The State of Serum in 2017

[foosnark]

There's an argument to be made that wavetable oscillators don't need, or even work well with, filters in a lot of cases (no literally, there were just recently people saying exactly that in a modular forum). To me it depends on the harmonic content and how you intend to use it. Certainly the more additive and FM-ish tables don't lend themselves as well to a typical filter approach.

If the filters in Serum disappeared in the next version, I'd just use the EQ slightly more often and it would remain my favorite and most-used software synth.

I just don't have a filter-centric worldview. There's more to synthesis than subtractive. You'll hear wavetable sweeps, wavefolder sweeps, FM index/ratio sweeps and PWM in my music but filter sweeps are very rare.

In software I basically just ignore VA synths anymore. I use WOW2 occasionally but tend to think of it as a sort of resonant shelving EQ with distortion. In hardware, aside from my Microbrute I have exactly one dedicated filter, and I use that as a sine oscillator more often; I've also got LPGs that can act as 6db lowpass filters, but I use them that way maybe 5% of the time.

[andrelafosse]

Well, Cluster Sound has a set of Serum wavetables explicitly capturing the sound of a filter!

https://www.clustersound.com/product-detail.php?id=105

"EXTRA : Microwave comes with 48 additional analog & digital wavetables including :

8 x Oscar LP - reproducing the LP filter of the OSCar vintage synth"

(The Cluster Sound Serum pack is fabulous. Try the free demo tables.)

AND: one of my favorite Serum tricks:

Assign an LFO to modulate... its own LFO rate.

[sfxsound3]

Other than that, I don't like the LFOs. Draw a shape and use it. No way to alter the shape, morph between shapes (PolyKB comes to mind), no LFO 'Gain' parameter... The result is precise and clinical in a cartoonish way.

It is possible to crossfade between two LFO shapes and add LFO gain capabilities with some canny routing, and it's more feasible now that you've got 8 LFOs to play with. LFO gain is as easy as adding an aux source in the mod matrix. Crossfading 2 LFOs is a bit more complicated though. The image below shows the routing that'll let you use Macro 1 to crossfade between LFOs 1 and 2, but of course you could use another LFO or envelope or whatever instead of the Macro to automate the crossfade. I appreciate that it's a right fanny on compared to many other synths, but it can be done!

Workarounds and roundabouts and jumpings through hoopses. How do you program a patch, modify a patch, or remember what's linked where? In terms of time, effort, hard thinking, etc.? Those parameters are required for a LFO to be complete, and they should be where they belong - in the LFO panel.

The LFO's have no phase control either... and only rate is modulatable.

Oh, you think LFO phase is important??? Somebody please call Mr. Duda and break it to him! Oh wait, maybe there's a roundabout for that too? Yes, just draw the waveform differently! Quick and easy... NOT! Coz how do you change the phase on the fly??? Hmmm, back to the drawing board!

Re. modulatable - let's wait a few years and see..........................

[Ingonator]

Well, Cluster Sound has a set of Serum wavetables explicitly capturing the sound of a filter!

https://www.clustersound.com/product-detail.php?id=105

"EXTRA : Microwave comes with 48 additional analog & digital wavetables including :

8 x Oscar LP - reproducing the LP filter of the OSCar vintage synth"

Just found about the Microwave wavetable pack:

PACK : Microwave is a collection of 64 wavetables extracted from the DSP-based Creamware Waldorf Oscillator and ready to be placed in Serum. Each of the 64 wavetables contains 61 single-cycle waveforms : over 3900 waves have been sampled, meticulously edited and re-arranged in Serum to reproduce the sound of this magic synth.

So the wavetables ar for ma real Microwave but a Creamware DSP plugin?
Might be based on te "Quantum Wave" Scope DSP plugin-in then:
http://sonic-core.net/joomla.soniccore/ ... 51&lang=de
This is alraedy from 2005 before Waldorf had released it's own Largo plugin. Waldorf did not seem to be directly involved with Quantum Wave.

Funny that you mention the Microwave pack here as the real Microwave 1 included a real analog filter (a in Rev A and a CEM3387 in Rev B).

Another quote from the website of the wavetables pack:

SOURCE : The Microwave is a cult synthesizer released during the first half of the ’90s by the German synthesizer company

Actually the Microwave 1 seemed to be released in 1989, just 2 years after PPG was closed (and Microwave 2 released in 1997). Wolfgang Palm from PPG seemed to be involved with the development of the so called "Waldorf ASICs" for the Microwave 1.-
More than 20 years later he was also involved with Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V, with providing a lot new wavetables (more than 100), as a beta tester and also as a consultant.
Besides that his own new PPG plugins (e.g. Wavegenerator and Wavemapper 2) were done fully independent of Waldorf and Waldorf is not involved with those plugins.

