Am I confused about wavetable

[himalaya]

Yeah, modulating the wavetable index position is where wavetable synthesis does its magic. It's completely different from anything else out there.

and that's predominantly why Wavetable synthesis has gained such reputation (for cool new sounds). Anyone who grew up with hardware synths in the 80s + 90s knew that wavetable = wavescanning = those shifting, moving sounds. Then come the new comers like Rapture which, technically a wavetable synth, omits the wave scanning bit, and creates so much confusion for people, as evidenced by this thread. It's a bit naughty of Rapture creators not to have acknowledged ( on the official product page) that Wavetable synthesis (as it was known throughout the 80s and 90s) was more than just those wavetables on their own, but rather, the wave scanning feature.

[EvilDragon]

I agree with that sentiment, himalaya.

[Shabdahbriah]

I agree with that sentiment, himalaya.

+1

[himalaya]

Thanks, friends, I was expecting to get shot down for that, as happened the last time this wavetable topic was discussed.

[pdxindy]

Thanks, friends, I was expecting to get shot down for that, as happened the last time this wavetable topic was discussed.

what is the point of a wavetable if you cannot scan through it???

[aciddose]

i think we ought to be fair and call it like it is:

a wavetable is a table containing a wave.

period.

you can add a whole slew on top of that but then you're adding on top of it!

interpolation through tables, morphing, blending, scanning all this stuff is in addition.

that's the issue.

now if you said "i'm confused about scanning multi-axis wavetables with interpolation" that would be something else.

here is a wave-table:

wave[2] =
{
0,
1,
};

[Shabdahbriah]

...
here is a wave-table:

wave[2] =
{
0,
1,
};

I loaded that formula into 'notepad' and couldn't get any sound out of it.

I took a screen-grab of it, and drag-n-dropped it into IL's Harmor, and WOWSERs!!!

It WORKS!!! We has noises...

[aciddose]

i typed it in my "notepad" and got this: http://soundcloud.com/aciddose/palynological-mutants

[Shabdahbriah]

i typed it in my "notepad" and got this: http://soundcloud.com/aciddose/palynological-mutants

WOW U ROCK!!!

[risome]

I am trying out rapture synth. I read that it was a wavetable synth, and this is why I want to try it out.

But it seems to me like it is nothing more than a bunch of separate waves that are layered together with no relation or interaction with one another.

I was under the impression that wavetable synth had progressively different waveforms that you cycled though to get a changing unique sound. Am I missing something here?

If you use Ableton LIVE you can get our Look Up Table Synth Live Pack with over 2000 analogue waveforms.

[aciddose]

i typed it in my "notepad" and got this: http://soundcloud.com/aciddose/palynological-mutants

WOW U ROCK!!!

oh wait. i think there was a typo... i managed to enter a load of random keys instead of 0 and 1 in some places.

otherwise though the whole thing was really represented by 0,1 at some point

[clif321]

