Editorial. Reviewed: MicroWave PC

Many people asked us how this synth sounds, because at the dealer you hardly ever find a working setup. The sound is a matter of personal taste, but to our own opinion it's difficult to get disappointed. It's a combination of a 'dejà vue' with old analogue/hybrid synth-technology we know from manufacturers like Moog, Roland (Jupiter), Prophet, Korg (PS-series and later) and the typical digital 'flavor' of modern wavetable-synthesis. The best of both worlds. We like it very much!

People that buy a MicroWave PC should not shirk the experiment and the work that comes with that. In other words: if you're the type that hates studying manuals, do not buy it. Of course you can do with the factory sounds, but to make the most out of this equipment you have to do some serious studying, especially when familiar yet with the sound synthesis terminology that came with earlier generations of analogue synthesizers.

There are also some drawbacks that you certainly should take into consideration before buying this synth. First of all there are some limitations in combining the MicroWave PC with external synthesizers. For instance: you want to layer the sounds of the MWPC with external sound modules. Getting the output of all synths into an external mixer is not problem, but feeding the combined signal back into the pc again (e.g. to make a harddisk recording) is impossible. This is caused by the fact that the Control Panel needs to be set to 'D' in order to hear the MWPC, thus blocking the other inputs (analogue as well as digital) the external equipment is connected to. Maybe I'm following the wrong concept here, so anyone who has a workaround to this problem is welcome to correct this review.

Also the user interface doesn't get the price for ergonomic design. OK, it looks beautiful, but it's a drag to operate and hard to read, even on a 800x600 resolution. I hope in future versions it can be at least blown up to full screen size.
Already since the beginning of the SCP we plead user interfaces that do not look like the original hardware. A computer screen is not a touchable set of knobs. So make the interface suited for a mouse! When will programmers start to understand this basic principle? Please kill your fancy looking darlings and make a fast operable user interface, that enables me to enter precise values.

For the rest, nothing but praise so far (I'm still learning). Should you sell your good old FrontPanel now? That's up to you, but consider that if the MWPC ever needs repairing, it's convenient if you still have it around somewhere.
Is the MicroWave PC worth it's money? It certainly is! Every synthesizer that enables you to construct your own sounds is timeless. All the synths I mentioned in the first paragraph are still available on the second hand market. Quite some years ago they made an sudden, unexpected revival, thanks to a new and younger generation of musicians who re-discouvered the beauty of a filter sweep.
One word of comfort for the people who can't affort a MicroWave PC: read our review about the Sonic Planet sample cd. It's a nice alternative :-)