FWIW when talking with Wolfgang Palm im the past he mentioned to me that most of the sound of a wavetable synth indeed comes (or should come) from the wavetables while personally i like to have a nice sounding filter or even better a selection of different filters (for example Waldorf Largo has 10 modes, Blofeld 11 filters with the additionakl PPG mode and Tone2 Icarus more than 60 and those 3 just mentioned coudl also fully bypass the filter).
Well, so far nobody seemed to have the idea to release a wavetable synth without a filter and i doubt this would sell really good with what is already available now in terms of wavetable synths.
This would also only make sense with a really good wavetable and waveform editor included or at least wit ha huge wavetables collection to mimic the behavior of a filter whicl this could only capture a fraction of what is possible with a filter.

With synths that include a dual filter like e.g. Largo, Bolfeld, Icarus and also my Novation UltraNova sometiems i even use two filters in series to shape the sound

In case you want to morph both the timbre (using a wavetable) and the filter settings (filter modulation) at the same time this will just not work wit ha single wavetable.

[pdxindy]

There's an argument to be made that wavetable oscillators don't need, or even work well with, filters in a lot of cases (no literally, there were just recently people saying exactly that in a modular forum). To me it depends on the harmonic content and how you intend to use it. Certainly the more additive and FM-ish tables don't lend themselves as well to a typical filter approach.

If the filters in Serum disappeared in the next version, I'd just use the EQ slightly more often and it would remain my favorite and most-used software synth.

I just don't have a filter-centric worldview. There's more to synthesis than subtractive. You'll hear wavetable sweeps, wavefolder sweeps, FM index/ratio sweeps and PWM in my music but filter sweeps are very rare.

In software I basically just ignore VA synths anymore. I use WOW2 occasionally but tend to think of it as a sort of resonant shelving EQ with distortion. In hardware, aside from my MIcrobrute I have exactly one dedicated filter, and I use that as a sine oscillator more often; I've also got LPGs that can act as 6db lowpass filters, but I use them that way maybe 5% of the time.

If that works for you, fine... but that majority of people value filters cause it is so easy to do lots of stuff. For example, assign velocity to cutoff and use an LP filter to cut the highs a bit at low velocity and filter open at high velocity and it works per voice...

I would never purchase a wavetable synth that did not have filters... and there is more to filters than filter sweeps... I almost never use them either... but filters are powerful sound shaping tools and I see no reason to put some arbitrary restriction on how one can craft a sound.

[MorpherX]

Regarding Serum in 2017:

Normally a good wavetable synth don't need much filtering, the point here is the quality of the wavetables and what you can do with it.
Also important is the resynthesis quality.

And yet lots of highly regarded wavetable synths have a variety of filters... Waldorf Q, Q+, Largo/Blofeld all have diverse filter options including analog filters on the Q+. The upcoming Waldorf Quantum has 2 analog filters per voice plus a bunch of digital filter types as well.

So your point is contradicted by the evidence...

Not to forget that the PPG Wave 2.2/2.3 (hardware), Waldorf Microwave 1 and Waldorf Wave had analog filters too.
For example the original PPG Wave synth would have sounded hardly the same without the analog filter.

The Q, MicroQ, Blofeld and also Largo got the Waldorf Comb filters for which especially the Q seemed to be quite famous.


FWIW Tone2 Icarus has more than 60 filter modes and having a selection of good filters indeed makes sense with a wavetable synth.
In theory you could get a proper soudn just from wavetables but in practical use doing everything with the wavetables only is a big PITA which is evn more difficult when doing modulations of the filter.
With more complex filters than a simple LPF or HPF replicating the result only with wavetables will not really work anyway.

In the original (hardware) PPG Wave 2.2/2.3, witch I still have, there is only a Low Pass filter. Mr. Palm knew why to only implement one simple but good sounding filter; only to smooth the wavetables or give it additional resonance.
Also in Serum I regard the filters and their quality as a third or fourth point, because it's a "Wavetable-Sythesizer".
I only design with wavetables in Serum and other wavetable synths not with filters.
But this is a personal point of view.
On the other hand why is a wavetable-synth a wavetable-synth and why use people it ? Because of the filters ?
Ask yourselfe !

