I rarely need help with a synthesizer because usually when all else fails i am able to figure things out via trial and error. But is this case there are a few things that remain somewhat mysterious.
- The synth comes with a bunch of .wt2 files in its Wavetables dir, but the Wavetable Oscillator itself works with .smw files. These .wt2 files can not simply be renamed to .smw, which means they are really a different format and not just having a different file extension. What are the .wt2 files included for if thats not what the WTO actually uses, and why are there no .smw files?
- What kind of material is one supposed to be loading into the WTO via Load Sample? I understand that it doesnt do single cycles since it wants to chop up the sample into several bits, (harmonic snapshots, as its called in the manual), but what exactly is one supposed to be using here so it gives useful results? Is there something like a recommended lenght, recommended gaps within the source, anything that one should know with regards to optimal format?
- What does the WTO actually do, in a operational sense? It doesnt seem to actually scan through a source when you, say, set Wavecount to 2 and put one indicator at the start and one at the end. To me it sounds more like it is simply morphing from one indicator-area to the other as the Wavepos knob approaches the 50% position, and then back again when you go from 50% to full. But everything outside and in-between the indicators seems to be discarded/ignored. The only way to do a classic scan-through-the-entire-source seems to be enabling 'Preview Wave' and then dragging one of the indicators across the source, manually, with the mouse.
- The manual calls the window that displays the waveform 'WaveMaker', and goes on to say that "This window allows you to edit wavetables". Still i can see nothing on the UI that indicates that making waves (as in creating new ones from scratch) or even just editing loaded waves is actually possible.
- Has anyone ever tried to make wavetables for this synth with AudioTerm? I did a quick check on the files that come with AudioTerm, and as far as i could see they all had different headers. (Which means they are not compatible.) WAV format should still work though, so has anyone ever tried this? Any recommendations as to how one should go about it to get good and useful results?
Thanks for any and all info you can share.
Mysteries of the Sonigen Modular Wavetable Oscillator
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- KVRAF
- 21196 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
Give me a week and I'll figure it out. LOL.ENV1 wrote:I rarely need help with a synthesizer because usually when all else fails i am able to figure things out via trial and error. But is this case there are a few things that remain somewhat mysterious.
- The synth comes with a bunch of .wt2 files in its Wavetables dir, but the Wavetable Oscillator itself works with .smw files. These .wt2 files can not simply be renamed to .smw, which means they are really a different format and not just having a different file extension. What are the .wt2 files included for if thats not what the WTO actually uses, and why are there no .smw files?
- What kind of material is one supposed to be loading into the WTO via Load Sample? I understand that it doesnt do single cycles since it wants to chop up the sample into several bits, (harmonic snapshots, as its called in the manual), but what exactly is one supposed to be using here so it gives useful results? Is there something like a recommended lenght, recommended gaps within the source, anything that one should know with regards to optimal format?
- What does the WTO actually do, in a operational sense? It doesnt seem to actually scan through a source when you, say, set Wavecount to 2 and put one indicator at the start and one at the end. To me it sounds more like it is simply morphing from one indicator-area to the other as the Wavepos knob approaches the 50% position, and then back again when you go from 50% to full. But everything outside and in-between the indicators seems to be discarded/ignored. The only way to do a classic scan-through-the-entire-source seems to be enabling 'Preview Wave' and then dragging one of the indicators across the source, manually, with the mouse.
- The manual calls the window that displays the waveform 'WaveMaker', and goes on to say that "This window allows you to edit wavetables". Still i can see nothing on the UI that indicates that making waves (as in creating new ones from scratch) or even just editing loaded waves is actually possible.
- Has anyone ever tried to make wavetables for this synth with AudioTerm? I did a quick check on the files that come with AudioTerm, and as far as i could see they all had different headers. (Which means they are not compatible.) WAV format should still work though, so has anyone ever tried this? Any recommendations as to how one should go about it to get good and useful results?
Thanks for any and all info you can share.
Seriously, I love Sonigen but never spent a lot of time with the WT functionality because I'm always so damned busy with work.
