Waldorf Largo review: German synthmaker Waldorf truly masters the art of creating impressive synthesizers, but still hasn't got rid of its shadow of the past: it's very, very German.

Since the publication of my review of the Waldorf Largo in the Swedish magazine Studio, I've learned much more about the inner workings of Largo. I still think Largo is one damn fine instrument – in fact, it's one of the best software synthesizers on the market right now. But after working with it for a few months, I've also learned that Largo can be quite irritating and sometimes downright frustrating to use.

But before we dive into the finer details, let's just spend a few moments to roughly summarize what Largo is.

If the old – and unfortunately discontinued – Terratec Komplexer was a software version of the Waldorf MicroQ synthesizer, Largo is the closest software reproduction you can get to a Waldorf Blofeld, which in turn can be said to be the smaller brother of the mighty Q-synthesizer.

Although Waldorf describes Largo as a three-oscillator synthesizer, it makes more sense to me to think of it as a two-oscillator synth with a bunch of extras. Largo has indeed three oscillators, but only two of them features the full black synth magic of Waldorf, while the third one can be seen as a buy-two-get-a-bonus-oscillator-for-free. Two oscillators plus one with hot sauce, or three oscillators where one is crippled. Pick the description that makes most sense to you.

Two gorgeous oscillators
The first two oscillators packs a seriously impressive amount of features. Firstly and most importantly, these two oscillators are equipped with the Wavetable oscillators that Waldorf are so famous for. Although Waldorf no longer is the only company that uses this technique, they are still the masters of it. And no wonder – they invented it!

A wavetable oscillator is like any other sound producing oscillator, but instead of a fixed waveform, it's possible to smoothly change one waveform into another. Much like morphing. One so called wavetable is built up on 128 separate waveforms that slowly evolves from one shape into something else. These waveforms can naturally be used as the base of traditional subtractive synthesis, which in itself gives a huge amount of sound sources to create your own sounds with. But the true power of the wavetables becomes apparent during modulation. Set the oscillator to any of the wavetables, set up an LFO that slowly modulates the wavetable and you'll get an organic, moving sound that can be described as a combination of filtering, oscillator sync, FM and morphing.

Of course, Largo isn't just about wavetables. There are all the classic waveforms used for traditional synthesis as well. Most wavetables also feature all the traditional waveforms, but by some reason they are not nearly as powerful as the pure dedicated waveforms. Either the technique behind wavetables does something with the sharpness of the waveforms – or the clean analogue waveforms aren't anything from this world. Let me put it this way – there is something about the Largo sawtooth that just make me Very Happy.

To finish off my lengthy overview of the two first oscillators, I just want to mention that the oscillators also can modulate each other with FM synthesis, oscillator sync and ring modulation. The two first oscillators also have the possibility to add a sub-oscillator for some extra oumpf. Needless to say – sub-oscillators are always welcome in the oumpf-department.

The third oscillator is nowhere near as powerful as the first two. It doesn't have a sub-oscillator and is not capable of wavetable synthesis. But for simple tasks, it's perfect.

Two gorgeous filters
Largo features two independent multimode filters that can be set in either parallel or serial mode. For the connoisseur, filters are a bit like wine. Besides that there are good quality filters, there are also the matter of taste. My personal opinion towards the Largo filters is that they are fantastic. Not perfect – but damn good. The resonance can go extremely high without things starting to fall apart. Using the resonance to bump up a sweet spot is like chopping up food with a very sharp knife. If Pinot Noir is the wine of wines in my book – then Merlot is my second choice. The filter in Largo is like a fantastic Merlot.

The 24 dB lowpass and the comb filters are two of the best of the market. Although, I must say that I didn't feel as happy about the 12 dB lowpass. As I am coming of age, I'm starting to appreciate the power behind the lesser steep lowpass. It's softer and more – eh – creamy, than the 24 dB filter. The 12 dB lowpass didn't attract my sound creation senses in any way.

The filters also feature a drive stage which can be used to add an extra level of hard- and grittiness to the sound. If you want to bring out some real ugliness from the oscillators – this is the knob you want to turn. The drive stage can be set to eight different modes, but in all honesty I felt them to be quite small variations of the same theme. The “light” mode is indeed not as brutal as the “shaper” mode, but they still sound kind of the same. For example, they are nowhere near the saturation found in the Virus TI.

Modulation matrix – almost a sound designer's dream
The modulation capabilities in Largo are formidable. There are four envelopes – two are locked to the filter and volume – but the other two can be used in any way you like. The envelopes are of the linear type – and does not have the snappy character as with some older analogue synthesizers, such as the Minimoog or the new Fxpansion Synth Squad softsynth. There are three LFOs that can reach quite high modulation rates – synced and unsynced. The third LFO can even be used to draw your own modulation curve, which is a brilliant and adds a powerful weapon in your sound mangling arsenal.

At the heart of all this lies the modulation matrix, and is your command central from where you set up where all modulations are going. The routing capabilities are extensive, but isn't – in my opinion – modulation nirvana. When I was creating my own patches, it happened to me quite a few times that a parameter I was looking for didn't exist among the available routings.
But that probably says more about me as a control freak than Largo. Bottom line - personally I wouldn't have minded a few more destinations among the routings - but compared with other software synthesizers very few can match Largo.

