a video on. XD a great learning synth, bit difficult to integrate in your work but absolutely wonderful for ambient drones and the likes.
Saw you on superbooth but I was to shy to talk to you and you were also quite busy. Was a nice day and to see you there was soooper. Thought I am gonna see Bobeats, lol but it was you.. thanks from a fan for your relentless work 🎉
You can almost hear the Roland reps angry response when they log into RU-vid today to see you covering something other than their product. "We just made a new Aira device for you and this is how you pay us back!!!!".
6:35 You know, General Motors used to tune their car horns to two notes, and every division used a unique pair of notes so you could tell a GM marque from the sound of its horn alone.
It always feels like martial arts training set by Mr Miyagi to me, when I am fixing my encoders by turning them clockwise and anticlockwise a bunch of times to clear them up.. So far I've not taken the plunge on a Pulse 2 and stuck with my Pulse 1s. Great vid as ever 👍
I have both. The 1 sounds warmer, the 2 more modern, cuts through the mix...but my god, both of them have bottom end like no tomorrow. Hands down goto's for bass or leads. Great to see someone else with the dark editions of the Blofeld & Pulse 2.
Thanks for another masterpiece! Bought roland se-02 and Waldorf pulse 2 to compare for mono duties ... eeeh.... Both stayed😅 Please, please do production/composition masterclass ! Or maybe second playlist/ yt channel! Your three-duty-tunes per synth is my personal benchmark for synth demo! Thanks 🙏
I remember suggesting that a few months ago (maybe years?). One day I plan to open up my Pulse 2 and reverse engineer that mysterious drive module option.
Waldorf Pulse 2 is the waldorf minimoog and it's octaphonic, it can make incredible 8-note chords, the sound of jupiter 8 and CS80 for example and the arpeggiator is identical to the one the blofeld has. It's the only analog that Waldorf has in their catalog, and it's really great with its filter and PWM. Great little machine with spectacular sound. I use mine with waldorf blofeld keyboard, and have both machines play from the keyboard, while blofeld sounds routed to the input of his filter.
I have just got my hands on an immaculate second hand Pulse 2. My god it sounds good! It’s rich and creamy, thin and gnarly, deeper than Atlantis, wide and spacious, thick and dark, precise and clinical, open and hands on - all at the same time. Such an excellent all-round (mono)synth - wildly flexible with multiple modes of engagement and operation. Set up an external MIDI controller encoder knob array with CCs and it’s so playable. I can’t believe how lucky I am to own one of these things. I have it in a little rack next to its Blofeld cousin. BTW thanks for this excellent review!
Luckily Waldorf has encoders available on their website. BTW: I didn't hear anything about encoders for MC-101 sold separately on Rolan's website ;) Great video - as usually!
@@AudioPilz But AFAIK they don't have so many issues with encoders ;) I love my Blofeld and I was thinking to buy also Pulse 2... but finally I went different path.
Okay, I had to watch this twice to make sure I wasn't mistaken that you didn't really make any negative critisism of the Pulse 2. The intense Waldorf goodness that oozes out of the Pulse 2 is immense. Everything you have marked as cons are the niggles at most (if you own an og Pulse 😉) I paid a ridiculous amount a decade ago and when it arrived decided it was worth every penny. Oh and I loved the Atari meme. Pulse 2 does an amazing Nanoloop emulation. A Pulse 1 and 2, Blofeld, Streichfett, your favourite set of drummachines (which reminds me you need to get your hands on a Rack Attack for a show, you will suddenly love the stabilty of your Blofeld encoder), tie them all together using a couple of Arturia sequencers and you are in for some legendary lost hours! ✌
Never thought about this synth at all, but I'm surprised how lovely it sounds. Monosynths can be all a bit samey after a while so this has some neat tweaks on it. UI does seem to be a bit unintuitive or weird, but hey. I'm going to keep an eye out for one now. I recently bought a JD-08 after you showing it off on here, and frankly it's become my go-to synth for just composing and playing around.
Managed to snag one almost brand new in the US for just $350 days after they were announced discontinued. Lucky, I didn't know about that until now. I love the sound and learned subtractive synthesis on matrix style synths so no gripes! Haven't seen the Hartmann 20 before but the Quantum looks sick
I'm putting this here just because its the most recent review. Please check out the 0-coast. Your volca modular review made me think youd get some enjoyment from this little machine and I want to live vicariously through your experience with something I don't own
This was my best gear and it was better than my Moogs. I strongly suggest it's editor for patch editing. When I sold my all hardware, this was the last one to sell. And I had plenty of gears.
