New (or rather, very old :-) Synth in town

[bmanic]

This is quite interesting but didn't the real PPG wave have an analogue filter and output path? That surely must be a big part of the color of the sound as well.

Cheers!
bManic

[Guckli]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you [da capo ad infinitum].

Retrogaming and old electronic hardware being another interest of mine I'm really interested in (as) true (as possible) emulation. I can already play my Commodore and Amstrad/Schneider games and run the horrible CPC-sequencer I started out with, this is the next step! That you decided to tackle one of my favourite digital synths is an added bonus.

This gem, VST/Savihost and the emax images have now officially made you my favourite KVR-member (at least while XT2 is still in beta...)

My emax floppydrive died on me a while ago though; haven't found a spare yet so if you need an idea for another vst-project...

[arakula]

Using the Waveterm emulator to send MIDI seems especially confusing (no doubt, exactly like the real thing).

You don't need that.

Here's a bit of my personal history to make things a bit clearer... the following paragraphs try to unwind the threads a bit, although most really ran in parallel, one way or the other.

If you look at www.waveterm.com , the site dedicated to our Waveterm C project, you'll find a bit of information. The original PPG Waveterm was a computer that could be connected to up to 2 Waves, 2 EVUs, 1 PRK(-FD), and a HDU. For that, PPG had a proprietary parallel bus which was, at the time, rather fast - much faster than MIDI, anyway, and MIDI had just started, so PPG decided not to jump the MIDI train yet... it wasn't until 1983 or 84 that they added a MIDI interface to the Wave.

When we decided to recreate the Waveterm, we had the original real, true-blue hardware devices in mind - we wanted to attach the real Waves to our modern PCs. To do so, Paul Maddox created a hardware interface (software running on this baby done by yours truly). This thing is attached to the PC over either a RS232 or USB connection and talks to attached PPG devices over the PPG parallel bus. This is the Waveterm C hardware part. The software part is a Windows package which can talk to the hardware interface using either a RS-232 or USB driver. Well, this project, unfortunately, isn't really complete, and I have doubts whether it will ever be - the number of hardware Waves wasn't very big from the start (300 Wave 2.2, 700 Wave 2.3, citing Mark Vail's "Vintage Synthesizers"), and production costs for the hardware device are relatively high if you only need a small batch, so we never produced more than 2 protoypes (can be seen on the web site).

The Waveterm C software part... well, this continues to grow, but only very very slowly. Other projects, such as my VSTHost, take too much of my spare time... and I tend to do the things first that currently manage to catch my interest.

Now let's look at a completely different area.

The original PPG Wave 2.2 and 2.3 were really nice things, and with the V6 operating system they even had a simple, but working MIDI implementation. What they didn't have, however, was the capability to save and restore their programs over MIDI. To do so, you needed to create backups on cassette tape, or you needed a Waveterm to store them on diskettes. The Waveterm wasn't cheap, so not very many Waveterms were produced. Someone, named Bill Johnson IIRC, produced a little patch for the Wave 2.3 V6 that allowed it to send/receive patch data over MIDI. I found this very intriguing, but extremely limited. Over the next year, I reverse-engineered about 85% of the Wave and EVU operating systems ("reverse-engineered" means that I know exactly what it does; some areas in the sequencer part are still a mystery to me ) - and began to create my own additions to it. Including a patch that does the same as the original V8 did, but better, faster, more complete, and for all 3 devices (Wave 2.2, 2.3, EVU). Plus quite some other bug removals, enhancements etc.. Originally, I simply passed that around for the price of the EPROMs, until I came to know Alexander Guelfenburg of Virtual Music, who persuaded me that this might be a commercial success of sorts (remember, 300 2.2, 700 2.3 - very limited potential customer base). Over the course of some years, we really managed to sell quite some V8.x kits - a fair percentage of the world's Wave population runs on my OS now, something I'm really proud of.

Here, now, comes the "Waveterm and MIDI" thing.

In the V8.1/V8.3 Wave OS, I've added a nice little thing - these ones allow the Wave to use the complete PPG Bus protocol over MIDI, too, in form of SysEx strings. This, of course, is much slower than the parallel bus, but it allows a V8.x Wave or EVU to communicate with Waveterm C on the PC without the need for a hardware interface. Granted, transferring a complete Wavetable takes around 20-30 seconds, compared to 2-3 seconds using the PPG Bus, but it works - and, with devices of this age, you can't really expect instant access to thousands of programs anyway. So, while V8.x grew, so grew a MIDI driver for Waveterm C, which can now talk to real Waves over MIDI, too - if they use my operating system.

