Do Wolfgang Palm's latest synths make PPG Wave 3 redundant?

[Echoes in the Attic]

The new PPG synths also support MPE

Yes that’s another big plus. Functionally and visually they all seem to have the advantage. My only thing is that I really love a lot of the sounds that come out of the ppg wave and some of those more aggressive sounds I haven’t come across in the newer ppg synths. Could be just the preset choices though not sure.

I don't know what the potential is for those sorts of aggressive sounds with the PPG synths. I suspect you are just not gonna get the same tones as a Waldorf synth.

I've mostly used the PPG synths for softer and rounder sounds and also more soundscape, evolving stuff.

Seems to be what they excel at, based on presets. I do notice they do the sort of plastic plucky sounds quite well too though.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I've spent a little of time recently going through presets more carefully in both Wavemapper and Infinite and I think they both sound great. And there actually more than just ambience and pads, some good aggressive sounds too.

One disappointment I found is that Wavemapper only seems to have 24 note pitch bend, is that correct? This means I can't use it with mpe in bitwig. infinite does have 48 note range, but i honestly can't figure that thing out or get much out of tweaking it. I have no desire to edit 128 partials individually and haven't quite figured out how to get interesting results of my own yet. Not sure it will ever click with me. wavemapper though is fun to tweak but no full pitch bend range is too bad. I'm also trying to figure out in both synths what the easiest way is to simple scrub through a sample/wavetable. In wavemapper the playback position is controlled by an envelope but what if you want to move through it manually, is there a way?

[ChamomileShark]

hi, what MPE device are you using?

Trying to understand why that means you can't use it with Bitwig - I've yet to use my Bitwig 8 track - if it's a Rise then you can set pitch bend within the dashboard.

[Echoes in the Attic]

hi, what MPE device are you using?

Trying to understand why that means you can't use it with Bitwig - I've yet to use my Bitwig 8 track - if it's a Rise then you can set pitch bend within the dashboard.

Bitwig stores per note pitch bend data with the assumption of a +/-48 note bend range. So while you can set your instrument and device (seaboard or linnstrument) to be +/-24, bitwig won't play it back correctly because it thinks it's a 48 note range. You don't need a device to test this. Simply draw in pitch bend data in mpe mode. With an instrument set to +/-24, a glide from C to D in the midi data would actually only glide to C# because it's half the expected range. So of course you can use it with bitwig, you just don't get correct bend playback.

[ChamomileShark]

ah ok, got it.

I wonder what Cubase does (that's my DAW - I have Bitwig 8 track but I've yet to use it).

[Echoes in the Attic]

ah ok, got it.

I wonder what Cubase does (that's my DAW - I have Bitwig 8 track but I've yet to use it).

Apparently other Daws like Cubase and Logic, which support MPE, allow for different pitch bend ranges.