KVR Audio

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 11:57 am

fluffy_little_something wrote:Maybe it sounds appealing because it doesn't sound like a WT synth
I think I could do that pad in my va synth as well.

Not exactly. THe original PPG Wave 2.2 had a real analog filter too and PPG Wave 3.V includes a model of that.
Anyway Codex seems t o be good for doing both analog and digital sounds (like i also did with my free bank for PPG Wave 2.V and 3.V).

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 12:06 pm

BTW i also like how you could adjust the wavetable scanning points (Start, Mid, End) and the speed directly in the oscillator sections (including the graphical representaion).

There also are a few features for the wavetables that seem to be quite useful like e.g. the Formant, Resolution, Loop and Ringmod features.
Besides the Ringmod also the option for doing Osc Sync with the second oscillator could be quite interesting (comparable to e.g. Largo).

fluffy_little_something · Sun Oct 12, 2014 12:19 pm

Yes, the user interface is very good, invites you to start messing with the controls without studying manuals

SWAN808 · Post by **SWAN808** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 2:37 pm

theres no way to adjust the unison settings?

kiezum · Post by **kiezum** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 3:11 pm

At last I could try out Codex. To install Codex I had to update all the Waves plugins to 9.2. But after updating all my authorisations were lost. I had to contact support. Really a waste of time.

But Codex is great! Importing wav-files works really well. Speed, start, middle and end point is a brilliant simple way to get lots of sounds out of a wavetable. One page layout makes it easy to program. Nice filter, like elements. And modulating scanning through different wavetables... Modulating speed, start, middle and end is excellent. The resolution, formant knobs are also great.

I find that Codex is easier to program than Serum. But it doesn't have the wavetable editor of Serum!

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 3:16 pm

Both Codex and Serum seem to use wavetables as standard WAV files and the wavetables from Serum seem to be also possible to load into Codex.
This means you could export wavetables that were created in Audio Term using the Serum or the standard WAv format (i still test which one is best).

The Resolution knob in Codex adjusts how smooth the waveforms are played/interpolated with the maximum setting corresponding to the highest resolution. When using wavetables from Serum this seem to be too "clean" if you want to get the same sound as in Serum (i compared to the Serum demo).

Theoretically you could create the wavetable fro ma standard waveform editor like e.g,. Wavelab Elements 7 by just conectiong a bunch of waveforms as save this as a new WAV file. This is also how some of the WAV files of Serum seem to look inside a waveform editor whe one waveform has a size of 2048 samples.

Of course you could also just import a sample (could be a few seconds long) and do resynthesis of that one (e.g. a speech sample). Codex seems to be able to import WAv files with different bit-depths and sample rates.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 6:59 pm

stikygum wrote:I'm just not hearing anything that makes me think this is a wavetable synth. It all sounds like bread and butter stuff any VA could do, which isn't saying much.

Waves has some wavetable-y examples... but yeah

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 7:39 pm

pdxindy wrote:
stikygum wrote:I'm just not hearing anything that makes me think this is a wavetable synth. It all sounds like bread and butter stuff any VA could do, which isn't saying much.
Waves has some wavetable-y examples... but yeah

The factory library of Codex seems to be huge and there are indeed a lot of great analog and/or old school sounds. Anyway there are also lots of typical wavetable sounds, especially in the Keys, Pads and Atmospheres.

This seems to be one of the few synths that could do both typical analog stuff and wavetable/digital stuff with conparable great quality. If programmed properly it does not really seem to lack in one of those two kinds of sounds.

The low end is already good by default and could be even beetter with the simple but useful built-in EQ.

Wavetable import also does not seem to be a huge problem as it uses standard WAV files for the Import (comparable to Serum in that respect, also se my post above).

The Resolution knob for the wavetables could also have a huge impact on the basic sound of the oscillators. With that the wavetables could sound either very clean or quite rough (and/or Lo-Fi).
There are also several other features to change the basic sound like e.g. FM, Ringmod and Osc Sync, not to forget the Formant feature that could change the basic sound of the wavetable.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 7:52 pm

goldengate wrote:The presets are amazing! I'm rarely impressed by stocked presets, but these are great and usable.
This thing is on sale too, found it for $89!

