The PPG Wave 2.3 |
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The legendary PPG Wave 2.3 |
| The 2.3 took the wave series into the realms of a true workstation. Building on the features of the 2.2, the 2.3 added 8 part multi-timbral voices with individual outputs, sample playback in 12 bit resolution (loaded via a Waveterm etc) and of course MIDI. |
| PPG had its work cut out installing MIDI into the 2.3 as it already had its own parallel bus for interconnecting the system components. Palm was frustrated by the added complications of adding such a limited serial interface as MIDI when his bus allowed far greater speed for sample transfer. In my experience, the MIDI implementation of the Wave 2.3 is not the most stable and seems very susceptible to ground loops and lock-ups! |
| The features of the Wave 2.3 are very much a 'logical
progression' from the 2.2 and the end result is a very musical and extremely
versatile machine. From thick strings, choirs and analogue filter sweeps
to the dirty digital hard-edge industrial grunge, the the 2.3 excels.
Add a Waveterm to your set-up and you open up a whole new world of
wave-mangling possibilities! The combination of beautiful SSM filters
and the merging of samples with Palms quirky synthesis make the Wave.2.3
one of history's true landmark instruments. Many later digital (and analogue/digital hybrid) synths lacked the immediacy of the 2.3 with it's familiar knobs and went down the cul-de-sac of the dreaded data entry pad and an encoder if you were lucky. |