Another thing that is important to mention is that the LFOs (and also the effects) can be kept in sync with the tempo of your sequencer. Nothing new under the sky here. But instead of offering the usual tempo signatures of 1/16, 1/8 and 1/4 plus the occasional triplet – the guys at Waldorf offers you the whole lot. From the rapid movement of 1/96th to the slowest setting of – hold on here – 1280 bars. Cool? No. Not at all. I appreciate the fact that Waldorf encourages you to work with different time settings than the normal ones – but scrolling through a huge list of odd signatures is not – I repeat: not – anything that inspires. Between 1/8th and 1/4th it looks like this: 1/8, 5/32, 1/4T, 1/8., 5/16T, 7/32 and 1/4. The only way around this is to learn your favourite signatures and then type them in. There must be an easier way to do this.

As with the other synths from Waldorf, Largo comes with an arpeggiator that can break up a chord into its separate notes or play the chord in a specified rhythm. There are 16 pre-programmed rhythms of the arpeggiator, but you can set up your own rhythm if you want. The arpeggiator can use up to 16 steps and for each step you can set length, velocity and timing, giving you quite good possibilities to create arpeggios far away from the traditional broken-up chords.

But Waldorf didn't go all the way with the arpeggiator and turned it into a step sequencer hybrid, like the arpeggiator in Sylenth1, where you can program quite sophisticated melodies within the actual arpeggiator. And regarding the tempo – oh yes, it can be synced to tempo, and oh yes, you have a huge list of possible and impossible tempos, just as with the modulation. Sigh...

A reverb so bad you'll love it

When it comes to the effects, Waldorf is still living somewhere in the early 1990s when built-in effects should be seen as a bonus, rather than something really useful. To put it plainly: with the level of quality we have today, the effects in Largo is not up to standard.

It was with the ReFX Nexus that I learned how much a good reverb can do for a sound. As a huge paradox, the reverb in Largo is actually so synthetic that I over time grew quite fond of it. Of course – if Largo would feature the Artsacoustic reverb that's used in Nexus – this would change the whole sound of Largo. In my opinion that would be good. But on the other hand, the plastic-esque reverb that sits in Largo works very well with the rest of the synthesizer.

The presets left me slightly confused. With a powersynth like Largo, I was surprised to hear so many middle-of-the-road sounds. There are of course several good moments, but from the perspective of what Largo is capable of – don't judge the synth on its presets. A tip to Waldorf: hire some heavy-weight sound designers and let them push the boundaries of Largo.

Weird bugs
The version I was working with was v1.1 which was released in the summer of 2009 – and although it's totally stable, it's not free from bugs. Sometimes the changes I made to the oscillators didn't kick into effect until several moments after – sometimes they didn't come into effect until I've (hold on to your hair) changed the setting of the unison. How weird is that? The bugs are not show-stoppers in any way – but if you're not aware of them, you could find yourself pushing and turning knobs with nothing happening at all. Sometimes the some settings of the second filter were still active although it was turned off.

Largo is copy protected with a Syncrosoft usb-key or via a software key. Dongled products are always an issue of controversy, and for many users this is a huge obstacle. Some users even go so far to not use dongled products. Personally, I've never had any problems with Syncrosoft. As long as I have the usb key with me, there is no problem for me to use my PC or my Mac. The only thing I don't like about Syncrosoft is that it takes much longer time to load the plugin in your host. Apart from that – and the fact that you'll be better off with a hardware key (one you'll have to buy separately) – software dongled with Syncrosoft is cool with me.

One feature that shows some clever thinking is that most parts of Largo can be turned off. As Largo is a quite an cpu intensive synthesizer, this is a welcome feature. By turning off parts that aren't in use, you can save some valuable cpu power.

Conclusion
My initial reaction to Largo was – yes... This. Is. It.

After the dust have settled and the excitement of having a new synthesizer to work with, my revised reaction of Largo is still a yes. For the record, we talk about a big yes here – but it's not as big as I felt when I first started using it.
The strongest point of Largo is that it has a sound of its own, and in these days when the market for software synthesizers – especially virtual analogue stuff – are totally overcrowded, there is no better argument for.
But Largo also disappoints in a few areas. There are some bugs that if you're not aware of them, make sound design a little bit like building LEGO in the dark.
In some ways it feels like Waldorf is left somewhere in the 90s. The construction of Largo is up to the standards we expect to see, but there are none of the nifty programming we've seen in newer synths, such a preset browser with preview functionality, outstanding effects, possibility to copy and paste settings of modules or arpeggiator with step sequencer functionality. None of these omissions are critical – but is the topping that could have made Largo into the King Kong of synths.

As it is now, Largo is “just” an extremely cool synth. It you are looking for a synthesizer that will stand out in your sonic collection – this is one of them. Waldorf even offers a demo which fully works for 30 days, so if you haven't done so already – download it right away. Don't judge it too hard on the build in presets – spend some hours playing around with the oscillators, the filters and the step LFO and you'll find yourself with a seriously cool synthesizer.

Despite its small bugs and minor annoyances, Waldorf Largo is one of the hottest software synthesizers we've seen in a long long time.

Get it.
Now.

(PS but it's not the synth that will rule them all, which in my opinion still is John Bowen Solaris and even worth getting a Creamware/Soniccore DSP-card for. But that's another story...)

Waldorf Largo
Web: www.waldorfmusic.de
Price: 229 Euro.
Format: PC/Mac VST/AU.
Good: Extremely powerful. Sounds unique. Great oscillators and filters.
Bad: The operation can sometimes be frustrating. Demands quite a bit from the computer. Slightly buggy.