I expect to have some free time towards the end of this month. I WILL figure it out. That I can guarantee. I haven't met a synth yet that I couldn't conquer. Okay, maybe Cycle, but that's not a synth. That's a mutant being from the planet Kwilar.
Later.
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- KVRAF
- 3060 posts since 10 Nov, 2013 from Germany
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- KVRist
- 148 posts since 16 Jul, 2014
I am looking forward to an answer on this as well. I just discovered Sonigen and it looks like fun so I started working through the manual and playing with it and after an hour or so I figured I understood pretty much everything except the WaveTable osc. I only got as far as ENV1’s point 1 (wavetable file types don’t even match) so came searching KVR and found this thread!
So anyway here is a bump to see if wagtunes can deliver
Cheers,
provoc
So anyway here is a bump to see if wagtunes can deliver
Cheers,
provoc
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- KVRAF
- 21196 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
Thanks for bumping this thread. I forgot all about it. Have since got sucked into another project (Omnisphere 2 patch library) that should be done by the end of this month. Have also been working on creating patches for Wusikstation 8 that William will be including with the release. So far he has about 70 of mine.provoc wrote:I am looking forward to an answer on this as well. I just discovered Sonigen and it looks like fun so I started working through the manual and playing with it and after an hour or so I figured I understood pretty much everything except the WaveTable osc. I only got as far as ENV1’s point 1 (wavetable file types don’t even match) so came searching KVR and found this thread!
So anyway here is a bump to see if wagtunes can deliver
Cheers,
provoc
In addition to that been working on some club mixes to get my chops up to snuff.
I am officially now putting this on my to-do list to be completed no later than end of June. I will have a definitive answer by that time even if the answer is "Sorry, this thing don't work the way we want it to" which is what I am suspecting before I even get started from the limited time I've already had to play around with it. Modular synths are no problem for me and if they include functionality not normally associated with them (such as MUX wavetables) they normally work as expected. MUX is a perfect example and its wavetable capability is excellent. Sonigen appears to be a little quirky upon initial inspection.
Like I said, by the end of June, I'll have an answer.
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- KVRAF
- 21196 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
Okay, decided to take a break from my work to tackle this. Took me a couple of hours but mystery solved.
I have kind of mixed feelings about the Sonigen wavetable functionality. It is nowhere near as powerful as a dedicated wavetable synth like Serum. So let's not even go there. However, it does have some interesting features that can come in handy.
What I did, in order to test this, after I figured out how it works, was to go into Audio Term and create a hand made wavetable and store it in KTERM (File type 3) wave format. I figured this would probably be most compatible with Sonigen. In importing the wave, it appears that Sonigen runs it through some sort of filter process. I made sure I tested this with no filters inserted. So you don't get a pure WYHIWYG wavetable. So if that's your goal, you can pretty much stop here. It ain't happening.
However, I did solve the smoothness issue or the appearance of just jumping between wavepoints. It has to do with setting this thing up and it's a royal PITA.
Essentially, your wave or wavetable (wav format) is treated as a wave source, not a table. Oh, if you create a table and load it (which still has to be done via the load sample option if it's a wav file) it will "attempt" to figure out the number of wavepoints in the file but in my case, it did a piss poor job. I had to increase the number of points.
The way you do that is simply go to wavecount and from the pull down box pick the number you want. Unfortunately, you are maxed out at 16 (waves 0 to 15). So if you have a wavetable with more than 16 sample points you'll have to adjust the wave in the Sonigen editor. I don't expect that will be too big a problem though. I only used about 6 or 7 sample points though Sonigen only picked up 4.
Anyway, to set your sample points (this is a key step) you have to scroll through each point using the Wave arrows which are right under the wavecount drop down box.
If you look very carefully, you will notice at the far left hand side (after you've increased the wave count to the number you want) little red boxes. At least they look red to me. I'm color blind. But they remind me of that old breakout game by Atari with the little stairs. Anyway, if you choose your wave point, one of these stairs will highlight. You will notice as you go from wave 0 to 15, the stairs get lower.
