Review: Waldorf LARGO Software Synthesizer

Largo Softsynth by Waldorf

$249

Waldorf have long since made themselves a household name among the modern hardware synth market through the success of their digital units Blofeld, Q and Pulse. Largo, while not technically the companies first softsynth (they had earlier released a nice emulation of the classic PPG Wave synth as part of a bundle with the Attack drum synth), is nonetheless their first large-scale entry into the software instrument market. And "large" it truly is: a three-oscillator, two-filter, modulation-heavy wavetable monster that, while not presenting anything notably novel into digital synth design, instead simply aims to do what's been done before, but with Waldorf's signature style and edge. Do we need another subtractive style soft-synth? Is simply having that "Waldorf signature" worth a notably steep $249? Well, follow me...

I'm going to bypass writing paragraphs aimed at comprehensively listing all of Largo's various features, as a quick jump over to Waldorf's website will fill you in on anything you might want to know. Suffice to say that Largo boasts a very typical subtractive design, with the notable (and very important) added feature that it's a true Wavetable synth, with two of the three oscillators providing a selection of sixty-eight wavetables, borrowed from Waldorf's hardware line (the Blofeld, specifically). Each 'table' contains a long chain of single cycle waveforms (one hundred and twenty-seven, to be precise) that each individually provide, as you progress along from 1 to 127, gradually varying harmonic content. For example, a table might start with a standard sawtooth waveform and gradually morph into a standard square waveform, with the harmonic content of each wave inbetween altering slightly to create the total morph. Using modulation sources such as envelopes and LFO's, each table can be 'scanned' through, thereby resulting in a fantastic array of moving textures, tones and soundscapes.  

I'm always happy to see new wavetable synths come on the market, as they represent a definite minority among the software market despite their ability to offer a much wider range of timbres and sound-shaping abilities than your average synth. Before Largo's arrival, the most notable (and certainly most popular) wavetable synth on the market had been (and probably continues to be) Native Instrument's Massive, a synth that shares quite a few substantial similarities (and also a number of important differences) with Largo.

THE OSCILLATORS...

Evaluating the sound quality of provided waveforms is always terribly subjective at best, but all the same, as the owner and user of an admittedly over-large array of software instruments, I feel 100% comfortable in stating that Largo's oscillators are among the best I have heard. And I'm talking about the straight, unfiltered sound quality of the waveforms and tables: there is a richness, smoothness and perceived 'purity' here (so to speak, as I know such terminology verges on the dangerously arbitrary) that my ears aren't used to hearing when loading up dry waveforms. Largo's oscillators are high-powered machines: first there are the scannable 68 wavetables, and secondly there is the powerful sub-oscs to further fatten the sound.

THE FILTERS...

Waldorf are famous for the supposed legendary quality of their filters. All I know is that these sound really, really good. Furthemore, they each boast a variable drive-stage that allows you to instantly dirty-up the sound. This is a great feature.

THE GUI....is pristine. Really. Look at those big silver knobs, they're a thing of beauty. The layout is natural and easy to get around. Yes, you have to tab between the modulation sources, mod matrix, fx, and arpeggiator, and the synth itself is rather large to begin with. But at least the 3 oscs and 2 filters are always visible.

At first glance, Largo definitely looks to be more-of-the-same. You could argue that it's basically just like Massive, but with no available step-sequencers as mod sources and a vastly more antiquited approach to modulation (Massive still has, I must admit, my all time favorite implementation of modulation-- long live the colored-rings!). The difference for me -- and it's a huge difference -- is all in the sound. Whereas Massive has always sounded cold and edgy to me, no matter what the style it's programmed for, Largo's pallette is smooth, warm and clean. They both sound unabashedly digital, but Largo, for my  money, sounds far and away superior. 

Nonetheless, if it weren't for the wavetable oscillators, fully recommending Largo would be harder to do, simply because despite the overall excellent quality of the GUI and filters, the synth just doesn't bring much of anything new to the table in an already crowded soft-synth universe. Everything it does, it does well, and the whole package is slick, sleek and refined. But if you've been using software synths for a while, it's unlikely that Largo will offer you any real new tricks or abilities that you don't already have well covered among your synth arsenal. But, I'm a sucker for wavetable synths, and the only real competition in this department is Massive (you could argue Rapture as well, but if you see my feature on that synth, you'll learn that it's claim to the 'wavetable' title is tenuous at best). The large choice of waveforms and, more importantly, the ability to smoothly glide through the 127-cycle long tables, altogether allows for a depth of sonic exploration you just don't find on non-wavetable synths. I can't say I'm very fond of the preset library shipped with Largo; it's weak compared to the great (and extensive) material that comes with synths like Predator, Rapture and Sylenth1. Too many of the presets fall in the trancey, buzzing lead category, which is odd for a wavetable synth, and the browser itself is a bit clunky. Still, these considerations aside, the good certainly outweighs the mediocre on this thing, and Waldorf have crafted a classy software instrument that I imagine will please both their longtime followers as well as nit-picky soft-synth users such a myself.