Since creating a new OS version for the Wave meant

• o changing the assembler source
  o assembling it (did I mention that I created an Assembler and Disassembler for that? )
  o creating a set of 4 EPROMs
  o opening the Wave (unless in the middle of a debugging cycle and it is open )
  o carefully replacing the EPROMs
  o booting the Wave, only to
  o find that it doesn't work, so
  o go back to the source to find out what's wrong by mentally reproducing the program flow

I became fed up rather fast and looked for a better way. Knowing quite a lot about this Wave and its hardware already, I set out to recreate it in software. This took quite a lot of time, but I did it; amusingly, from a musician's point of view, the actual sound generation was the last thing I added. The first was the processor emulation, followed by a crude debugger. This allowed me to start debugging a new OS version on the PC, without the need to play around with my precious hardware. Over time, more and more peripherals were re-created in software, until WaveSim contained a nearly complete software simulation of all Wave hardware parts visible to the OS software. V8.3 was developed completely on my PC - only the final tests were done on the real devices.

During the last years, I invested quite a lot of time and thoughts into this VST revolution - Cubase V3.7, I think, was the version that started it, but I didn't really become interested until VSTis became a possibility. Now that was something. I started to create VSTHost and the VSTi version of WaveSim in parallel. When someone, I think it was on a Cubase forum, asked for the source code for a VST host program, I offered a link to my little solution, which wasn't even linked to from any of my web pages yet, and AFAIR, didn't even output any sound at that time, it just loaded and parameterized PlugIns - and found that during the next days and weeks, some thousand downloads happened. Whoops, thought I, looks like they like it, so I made VSTHost official... "the rest is history", as they say. The VSTi WaveSim slowly grew, too. I'm still not absolutely happy with it, but I'm a perfectionist at heart, I'll never be satisfied... so I decided to look whether anybody can see a sense in this thing, which is why you're holding it in hand today.


... so, you see, MIDI and Waveterm are no strict necessity.

[arakula]

This is quite interesting but didn't the real PPG wave have an analogue filter and output path? That surely must be a big part of the color of the sound as well.

Yep, and that's where I'm not absolutely satisfied with my recreation yet. But - don't overestimate it. The Wavetable (in the PPG/Waldorf sense) sound generation is much more important for this distinctive "this is a PPG" sound.

[Edit:] oh yeah... and if someone has an accurate mathematical or pseudocode description of a SSM2044 VCF or CEM 3360 VCA, that would make me really, really, really happy!

[arakula]

My emax floppydrive died on me a while ago though; haven't found a spare yet so if you need an idea for another vst-project...

Actually, if anything, I'd tackle my Fairlight CMI IIx - dual 6809 processors, which I'm familiar with.

[noizetronic]

+1 for 'things on gui are difficult to read'.

Apart from that, it sounds wonderful and the cpu use is below expectations after having read what's going on there 'under the hood'. The lcd contrast pot made me giggle. Thank you for sharing this!

[laputa_sync]

fish.

[omissis]

I would have been a lot happy if the WaveSim would have featured a Waveterm emulation, at least in order not to completely waste the "Waveterm C" project....I believe it had a nifty though a little "get used to" GUI....

BTW: ever thought to port the Waveterm to software while getting free of the hardboard?

Waveterm C is a Windows program, and it can work without the hardware interface, too - this is only necessary when talking to a real Wave. And not even that, provided it uses my OS V8.3 - in this case, Waveterm C can talk to it over MIDI. This, of course, is much slower, but works quite well, too. Waveterm C (the software part) can communicate using the hardware interface, MIDI, a serial port, or an internal interprocess communication driver for simulated Waves/EVUs. And yes, I'm thinking about reviving it on a software-only base - if and only if enough interest is there.

That is, if I have downloaded somewhere ( don't remember where, really!) the preset soundbank featured on the Waveterm can I load them ? Or, if I have a wave file , can I load it into the Waveterm , both if it acts like a WavetermC or a Waveterm-A or B environment??

[Scot Solida]

I chose the "have an original" option, even though I'd still probably buy this one if it was close. I am looking forward to trying it out to see how it compares to my Wave 2.2. Ah, I see it is the same as the standalone version that was included with the Waveterm C demo...this will very good, yes, I would buy it...especially if it ran on my Receptor!