Take your mouse, left click on the highlighted stair and move it to where you want it to go along the wave itself. I suggest starting at wave 0 and then moving each wave (0 - 15) continuously to the right of the wave before it. This is the first step to getting a smooth transition between one wave point and another.
Before I go to step 2, you will notice that graphic at the bottom of the box. That is the highlighted wave position (0-15) of where you are currently at. If you look inside that box, you will notice a blue line going from top to bottom. This blue line can be moved by right clicking on your mouse button and dragging the line to where you want it to end for that wave position. This is the part I was referring to above as being an interesting feature. The placement of this blue line will determine the number of harmonics associated with that particular wave point. And you can do this for each wave point. So you can effectively take the same wave and create multiple wave tables out of it simply by changing harmonic content. Pretty nifty.
Finally, when setting up your patch, in order to clearly hear what's going on with your wavetable, assign a controller using the modwheel option to the Wave parameter in your wavetable module. From there, it's a matter of adjusting the modwheel min and max values in order to get a smooth transition from the start to the end of the wavetable.
I am not 100% sure what the wavetable is doing if you assign your mod wheel hard left and hard right for min and max. It sounds like it is going past the end point of the wavetable and starting over again at the beginning, which would be a bug. But I can't be 100% sure. So to make sure you get a smooth transition from start to finish, you will need to carefully plot your min and max values for your mod wheel control.
It isn't the most powerful or elegant wavetable functionality in the world but it is useable. I've managed to create very smooth wavetables and will post some examples when I get a chance. It takes some work and it's not nearly as easy as doing it in Serum, but it can be done.
One last thing. You cannot create traditional wavetables directly in Sonigen by loading multiple samples at each wave point. One sample load is it. If you load another one, it overwrites the one you loaded before it. So if you want to create a wavetable out of several static waves, you will have to do this outside of Sonigen. You can however load a wave file into Sonigen that is an existing wavetable and, while Sonigen may not interpret it exactly, you will be able to work with it to get it to something usable. You may have to do a bit of transposing up or down depending on the sample key.
Like I said, not the most powerful or elegant but it works.
** EDIT ** Forgot something important. Well, 2 things.
1) Adjust your FFT after importing the sample. It defaults to 1024. You might find that too small.
2) After you're happy with your work, save the wavetable. This saves it as SMW (Sonigen Modular Wavetable) format so that you can then just reload the wavetable again without having to do all that work again.
I have kind of mixed feelings about the Sonigen wavetable functionality. It is nowhere near as powerful as a dedicated wavetable synth like Serum. So let's not even go there. However, it does have some interesting features that can come in handy.
What I did, in order to test this, after I figured out how it works, was to go into Audio Term and create a hand made wavetable and store it in KTERM (File type 3) wave format. I figured this would probably be most compatible with Sonigen. In importing the wave, it appears that Sonigen runs it through some sort of filter process. I made sure I tested this with no filters inserted. So you don't get a pure WYHIWYG wavetable. So if that's your goal, you can pretty much stop here. It ain't happening.
However, I did solve the smoothness issue or the appearance of just jumping between wavepoints. It has to do with setting this thing up and it's a royal PITA.
Essentially, your wave or wavetable (wav format) is treated as a wave source, not a table. Oh, if you create a table and load it (which still has to be done via the load sample option if it's a wav file) it will "attempt" to figure out the number of wavepoints in the file but in my case, it did a piss poor job. I had to increase the number of points.
The way you do that is simply go to wavecount and from the pull down box pick the number you want. Unfortunately, you are maxed out at 16 (waves 0 to 15). So if you have a wavetable with more than 16 sample points you'll have to adjust the wave in the Sonigen editor. I don't expect that will be too big a problem though. I only used about 6 or 7 sample points though Sonigen only picked up 4.
Anyway, to set your sample points (this is a key step) you have to scroll through each point using the Wave arrows which are right under the wavecount drop down box.
