Am I confused about wavetable

[ENV1]

A Square is called Square, but what it really describes is a series of equal-length linear pulses. The proper term for Square therefore would have been 'Symmetric Linear Pulse'

Not that it matters, but both Triangle and Square are the closest you can get to being a triangle and a square in one dimension (plus time).

That goes without saying.

The point was, there would have been better terms.

But then under that definition, the Saw is also a Triangular wave (which makes sense, a saw is a triangle with 0% duty cycle).

Which is why i said that what is now called Triangle should have been called Saw. It makes perfect sense in that case, just as it makes perfect sense to call what is now called Saw Ramp Up and Ramp Down.

A Square is called Square, but what it really describes is a series of equal-length linear pulses. The proper term for Square therefore would have been 'Symmetric Linear Pulse' (SLP).

LOL—I think more people get the right idea when you say "square wave" than if you said "Symmetric Linear Pulse" (or worse—yet another TLA—"SLP").

That may be true today.

But thats not what i was talking about.

I said that these terms should have been used from the beginning, i.e. 50-60 years ago.

Now it is of course too late for a change.

(Which is kind of the point i was trying to make.)

I realize that you may be joking, but if not...ever hear the word "pedantic"?

Well, if 'pedantic' is another description for doing things in a logical, thought-through fashion then 'pedantic' would seem to be the way to go. It is in any case preferable to ignorant, negligent and careless, which rather often leads to chaos, misunderstanding and things that make little or no sense at all...

[jens]

I realize that you may be joking, but if not...ever hear the word "pedantic"?

Well, if 'pedantic' is another description for doing things in a logical, thought-through fashion then 'pedantic' would seem to be the way to go.

But it isn't. Pedantic means wasting time&energy by being more exact than is sensible&logical. No good scientist is a pedant.

[ENV1]

I realize that you may be joking, but if not...ever hear the word "pedantic"?

Well, if 'pedantic' is another description for doing things in a logical, thought-through fashion then 'pedantic' would seem to be the way to go.

But it isn't. Pedantic means wasting time&energy by being more exact than is sensible&logical. No good scientist is a pedant.

You are missing the point.

It is not 'pedantic' to describe things with proper terms.

It is stupid to describe them with terms which are less accurate than possible.

If you need proof, re-read this thread.

The 'wavetable-war' is a prime example for what chaos ill-chosen terminology can cause...

[jens]

There is no such thing as a 'proper' term, which is the point you seem to have been missing.

[ENV1]

There is no such thing as a 'proper' term

OK...

[optofonik]

Stop yelling and RTFM.

http://www.musicdsp.org/files/Wavetable-101.pdf

Nuff said.

ftfy.

Sorry mate, nothing to fix. The guy who invents it calls the shots.




Every wavetable is a wave but not every wave is a wavetable.

Every wavetable is interpolated but not everything interpolated is a wavetable.



I'm just sayin'.

[whyterabbyt]

Sorry mate, nothing to fix. The guy who invents it calls the shots even after the academics try to steal the glory.

i dont think that counts when the academics have already defined the term the reuses for his invention. and anyways, what glory are they trying to steal? first credit to have thought up a name?

"hello, my colleagues in the Secret Cabal of Synthesis Academics. First order of business; we have that heard this guy Palm has thought up a method of synthesis"
"the bastard. did he write an academic paper?"
"not yet"
"so what can we do? we cant have some non-academic calling the shots"
"hey, what if we... <duh duh duh> steal the glory and reuse the name"
"cool. what did he invent?
"he calls it 'wavetable synthesis'"
"wait, didnt we already do that one in Music-IV?"
"shush, we're stealing his glory, now get out there and write some f**king papers"

[optofonik]

I want to add that IMO, a lot of these semantic problems come down to the number people involved in "electronic music" today who think it started with Juan Atkins, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Bob Moog, or any number of pop culture figures that come up in so many conversations about electronic music.

So many think they are leading the vanguard of something that started over a hundred years ago when, instead, they are trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm not saying that everyone is as ignorant of electronic music's history as they were in the 90s when all the cool kids started jumping on the bandwagon en masse, thank goodness, but that same misinformation that existed then still exists among many today and pervades a good deal of contemporary discourse on the subject.

I'm also infinitely amused by people who remain steadfastly contrary, just to be contrary, even when provided with information that supports their position.

[jens]

Every wavetable is interpolated

No.

[whyterabbyt]

Every wavetable is a wave but not every wave is a wavetable.

