German Synthesizers: The Trailblazing History of 5 German Synth Giants
History-making synths from PPG, Waldorf, Access, Behringer, and more.
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From the country that gave us synth-pop, this is the story of German synthesizers as told through the history of five groundbreaking companies.
German Synthesizers
In this ongoing series, I’ve covered the history of synthesizers across a number of different countries, including Japan, America, the UK, and even Italy. One that I have yet to address, though, is Germany. Let’s fix that grave error today.
For a country so inextricably linked with synthesizers and electronic music – it is the home of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and more techno artists than you can deny entry to Berghain to – Germany is not as much of a synth powerhouse as, say, Japan. However, what it lacks in numbers it has made up for in innovation, with a fair number of homegrown advancements that have become world synthesis standards.
Here is the story of German synthesizers as explored through five important companies. As always, my apologies if I left out your favorite company or instrument. If I did, let me know in the comments.
German Synthesizers: Palm Products GmbH (PPG)
In the 1970s, German synth music groups like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream often got around technical limitations by working with local developers to create the technology that they needed. Kraftwerk employed Matten & Wiechers of Synthesizerstudio Bonn to custom-make their first sequencers, while Tangerine Dream had a fruitful relationship with Wolfgang Palm, who pioneered the use of digital technology in synthesizers.
With his company Palm Products GmbH – better known as PPG – he started out in the 1970s making analog modular and monophonic synthesizers but soon developed what he would become famous for: wavetable synthesis. By organizing many small samples into a ‘table’, he harnessed the power of digital sampling but in a much more flexible way.
Palm’s first wavetable synth was the Wave Computer 360 in 1978. He followed it with the Wave 2 in 1981, which expanded synthesis options with analog filters, envelopes, and LFOs. The Wave 2.2 added more waveforms and samples, while 2.3 expanded to multitimbrality and MIDI. The Wave system reached its apex with the Waveterm, a computer add-on for creating and editing wavetables, sampling, and sequencing.
Back to Tangerine Dream. TD were early adopters of Palm instruments, employing him to create custom gear for them and even helped fund his workshop, reportedly. To hear Palm’s wavetable synthesis in full Tangerine Dream flight, check out their album, Exit. It sounded like nothing else at the time and is still striking.
PPG went out of business in 1987 but the Wave remains a potent source of inspiration, with Groove Synthesis and Behringer offering modern takes on it, as well as a software version from Waldorf, all incredible takes on a classic of German synthesizers.
German Synthesizers: Waldorf
Almost immediately after the demise of PPG, the company’s distributor, one Wolfgang Düren, took up the mantle of the wavetable legacy and started Waldorf. Now one of Germany’s largest synthesizer companies, it offers a variety of synthesizers and synthesis types, from analog to VA to yes, wavetable, with many of Wolfgang Palm’s original wavetables still involved.
The company’s first release was the Microwave. As the name suggests, the 1989 synth was a smaller, rackmount take on the Wave and featured a proprietary integrated circuit designed by Palm himself. The company’s next major release was the WAVE, a remarkable instrument that expanded on the Microwave’s tech, offering features for wavetable creation and resynthesis, along with a massive amount of hands-on control. It was also massively expensive at $9000.
Other notable entries in the company’s catalog include the Motorola-powered Microwave II in 1997, the bright yellow virtual analog Q in 1999, the Blofeld in 2007 (still in production today!), 2018’s hybrid digital/analog Quantum, 2020’s Iridium, and the M, which harkens back to the original Microwave, bringing it all full circle.
Now known as Waldorf Music, the company continues to innovate, particularly in the realm of digital synthesis, carrying on the legacy inherited from Wolfgang Palm back in 1988.
- Waldorf homepage
German Synthesizers: Doepfer
While Wolfgang Palm soon moved on from analog modular systems, another German synth engineer stayed the course, eventually creating a new format that has since taken over as the default modular size: Eurorack. I’m talking, of course, about Dieter Döpfer and his company, Doepfer.
Releasing his first product in the late 1970s, a Voltage Controlled Phaser module for the German Formant modular system, Döpfer continued making boutique modular gear before taking a detour into MIDI and MIDI-to-CV interfaces. This brought him into contact with Kraftwerk in the early 1990s, who used quite a lot of gear, particularly live, including the Schaltwerk sequencer and A-100 Modular Synthesizer.
It was the latter, the A-100, that was to be Doepfer’s crowning jewel. A modular system, it created a new format that reduced the size of modules to a more compact 3U tall and 2HP wide. Dubbed Eurorack, it started with a modest 10 modules but has now grown to take over the world – not just of modular but of synthesizers in general. The A-100 series is still going, now with more than 120 modules available from Doepfer alone.
- Doepfer homepage
German Synthesizers: Access
Around the same time that Doepfer was creating a new modular standard, there was a separate revolution happening with synthesis. Thanks to advancements in computing power and experiments with physical modeling, developers realized that they could recreate analog synthesis digitally. Eventually called virtual analog and spurned on by a move back towards hands-on control thanks to the worldwide popularity of dance music, VA became the synthesis of choice for many producers in the late ‘90s, and few synths were more coveted than the Virus series.
The brainchild of Access Music GmbH, the Virus arrived on the scene in 1997 with the Access Virus A. A keyboardless tabletop synth, it featured two oscillators, two multimode filters, two envelopes, two LFOs, and effects. Not so exciting on paper, but at the time, having direct control over each of these parameters was a revelation for those used to working with the barren landscapes of workstations and ROMplers. Of course, the Virus A also sounded amazing, with a punchy and aggressive tone that made it perfect for dance music.
Access followed up its initial Virus with a succession of models of solid German synthesizers, including the B, C, and T1 series, the latter of which was just discontinued last year. The company continues, although it’s no longer manufacturing synths, just Profiler amps sold under its sister brand, Kemper.
- Access homepage
German Synthesizers: Behringer
You might not think of Behringer as a German company, at least not anymore. Although its namesake founder Uli Behringer is Swiss, and its parent company Music Tribe is centered in the Philippines with a large factory city in China, Behringer itself is still headquartered in Willich, Germany. And, although it only released its first synthesizer in 2016, it’s since become an extremely powerful force in the synth market, pioneering less in terms of technology but more in market presence.
With a focus on creating affordable instruments, many based on famous and classic synths, Behringer is something of a market disruptor. It would be impossible to list all of the company’s noteworthy synths (you can keep track of many on our rolling list of releases) but some highlights include Deepmind, Model D, U-BXa, Pro-VS Mini, and Wave, which brings us back to the beginning of this story.
- Behringer homepage
German Synth Giants: Conclusion
There are more, of course, a lot more German synthesizers and companies. There’s Vermona, JoMox, KOMA Elektronik, Quasimidi, and Schmidt, to name a few. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Steinberg, who deserves credit for inventing the plugin instrument, the VSTi, and the Model-E, which brought synthesizers into our DAWs.
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2 responses to “German Synthesizers: The Trailblazing History of 5 German Synth Giants”
Yes, Germany has always played a big part in the mechanics and culture of electronic music. It also once hosted The Love Parade, the biggest free gathering of tech and party heads, that also ran in England once, c2000. Here’s an unrelated fact about who’s running the show in spite of the best endeavours of others;
Warners – 25%
Universal Music – 25%
Sony Music – 20%
Others – 30%
Whatever you design, whatever you make, a tone-deaf, fat fella with a share certificate will most likely be the one making a killing out of it. 😎
Play Stuntman by Edgar Froese for even more early PPG Wave sounds