If you look very carefully, you will notice at the far left hand side (after you've increased the wave count to the number you want) little red boxes. At least they look red to me. I'm color blind. But they remind me of that old breakout game by Atari with the little stairs. Anyway, if you choose your wave point, one of these stairs will highlight. You will notice as you go from wave 0 to 15, the stairs get lower.
Take your mouse, left click on the highlighted stair and move it to where you want it to go along the wave itself. I suggest starting at wave 0 and then moving each wave (0 - 15) continuously to the right of the wave before it. This is the first step to getting a smooth transition between one wave point and another.
Before I go to step 2, you will notice that graphic at the bottom of the box. That is the highlighted wave position (0-15) of where you are currently at. If you look inside that box, you will notice a blue line going from top to bottom. This blue line can be moved by right clicking on your mouse button and dragging the line to where you want it to end for that wave position. This is the part I was referring to above as being an interesting feature. The placement of this blue line will determine the number of harmonics associated with that particular wave point. And you can do this for each wave point. So you can effectively take the same wave and create multiple wave tables out of it simply by changing harmonic content. Pretty nifty.
Finally, when setting up your patch, in order to clearly hear what's going on with your wavetable, assign a controller using the modwheel option to the Wave parameter in your wavetable module. From there, it's a matter of adjusting the modwheel min and max values in order to get a smooth transition from the start to the end of the wavetable.
I am not 100% sure what the wavetable is doing if you assign your mod wheel hard left and hard right for min and max. It sounds like it is going past the end point of the wavetable and starting over again at the beginning, which would be a bug. But I can't be 100% sure. So to make sure you get a smooth transition from start to finish, you will need to carefully plot your min and max values for your mod wheel control.
It isn't the most powerful or elegant wavetable functionality in the world but it is useable. I've managed to create very smooth wavetables and will post some examples when I get a chance. It takes some work and it's not nearly as easy as doing it in Serum, but it can be done.
One last thing. You cannot create traditional wavetables directly in Sonigen by loading multiple samples at each wave point. One sample load is it. If you load another one, it overwrites the one you loaded before it. So if you want to create a wavetable out of several static waves, you will have to do this outside of Sonigen. You can however load a wave file into Sonigen that is an existing wavetable and, while Sonigen may not interpret it exactly, you will be able to work with it to get it to something usable. You may have to do a bit of transposing up or down depending on the sample key.
Like I said, not the most powerful or elegant but it works.
** EDIT ** Forgot something important. Well, 2 things.
1) Adjust your FFT after importing the sample. It defaults to 1024. You might find that too small.
2) After you're happy with your work, save the wavetable. This saves it as SMW (Sonigen Modular Wavetable) format so that you can then just reload the wavetable again without having to do all that work again.
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- KVRist
- 148 posts since 16 Jul, 2014
Hi Wagtunes,
Thanks for the detailed reply! I have downloaded AudioTerm and will give it a go soon. Looks pretty complicated though especially seeing as it appears to have a VT100 terminal interface from the 1970s
Cheers,
provoc
Thanks for the detailed reply! I have downloaded AudioTerm and will give it a go soon. Looks pretty complicated though especially seeing as it appears to have a VT100 terminal interface from the 1970s
Cheers,
provoc
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- KVRAF
- 21196 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
I grew up with MS DOS so this wasn't really that hard for me. Actually, when Windows 3.0 hit, I was totally lost. Took me a while to get used to GUI.provoc wrote:Hi Wagtunes,
Thanks for the detailed reply! I have downloaded AudioTerm and will give it a go soon. Looks pretty complicated though especially seeing as it appears to have a VT100 terminal interface from the 1970s
Cheers,
provoc
Now I can't imagine living without it.
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- KVRAF
- 12522 posts since 21 Mar, 2008 from Hannover, Germany
deleted as most parts were a bit off topic...
Last edited by Ingonator on Wed May 20, 2015 6:19 am, edited 3 times in total.
