emulating mWave I patches on Blofeld
I wanted to see how close I could get my Blofeld to sound like some patches on my MicroWave, so first I made some notes for the settings of the original patch for reference. To understand what values I’m translating from and to follow along at home, you’ll need to reference the table of parameters at the end of the entry.
In general, things seemed to work out one-to-one, for example a 10 filter cutoff on MW roughly equals a 10 on Blofeld as they both go from 0-127. First set both octaves to -16, the equivalent of -1 on mW. Set osc 2 wavetable to #46 PWM Pulse and osc 1 to pulse. As for osc volume, the mWave has 0-7 for wave volume, so a 2 would equal about 36 (around 18 per step) on BF’s 0-127 scale and that translates to about 38-45 on osc 1 and 127 on osc 2, both routed to the same 24dB LPF. To translate the “startwave” and “startsample” wavetable parameters to the Blo, according to the manual
When a wavetable is selected, the parameters Pulsewidth and PWM serve to select the start point of the waves.
so that’s where I’ll be headed in osc 2 to start getting them close. I have the two synths set up and are playing them side by side to get a feel for how close I’m getting, and I have a feeling these are the key settings to get correct.
As it turns out you have to fiddle with the PW and PW Amount a lot to get it close to the sorta overtone but a 30 startwave was about a 30 PW and wasn’t quite sure where 87 startsample was, but a couple of locations in PW Amount near to the extremes seem to get closest, although it’s still not quite right, missing some brash overtones in the mid to upper register even with brightness turned all the way up. The MW also uses stepped (non-interpolated) settings for its wavetable and since the Blofeld is not stepped it would probably take a fair amount of modulations to get that part closer. I think the MW is being overdriven in the wave stage so that’s perfect for dialing in drive on the filter, tube or clipping at 19 or so. Here are my attempts, the first one is MW, and the second is Blofeld. Good headphones or speakers will be necessary to pick up the nuances when the filter is opened a little wider with velocity.
the original MW1 patch
the Blofeld recreation
Even though the tone is sorta there, to me the Blofeld sounds “rounder” on the attack, and the velocity doesn’t seem to open the filter as much. To address those, I changed the filter type to PPG LP, added a little more filter env, modded the amp decay by ampEnv to give a more linear shape to the stage, and added a little pitch mod from filtEnv and got this. Sorry I played it a half step up haha 🙂
same Blofeld sound with linear envelopes/PPG filter
It’s still missing some mid/upper harmonics and the tone isn’t quite right but I think it’s closer than in the previous one in the lows and low-mids. I don’t really think the Blofeld is capable of fully emulating the natural tone of the microWave, there’s just something in the fullness of the basic tone that seems rounder on the Blo, that doesn’t “cut” as well as the MW, but in the context of a track, the patches will perform the same purpose. Below is a chart of the main values of the patch I was trying to emulate. Tell me what you think in the comments!
mWave patch: JCJ LOW BASS
| Wave1 | Wave2 | Osc1 | Osc2 | AmpEnv | FiltEnv | LFO1 | Vol | Filt | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shape | square | PWM Pulse R66 | Octave | -1 | -1 | Delay | n/a | 0 | Shape | sin | Env Amt | 63 | Cutoff | 10 |
| Startwave | 62 | 30 | Semitone | 0 | 0 | Attack | 1 | 0 | Rate | 1 | Env Velo | 63 | Env Amt | 11 |
| Startsample | 52 | 87 | Detune | -1 | 3 | Decay | 14 | 28 | Symmetry | 0 | Keytrack | 0 | Env Vel | 52 |
| Env Amount | 21 | 0 | Bend Range | 0 | 0 | Sustain | 18 | 2 | Humanize | off | Mod 1 | 0 | Keytrack | 0 |
| Velocity | 0 | 0 | Pitch Mode | normal | normal | Release | 28 | 13 | Level Mod Src | Keytrack | Mod 2 | 0 | Mod 1 | 0 |
| Keytrack | 0 | 0 | Delay | 1 | Mod 2 | 0 | ||||||||
| Mod 1 | link | Mod 1 | Src: LFO1 Ctrl: Modwheel Amt: 63 | link | Attack | 50 | Resonance | 0 | ||||||
| Mod 2 | Src: Filt Envelope Amt: -2 | link | Mod 2 | Src: LFO1 Amt: 17 Quantize: 0 | link | Decay | 0 | Res Mod | 0 | |||||
| Volume | 2 | 7 |