Way back when, I was fortunate enough to have had a used PPG 2.2 synth. My buddies had the full Waveterm system, which gave you a whopping 128k of sampling time and cost around $12,000! It was one of my most favorite synths, when it worked! It was maddening how whenever I wanted to use it in a session, it rarely worked. It came out just before the dawn of MIDI, so its retrofitted implementation was a joke.

However, the unique PPG sound was made famous by the most creative 80's synth albums and film scores, like Trevor Horn's production of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Go West, David Bowie and especially Thomas Dolby. (Don't forget those "St. Elmo's Fire Bells" from David Foster, too). The PPG had a sound like no other, and was one of the greatest "let's mess around with this a bit and see what happens" synth ever. Always wonderful "magic" accidents around the corner, which is why we were all willing to put up with cryptic displays and less-than-ideal stability. I eventually gave in and replaced it with a Waldorf Microwave, but as reliable and flexible as the Micro is, the fun interactive interface of the PPG was missing.

Guess what? My "Beast" is back as an incredible VST Instrument plug-in that works with Cubase and Logic. The interface is the same, only without the cryptic abbreviated mod routings. For those of you that don't program your own sounds, it comes with hundreds of patches, including all the original versions of PPG factory presets and even the legendary, bow-tie-wearing Andy Thomas' patches! Unfortunately, few are named (same as the original ) and the default factory set is pretty dull compared to what it is capable of.

How close is the sound? Darn close I'd have to say. The "True PPG" mode even models the original's aliasing sound convincingly (you can also turn it off if you want it cleaner). I hear that the filter was modeled after a PPG Wave 2.3...my personal preference was the 2.2's filter. The plug in's filter does sound a little more like one of the better digital modeling filters, as opposed to a true analog VCF. I also wish they had added a couple of basic new things, like Solo Legato (Minimoog style) triggering and Portamento. The Detuning is still limited to the PPG's original limited selection and the Velocity response isn't much better than the original. But hey, that's really ridiculous quibbling. This synth is really powerful and can do many things that the real one couldn't, like having enough polyphony to play chords in Dual and Quad modes (FAT DUDE!), full MIDI control of all parameters, total recall with your song and perfect sample-accurate timing (not to mention no cassette interface!).

Oh, and did I mention that it costs less than $200 and runs on my laptop?

Wow, it's nice to be living in the 21st century.

For more info go to Waldorf


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