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1
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- KVRAF
- 12522 posts since 21 Mar, 2008 from Hannover, Germany
I had used Sonigen Modular back in 2011:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=330048
Using it as a wavetable synth seemed to be very tedious and it is hard to get results known from typical wavetable synths.
As mentioned in the thread some of my "wavetables" i had done there later seemed to be included with the Sonigen Modular installer at that time. Have not used Sonigen for ages and have not checked if it is still included but i'll maybe have a look at it.
The point is that it is hard to get results from the Sonigen Modular wavetable oscillator taht are similar to dedicated wavetable synths like e.g. those from PPG, Waldorf or newer ones like DUNE 2, Serum or Codex.
Anyway i agree that the fre Audio Term tool is very helpful for creating wavetables for several wavetble synths and when exported as a WAV file those are also usable in synths that are not directly supported in the output formats of Audio Term. Seem to be a kind of "must have" tool for wavetable synth fans.
So far i had used this tool in combination with e.g. DUNE 2, PPG Wavegenerator, PPG Wavemapper 2, Waves Codex, Waldorf Nave and also my hardware Blofeld.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=330048
Using it as a wavetable synth seemed to be very tedious and it is hard to get results known from typical wavetable synths.
As mentioned in the thread some of my "wavetables" i had done there later seemed to be included with the Sonigen Modular installer at that time. Have not used Sonigen for ages and have not checked if it is still included but i'll maybe have a look at it.
The point is that it is hard to get results from the Sonigen Modular wavetable oscillator taht are similar to dedicated wavetable synths like e.g. those from PPG, Waldorf or newer ones like DUNE 2, Serum or Codex.
Anyway i agree that the fre Audio Term tool is very helpful for creating wavetables for several wavetble synths and when exported as a WAV file those are also usable in synths that are not directly supported in the output formats of Audio Term. Seem to be a kind of "must have" tool for wavetable synth fans.
So far i had used this tool in combination with e.g. DUNE 2, PPG Wavegenerator, PPG Wavemapper 2, Waves Codex, Waldorf Nave and also my hardware Blofeld.
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 2802 posts since 31 Aug, 2011
@wagtunes: I knew all of that already, what i was interested in learning was how this thing operates internally. (And of course the other things id mentioned in the opening post.) But thanks anyway, im sure its still helpful to other people who did not know these things.
At any rate, i had some time, fired up Sonigen, did some more checking, and this time ive actually made some progress. What the WavetableOsc seems to be doing is exactly what id suspected all along; namely going from one wave-segment to the next (0 -> 1 -> 2, etc.) and finally back to Segment 1. You can pretty much see whats happening when you enable 'Preview Wave' and then look at what the 'Wav' knob is doing as youre highlighting different segments. (It changes position depending on what segment is highlighted.)
The Upshot:
If there are only 2 segments enabled (the minimum amount) Segment 1 will correspond to Wav knob position hard left and Segment 2 will correspond to Wav knob position 12 o'clock. So what the WTO does in this case, as you turn the Wav knob clockwise, is go from Segment 1 (hard left) to Segment 2 (12 o'clock) and from there back to Segment 1 (hard right). Now the more segments you add, the more the 'return-to-1' position gets shifted towards the right. If you have all 16 segments enabled, Segment 16 will end at Wav knob position 0.94, (which is almost hard right), which leaves 0.06 of travel for the transition from Segment 16 back to Segment 1. So if you want to avoid the 'wrapping around' to Segment 1 at the end of the last segment, (i.e. you just want a traditional 'start-to-end sweep'), all you have to do is set the modulation intensity low enough for it not to reach the 'wrap-around point'. (Also the segments themselves can be freely positioned anywhere on the spectrum, meaning they dont have to be in any particular order, can overlap each other, anything goes.)
Thats about it as far as that particular aspect is concerned.
If anyone has any input with respect to any of the other points, lets hear it.