Thank you for this one. It makes my second bad gear owned piece after the dx7. The midi out does thru - so with a usb it can serve as a midi interface. A true swiss army knife.
Pulse 2 is still in the studio, it has character and growls. elektron a4, and dave smith mopho have been sold off. I wanted one mono analog synth and this ticked the boxes just right not simple like most but starting from an init I seem to always make some sound that i want to record. this filtered thru a sherman filterbank and eventide h9 and you have a toolbox for years.
Got one of the original pulse racks, it sort of reminds me of Waldorf having a crack at making a weird hybrid somewhere between a Moog and a Roland 303, its fat, somewhat warm and classically Waldorf scary. Not so sure about the soon to be discontinued modern one though - it sounds a little thin on accounts of harmonic saturation and roll off - its overly bright sound is probably in need of a little eq to dial it in to a versatile sweet spot. However it likely sits comfortably in doing Lead sounds with just a little more flexibility than the original.
Another great episode from our beloved synth guru ! Hope you enjoyed or still enjoy the Superbooth ! So much new products to potentially review in ypur channel 😂
The Pulse always cut through stuff. Happy days back in the 90s listening to techno produced with a Pulse. It has stood the test of time! They have retained their brand no doubt. When you see their name you think 'Quality'. This was an interesting return to the product. I wonder what they will do next....
related: I bought a Waldorf Largo (at a steep discount) because of the filter. I need another 3 OSC subtractive synth VST like I need another hole in my head, but those filters are gorgeous.
Another Fantastic Review, few suggestions if you haven't already done them. Roland SH-32 Groovebox thingy would be a good choice Novation K-Station or the A-Station rack I guarantee will annoy you. I like some of the Yamaha rack synths from the late eighties early 90s. I could go on so many 80s and 90s rack synths they've all annoyed me in some way or another. 😂
Another great episode Florian. Pre orders opened yesterday here in Oz for the Roland S-1 - can't wait to see memes featuring Tweak from South Park. Wondering if this compact will be a straight to Bad Gear release? It may even appear on your channel before mine has been delivered. Have a great week.
During the time I owned mine, I kept having this nagging concern: WHAT feature did Waldorf leave out?? It finally came to me! It was, That Waldorf Sound!! SOLD.
@@AudioPilz once…I owned the ruby red Q+ O M G gorgeous to behold and hear. I waited over 2 years for my first John Bowen Solaris-it was number 58, as I recall. Sold it because, unlike my Andromeda, it was not pure analog. Short time later, sold the Andromeda and began to cry over my missing my Solaris. I ordered a second one, in BLACK. It was so beautiful. Point? John did some Lovely Waldorf patches, vowel OSC and whatnot. Silky. John would verify all this and might add, “I think Mark has some undiagnosed personality disorder thing going on” So many manufacturers are selling out and building CRAP. Good for your biz. Right now, my dream poly is: SUMMIT. Based on Polys that make stunningly beautiful sounds, I’d be as happy with a summit as I would MOOG One. I was about to buy the HydraS, heard quality summit patches and backed out on the Hydra. What am I doing?! You don’t have time for this! Go…be funny and creative
Like it! I've got a MicroQ which is really capable with an editor, but with the price drop I *would* be tempted but I couldn't resist the Aria S1 as an impulse purchase (Im normally the same - meticulous planning and review watching is the norm)
The all Waldorf salad didn't feature Streichfett 😢 . My synth music has been called punk-ambient . I don't know why . Could you use that as a genre in an upcoming episode, so I could see what that is supposed to mean ? You are a master of genre -ology . I like all the Waldorf sounds . I came from the 80s when everything was unnaturally crisp , and toneful. They sound amazing with cheap reverb , or analog delay , or phaser . I always doubled down with a thickening stereo chorus , and smushy reverb . Or an octave effect .
As an original Pulse owner, I can say it lives up to the sound too. Both Pulse and Pulse 2 are absolute beasts in terms of raw sound. They do have a certain character you have to like, but if you do, there's nothing to replace them. Just listen to that saw bass at 04:34 for example. Impossible to replicate that power and exact character with anything else. And that's why you buy an analog synth, right? For its character. And both Pulses have plenty of it.
@@danielbaumgartner4910 How are your knobs holding up after all this time? Mine are a bit wobbly as they always were, but still work perfectly and certainly don't need replacement. I've heard a lot about the Pulse 2 having some issues, but I'm not sure if they're just feeling somewhat loose, or do make actual problems. My old Pulse 1 certainly doesn't have any actual working issues.
