a very quick update after a few days of experimenting with my new toy: now I understand why everybody who ever owned one praises the Wave so much, and mourns its lack of heirs!
It-is-just-amazing.
Seriously, I'm blown away. The combination of sampled sounds, synth oscillators and controls is great. And the choice of filters and effects is simply perfect, they easily blend together in the most natural and musical way. It is just so freakin' easy to get great sounds out of scratch.
One feature among the many that caught my ear: the "sampled waves". I thought it was just a freak afterthought (a sampled attack followed by a single-cycle wave? Who'll ever need such a weirdish thing?), but I find it instead to be amazingly useful and musical.
While on paper it looks like there are so many compromises and limitations (only 2-part multitimbral, no splits, non-configurable arpeggiator and aftertouch, etc etc), in practice it is simply a great sounding instrument. The perfect demonstration that specs don't mean a thing when the sound is THE right one.
Well done Clavia... now please DON'T bring out a Wave2, or I'll be forced to buy it !!!
I may get one soon too... Fingers crossed!!