At any rate, i had some time, fired up Sonigen, did some more checking, and this time ive actually made some progress. What the WavetableOsc seems to be doing is exactly what id suspected all along; namely going from one wave-segment to the next (0 -> 1 -> 2, etc.) and finally back to Segment 1. You can pretty much see whats happening when you enable 'Preview Wave' and then look at what the 'Wav' knob is doing as youre highlighting different segments. (It changes position depending on what segment is highlighted.)
The Upshot:
If there are only 2 segments enabled (the minimum amount) Segment 1 will correspond to Wav knob position hard left and Segment 2 will correspond to Wav knob position 12 o'clock. So what the WTO does in this case, as you turn the Wav knob clockwise, is go from Segment 1 (hard left) to Segment 2 (12 o'clock) and from there back to Segment 1 (hard right). Now the more segments you add, the more the 'return-to-1' position gets shifted towards the right. If you have all 16 segments enabled, Segment 16 will end at Wav knob position 0.94, (which is almost hard right), which leaves 0.06 of travel for the transition from Segment 16 back to Segment 1. So if you want to avoid the 'wrapping around' to Segment 1 at the end of the last segment, (i.e. you just want a traditional 'start-to-end sweep'), all you have to do is set the modulation intensity low enough for it not to reach the 'wrap-around point'. (Also the segments themselves can be freely positioned anywhere on the spectrum, meaning they dont have to be in any particular order, can overlap each other, anything goes.)
Thats about it as far as that particular aspect is concerned.
If anyone has any input with respect to any of the other points, lets hear it.
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- KVRAF
- 21196 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
Isn't this pretty much what I said, regarding the wrap around, if you re-read my post?ENV1 wrote:@wagtunes: I knew all of that already, what i was interested in learning was how this thing operates internally. (And of course the other things id mentioned in the opening post.) But thanks anyway, im sure its still helpful to other people who did not know these things.
At any rate, i had some time, fired up Sonigen, did some more checking, and this time ive actually made some progress. What the WavetableOsc seems to be doing is exactly what id suspected all along; namely going from one wave-segment to the next (0 -> 1 -> 2, etc.) and finally back to Segment 1. You can pretty much see whats happening when you enable 'Preview Wave' and then look at what the 'Wav' knob is doing as youre highlighting different segments. (It changes position depending on what segment is highlighted.)
The Upshot:
If there are only 2 segments enabled (the minimum amount) Segment 1 will correspond to Wav knob position hard left and Segment 2 will correspond to Wav knob position 12 o'clock. So what the WTO does in this case, as you turn the Wav knob clockwise, is go from Segment 1 (hard left) to Segment 2 (12 o'clock) and from there back to Segment 1 (hard right). Now the more segments you add, the more the 'return-to-1' position gets shifted towards the right. If you have all 16 segments enabled, Segment 16 will end at Wav knob position 0.94, (which is almost hard right), which leaves 0.06 of travel for the transition from Segment 16 back to Segment 1. So if you want to avoid the 'wrapping around' to Segment 1 at the end of the last segment, (i.e. you just want a traditional 'start-to-end sweep'), all you have to do is set the modulation intensity low enough for it not to reach the 'wrap-around point'. (Also the segments themselves can be freely positioned anywhere on the spectrum, meaning they dont have to be in any particular order, can overlap each other, anything goes.)
Thats about it as far as that particular aspect is concerned.
If anyone has any input with respect to any of the other points, lets hear it.
I guess I must have been speaking Martian.
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 2802 posts since 31 Aug, 2011
You were stating the obvious. I was perfectly aware that it wraps around a long time before i ever wrote the opening post so a solution to that 'issue' was never sought. Still ive said thanks, so no need to get wierd here. Even if i dont benefit from the info, others still can. And believe it or not, i appreciate that too.wagtunes wrote:Isn't this pretty much what I said, regarding the wrap around, if you re-read my post?
I guess I must have been speaking Martian.
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- KVRAF
- 35439 posts since 11 Apr, 2010 from Germany
Why did this project die, BTW? I remember the dev made a couple of betas, sort of one every 2 months, and then, suddenly, the project died. Did he have to take a day job, and therefor didn't have the time to go on developing Sonigen Modular?