I haven't looked at the Waveterm C site for some time...but if I am reading your posts correctly, it seems that I could use the Waveterm C now with my Wave 2.2? is this right? Without the hardware interface? I do indeed have your OS running on my 2.2, so this would be good news indeed! Especially since I don't expect to ever find a Waveterm A for sale!

Waveterm C would be enough to convince me to put a PC in my studio again...

[shamann]

Actually, if anything, I'd tackle my Fairlight CMI IIx - dual 6809 processors, which I'm familiar with.

Ooh, do that! I'd buy that one for sure.

Thanks for the detailed answer about the Waveterm. I had assumed it might work in some form as a programmer and sequencer for the Wave. I'll ignore it for now and go read the docs on how to use the Wave instead.

[arakula]

+1 for 'things on gui are difficult to read'.

Point taken.

The lcd contrast pot made me giggle.

That was the main purpose

[arakula]

That is, if I have downloaded somewhere ( don't remember where, really!) the preset soundbank featured on the Waveterm can I load them ? Or, if I have a wave file , can I load it into the Waveterm , both if it acts like a WavetermC or a Waveterm-A or B environment??

Into Waveterm C, and from there into Wavesim - Yes in both cases.
Or, to be precise, into the full version. Not into the Wave 2.2 V6.

[arakula]

I haven't looked at the Waveterm C site for some time...but if I am reading your posts correctly, it seems that I could use the Waveterm C now with my Wave 2.2? is this right? Without the hardware interface?

Yes.

The only thing that it can't do yet is a rather arcane feature of the original Waveterm B. Using this one, you could send sequences of any length to the attached devices (which makes things like the "Two Tribes" demo a possibility). This is only possible if you split long sequences into parts - the amount of memory in the Wave/EVU set aside for sequences is very limited.

Waveterm C can't do that (yet), so, actually, I have no idea whether the corresponding code in V8.3 works or not (which means, presumably not ). But - I have severe doubts whether anybody would want to use this extremely complex sequencer anyway. Even Cakewalk 1 was better suited for creating MIDI sequences. In fact, any old Atari made a better sequencer.

[Scot Solida]

I haven't looked at the Waveterm C site for some time...but if I am reading your posts correctly, it seems that I could use the Waveterm C now with my Wave 2.2? is this right? Without the hardware interface?

Yes.

The only thing that it can't do yet is a rather arcane feature of the original Waveterm B. Using this one, you could send sequences of any length to the attached devices (which makes things like the "Two Tribes" demo a possibility). This is only possible if you split long sequences into parts - the amount of memory in the Wave/EVU set aside for sequences is very limited.

Waveterm C can't do that (yet), so, actually, I have no idea whether the corresponding code in V8.3 works or not (which means, presumably not ). But - I have severe doubts whether anybody would want to use this extremely complex sequencer anyway. Even Cakewalk 1 was better suited for creating MIDI sequences. In fact, any old Atari made a better sequencer.

This is very good news! I never realized that Waveterm C was already working so well...I thank you, sir, for all of the hard work you (and Paul) have put into keeping the dear old blue beasties up to date! Well, I reckon I will have to put my PC back into the studio rack! Eek. That means getting another rack. Oh well, anything for the PPG! I will be trying out Waveterm C today, then!

[stesgarbi]

Hi,
I'm very impressed by your project. I Love the PPG and, since i'm not completelly satisfacted by the old Waldorf VSTi(that's nice,and I like it, but it's not "the thrue" yet), I'd be very happy to get something REALLY NOT MINUS THAN 95% CLOSE TO THE ORIGINAL.
So, I dont' care about CPU usage, it's enough this new baby comes like "the real thing". And I'd also be happy to spend that money of value to buy it.
So, THE IMPORTANT IS THE ACCURACY OF THE REPRODUCTION OF ORIGINAL PPG (please dont' under-estimate importance of the analog filters: they gived a lot of the characteristic sound in the original. Wavetables, themselves, are much but they are still not enough IMHO).
In conclusion, THE IMPORTANT IS THE CLOSENESS TO THE ORIGINAL, to get something which blowes away the glorious (and rightly appreciated) waldorf PPG Vst.
If you'll achieve this result, I'll be ready to buy the beast, without careing too much for the price.
Cheers
Stefano