Every wavetable is interpolated but not everything interpolated is a wavetable.

I'm just sayin'.

you might want to rethink that; you dont actually need to interpolate data from a wavetable. fiddle with the delay time control on an early digital delay pedal and you'll get a demonstration of changing the clock speed to control pitch. if I remember rightly the voltage controlled Doepfer A-112 sampler module works in much the same way; no interpolation needed to control pitch, or do anything else.

[optofonik]

Sorry mate, nothing to fix. The guy who invents it calls the shots even after the academics try to steal the glory.

i dont think that counts when the academics have already defined the term the reuses for his invention. and anyways, what glory are they trying to steal? first credit to have thought up a name?

"hello, my colleagues in the Secret Cabal of Synthesis Academics. First order of business; we have that heard this guy Palm has thought up a method of synthesis"
"the bastard. did he write an academic paper?"
"not yet"
"so what can we do? we cant have some non-academic calling the shots"
"hey, what if we... <duh duh duh> steal the glory and reuse the name"
"cool. what did he invent?
"he calls it 'wavetable synthesis'"
"wait, didnt we already do that one in Music-IV?"
"shush, we're stealing his glory, now get out there and write some f**king papers"

Which one of those papers referenced defined it first? The paper itself appears to be well over ten years older than Mr. Palm's research and implementation. The earliest references are contemporaneous with Wolfgang Palm's period of invention but none of the titles seem to reference the subject directly. Although the title, "A Digital Signal Processing Approach to Interpolation", seems like it references a paper that could come close to addressing our topic, at least in theory, when one reads the abstract the paper's relation to the subject at hand seems less so. It seems related more to the Nyquist theorem and early research behind solving the problems related to digital audio sampling as a whole.

[aciddose]

It starts with the fact that there is no such thing as a square wave.

you're almost absolutely correct. notice that the term in technical use is "pulse wave".

"square wave" is another common term. although about the "almost" part of it - even though we're using two different measurements for the two axises; if our pulse were amplitude 1.0 and it's length were time 1.0, we could almost fairly refer to this as "square".

you can see though that such a definition is idiotic at best and otherwise just totally useless.

a more accurate interpretation of the term is that the edges of the wave are at 90 degree angles, making the angles "square".

the problem is that the average non-technical person won't have a clue what a "pulse waveform" is. it might be a sine with an amplitude envelope. so in that case defining the shape based upon right-angles (square angles) makes perfect sense. as long as you don't have a waveform with a 90 degree angle mixed with others. in which case you'd have a semi-square wave i guess.

[optofonik]

Sigh. Anything having to do with digitally sampled audio is, by definition, interpolated. Jeez, you really will argue anything, won't you? Lunch is over, I'll leave you to it.

Lose the chip, mate.

[optofonik]

"hello, my colleagues in the Secret Cabal of Synthesis Academics. First order of business; we have that heard this guy Palm has thought up a method of synthesis"
"the bastard. did he write an academic paper?"
"not yet"
"so what can we do? we cant have some non-academic calling the shots"
"hey, what if we... <duh duh duh> steal the glory and reuse the name"
"cool. what did he invent?
"he calls it 'wavetable synthesis'"
"wait, didnt we already do that one in Music-IV?"
"shush, we're stealing his glory, now get out there and write some f**king papers"

That ^ is funny stuff, however. Well done.

[Lotuzia]

Call me a simple mind but ........

I'd call a synthesizer wich use wavetables as oscillators a wavetable synthesizer, even if it cant perform scanning, modulation, interpolation, sweeping thru wavetables, and its wavetables are pure static. Because well it seems a bit logical and I dont see any other term.

Then if a synthesizer can peform some more sophisticated actions based on the wavetables, I could ........ still call it a wavetable syntesizer. Because it have some, and because as some posters have said, this particular term has also a kind of legacy, wich could lead me to think that most users will know instantly what this synth will do. But as this thread demonstrates, it might not be that obvious.

But I could also say it does "Transwave" like my old Ensoniq, or ScanWave, or MorphWave, or DWA ( Dynamic Wavetable Alchemy ), or something worse, or better.

But like I said, I'm a very simple mind

+ I think it might be a good move, if you're interested in a synth AND wish to know more about the synthesis it uses, to try it and/or to have a simple look at the manual, where most of the devs explain in a -more or less its true -detailed way all that stuff. Or ask in Kvr where there are always good souls to bring you an usually fast - and often informed - answer.

My 0.002