I've always been intrigued by Waldorf's machines, but I've never heard one nor seen one in person nor read much about them.

The Wave, in particular, looks mindblowing.

So...do they rock, or what? They don't seem to get much attention, though they seem to be highly respected. Might have something to do with the price tag.

I'd appreciate any thoughts you can offer.

I've got a Q Rack and a MicrowaveXT rack. Both are great syths. lots of "stuff" inside if you know what I mean. Lots of things unique to them above and beyond other synths/mfrs. Get to a store and try them out is best I can tell you. They do kick!

As an owner of an old original MicroWave, I can testify that the MicroWave series does indeed rock. Nothing sounds like the MicroWave -- there's some great digital weirdness and grunge produced by those old 8-bit wavetables that doesn't sound like anything else from any other manufacturer.
The one downside of the Waldorf MicroWave is that there's no software editor for it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody nowhere nohow noways nowise has ever made a piece of comptuer software that would let you edit one of these pups.
That's a bull-buster, since it means you've got to program the patches by hand. Not a trivial process. The PRELIMINARY USE MANUAL for the old Waldorf MicroWave has some 200-plus pages. The number of parameters you have to enter to generate a new patch is pretty mind-blowing.
The upside is that Waldorf has a website (in German) contains zillions of MicroWave patches, which will of course work on the MicroWave XT. (The only difference twixt the old MicroWave and the newer XT model is that the XT has digital analog-sounding filters with resonance but no microtonal tuning tables; the old MicroWave had true analog filters but did feature microtonal tuning tables.

Emagic SoundDiver will edit all of the Waldorf synths (all Microwave versions). There's even a non-supported Q adaptation for SoundDiver, but right now its a moving target with the changing OS of the Q (though its settling down and is solid now)