Evolution of terminology is always interesting. I suspect that historically the term "wavetable synthesis" has meant different things in the lexecon of computer sound versus the lexecon of hardware synths, which of course now have merged with sometimes confusing results. As one who came to the world of electronic music via computers rather than hardware synths, what comes to my mind hearing the term "wavetable synthesis" is the transition from computer sound cards with poor-sounding imitation instruments derived from FM sound chips to sound cards with more realistic-sounding instruments derived from ROM-stored samples. The "wavetable" in these improved sound cards was the collection of ROM-based samples representing the library of playable intruments (eventually standardized as GM in Windows soundcards and outboard units like the Roland SoundCanvas). This is of course different from the usage of the term "wavetable synthesis" in hardware synths like the PPG Wave, where the "wavetable" was a collection of waveforms that the synth could dynamically scan in creating a single sound. As I recall, Korg's early sample-based hardware synths (my first synth was an M3R) used sampled waveforms in both senses, though without using the term "wavetable." The M1 and the M3R had static ROM-based samples that Korg called "multisounds" to signify that some of them included samples across an instrumnt's range. The Wavestation allowed dynamic sequencing of samples that Korg called "wave sequences" (another term that might mean different things to different people in other contexts), and as I recall it also allowed cross-fading between multiple wave sequences, which Korg called "vector synthesis" (yet another marketing buzzword). In the world of software synthesizers, Rapture is a "wavetable" synthesizer only in the sample-based sound card sense. It uses sampled single-cycle waveforms as the basis for sound creation, though it sounds infinitely better than sample-based sound cards due to an exceptionally good software sound engine, and it obviously has much more flexibility in terms of filtering, modulation, effects, layering of multiple processed waveforms, etc. IMO with good programming it is easily one of the best sounding software synths out there. But it does not do wavetable synthesis in the PPG sense (except maybe as another poster mentioned by the brute force technique of step sequencing the six available waveform layers). If you want wavetable synthesis in the PPG Wave sense, you will want to look elsewhere. Fortunately there are many excellent choices. For classic PPG-style wave scanning I like both the PPG Wave 3V emulation and the cheaper ConcreteFX Kubik. I'm sure there are other equally good alternatives (someone mentioned Largo) that I haven't tried. And of course there are also superb sounding powerhouse software synths like Massive and Zebra that enable waveform morphing, to varying degrees, among their many other programming options.

[EvilDragon]

Holy shit that post needs paragraphs so desperately.

[Kriminal]

Here ya go then...

Evolution of terminology is always interesting. I suspect that historically the term "wavetable synthesis" has meant different things in the lexecon of computer sound versus the lexecon of hardware synths, which of course now have merged with sometimes confusing results. As one who came to the world of electronic music via computers rather than hardware synths, what

comes to my mind hearing the term "wavetable synthesis" is the transition from computer sound cards with poor-sounding imitation instruments derived from FM sound chips to sound cards with more realistic-sounding instruments derived from ROM-stored samples. The "wavetable" in these improved sound cards was the collection of ROM-based samples representing the library of playable intruments (eventually standardized as GM in Windows soundcards and outboard units like the Roland SoundCanvas). This is of course different from the usage of the term "wavetable synthesis" in hardware synths

like the PPG Wave, where the "wavetable" was a collection of waveforms that the synth could dynamically scan in creating a single sound. As I recall, Korg's early sample-based hardware synths (my first synth was an M3R) used sampled waveforms in both senses, though without using the term "wavetable." The M1 and the M3R had static ROM-based samples that Korg called "multisounds" to signify that some of them included samples across an instrumnt's range. The Wavestation allowed dynamic sequencing of samples that Korg called "wave sequences" (another term that might mean different things to

different people in other contexts), and as I recall it also allowed cross-fading between multiple wave sequences, which Korg called "vector synthesis" (yet another marketing buzzword). In the world of software synthesizers, Rapture is a "wavetable" synthesizer only in the sample-based sound card sense. It uses sampled single-cycle waveforms as the basis for sound creation, though it sounds infinitely better than sample-based sound cards due to an exceptionally good software sound engine, and it obviously has much more flexibility in terms of filtering, modulation, effects, layering

of multiple processed waveforms, etc. IMO with good programming it is easily one of the best sounding software synths out there. But it does not do wavetable synthesis in the PPG sense (except maybe as another poster mentioned by the brute force technique of step sequencing the six available waveform layers). If you want wavetable synthesis in the PPG Wave sense, you will want to look elsewhere. Fortunately there are many excellent choices. For classic PPG-style wave scanning I like both the PPG Wave 3V emulation and the cheaper ConcreteFX Kubik. I'm sure there are other equally good

alternatives (someone mentioned Largo) that I haven't tried. And of course there are also superb sounding powerhouse software synths like Massive and Zebra that enable waveform morphing, to varying degrees, among their many other programming options.

[PietW.]

A wavetable is a list with up to 64 or 128 waves, among which
you can move at will.