The Presets are great indeed. Igot it for 85 $ at WavesUniverse (you have to register there first to do the purchase):
http://www.wavesuniverse.com/waves-plug ... ble-synth/

The final price with PayPal was around 69 € here in Germany.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 8:19 pm

Ingonator wrote:This seems to be one of the few synths that could do both typical analog stuff and wavetable/digital stuff with conparable great quality.

ps - eye like codex

PatchAdamz · Post by **PatchAdamz** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 8:33 pm

Compared to other wavetable synths, Codex had a less of a "digital" sound.

The analog characteristics do stand out, which is what is nice about it.

The filters allow for a broad range of possibilities.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 7:17 am

I found another feature in Codex taht seems to be quite unusual in wavetable synths. With the "OSC1 Table" and "OSC2 Table" modulation destination you could change the actual wavetable (not the waveform) that is currently used. First i tried to use this for scanning trough waveforms and was confused by the result.
This means it is possible to modulate both the waveforms inside a wavetable and also the wavetable itself at the same time.

If instead of the built-in scanning parameters (Start, Mid, End, Speed) you want to use an envelope (e.g. ENV 3) and/or LFO for waveform scanning inside a wavetable you could use e.g. OSC1 Start or OSC2 Start as a mod destination (the "Speed" knob in the OSC section has to be at minimum then).

If you just want to use a single waveform form the wavetable withoiut scanning just set the "Speed" knob to minimum and manually adjust the "Start" fader to select the desired waveform from the wavetable.

Custom wavetables will be saved in the patch file so those do not have to be stored at an additional location.

As already mentioned Codex (like Serum) uses simple WAV files for the wavetables so there are several ways to get custom wavetables including a Waveform editor like e.g. Wavelab (or using WAV or the Serum format as the output format in the Audio Term tool where the imported result in Codex seems to be similar and with the Serum format the WAV files are smaller as they use each waveform only once but with 2048 samples for each one). Creating a wavetable from an imported WAV file seems to work quite good in Codex (wavetables/waveforms exported in Audio Term seem to look and sound comparable to the original wavetables like e.g. for DUNE 2) . Still checking how to get the best results.

UPDATE:
After doing a little search i found the location of the Codex factory wavetables (WAV files).
Just did this to get an idea about the format of the factory wavetables so i will not post the location here yet. The files had no extension but could be renamed to .WAV for ediiting them.

The WAV files seems to contain 64 waveforms that are directly connected (no silence between) comparable to how it is done with the Serum wavetables. A single waveform seems to use 512 samples and the format of the WAV files seems to be WAV (PCM) / Mono / 44.1 kHz / 32-bit-float

Here is a screenshot of the 3rd Codex Factory wavetable (WAV file) loaded into Wavelab Elements 7:

Additional interpolation is done by the synth engine of Codex (depending on the "Resolution" knob setting) so it does not seem to be necessary to have interpolation inside the wavetable and it also does not sem to be necessray to have a WAv file with 64 waveforms. As mentioned above Codex also seems to be able to import waveforms with a bigger size (e.g. 2048 samples like in the Serum output format of Audio Term).

raymondwave · Post by **raymondwave** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:32 pm

It's great that you can modulate both table and waveform and I think they quite cleverly set them up, so that they actually change quite nicely, you don't always end up with a bleepy robot sound, but a nice smooth sound that is alive.

The sample arpeggio jam that I posted a few pages back is most definately not possible to do with just any synth.

chroma · Post by **chroma** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:58 pm

wait... so codex is capable of 2-d wavetable scanning? that's very cool.

can serum do that?

kiezum · Post by **kiezum** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:27 pm

Scanning different wavetable is one of the reasons I bought Codex. On the Waves website there's a video by Yoad Nevo. He demonstrates this function. Really cool. If you load in samples of recordings of an instrument with different velocities as wavetables. And modulate scan table to velocity... You get basically a multisampled wavetable synthesis.

----
Last night I read the Codex manual. This manual (as all waves manuals) leaves me with more questions than answers. The number for the waveform in the wavetable has a decimal. What does that mean? Is it the interpolation between the actual waveforms?

And it's not clear how resolution works. Does it change the interpolation? Or does it have an effect on the granular synthesis? It sounds like there's less interpolation when turning down the resolution knob.

Codex is according to the manual a granular wavetable synth. Granular explaines the formant knob. But does it only use granular synthesis when the format button is on? Or all the time?

Last question... What is a good program/plugin to create wavetables? Is such a program/app available for the iPad?

Waves Codex Wavetable Synth