[kv331]

The other negative for me is that wavetables aren't interpolated during modulation. It's always a hard 'jump' between one frame and the next.

Wow, I just realized that. Seriously no interpolation???? Even Massive has that.

[stratum]

The other negative for me is that wavetables aren't interpolated during modulation. It's always a hard 'jump' between one frame and the next.

---------------

Wow, I just realized that. Seriously no interpolation???? Even Massive has that.

How does that work at all?

[exmatproton]

The other negative for me is that wavetables aren't interpolated during modulation. It's always a hard 'jump' between one frame and the next.

Wow, I just realized that. Seriously no interpolation???? Even Massive has that.

From the Serum manual;

"Technically speaking, when Serum loads a wavetable it is using 2048
samples for a sub-table of the wavetable set. This means the
maximum file size would be 2048(samples) x 256(sub-tables) x 32(bits) (which is exactly 2 megabytes).

Most wavetable files won't be this large however. It is common to have
a good sounding wavetable which may consist of just a few sub-tables.
These sub-tables can be interpolated tables which can get created in
the wavetable editor, to allow for smooth-sounding transitions from one
to another. These interpolated tables are generated by crossfading (mix
blend) or spectrally (frequency+phase blend, as pictured above (grey
areas). These sub-tables are computed at load-time: Serum embeds
the information for which interpolation type is in use, rather than the
interpolated waveforms (which eliminates wasted disk space)."

There is also a picture in there, which shows interpolation;

inter.JPG

[kv331]

"Technically speaking, when Serum loads a wavetable it is using 2048
samples for a sub-table of the wavetable set. This means the
maximum file size would be 2048(samples) x 256(sub-tables) x 32(bits) (which is exactly 2 megabytes).

2 Megabytes: that IS misleading. Because for each sub table you should resample at around every 3 semitones for 10 octaves -> so you should multiply that 2 megabytes with 40 (10 octaves X 4 samples/octave) -> 80 megabytes per oscillator.

[stratum]

80 megabytes per oscillator.

Waste of cpu cycles as it wouldn't fit the cache

[cron]

The other negative for me is that wavetables aren't interpolated during modulation. It's always a hard 'jump' between one frame and the next.

Wow, I just realized that. Seriously no interpolation???? Even Massive has that.

From the Serum manual;

"Technically speaking, when Serum loads a wavetable it is using 2048
samples for a sub-table of the wavetable set. This means the
maximum file size would be 2048(samples) x 256(sub-tables) x 32(bits) (which is exactly 2 megabytes).

Most wavetable files won't be this large however. It is common to have
a good sounding wavetable which may consist of just a few sub-tables.
These sub-tables can be interpolated tables which can get created in
the wavetable editor, to allow for smooth-sounding transitions from one
to another. These interpolated tables are generated by crossfading (mix
blend) or spectrally (frequency+phase blend, as pictured above (grey
areas). These sub-tables are computed at load-time: Serum embeds
the information for which interpolation type is in use, rather than the
interpolated waveforms (which eliminates wasted disk space)."

There is also a picture in there, which shows interpolation;

inter.JPG

This is what I was talking about when I mentioned building smoothing 'into' the wavetable. In the image posted, there are 3 waves/frames. Using the morph feature (as shown in the image) generates intermediate waves so the transition is spread across 256 frames. However, these 256 frames still hard step from one to the next. The wavetable position parameter only has 256 meaningful positions (i.e. one for each frame), regardless of whether you're tweaking the knob or modulating with LFO/envelope etc. It's impossible to land 'between' frames and get a bit of both, or smoothly transition from one frame to the next.

I mentioned a little earlier about why I think this is a contributor to Serum's reputation as an EDM synth. It's all about tempo-synced modulation between two timbres (think dubstep bass), and it excels in that area. It only really falls apart when you start using more complex wavetables with slower modulation (think ambient/new-agey stuff).

Workarounds and roundabouts and jumpings through hoopses. How do you program a patch, modify a patch, or remember what's linked where? In terms of time, effort, hard thinking, etc.? Those parameters are required for a LFO to be complete, and they should be where they belong - in the LFO panel.

100% agreed, but hopefully the workaround is useful for current users. Speaking of which...

The LFO's have no phase control either...

You can right click any point in the LFO and select "start point". Obviously limited as it's not modulatable, but might get the job done depending on what you're doing.

[kv331]

80 megabytes per oscillator.

Waste of cpu cycles as it wouldn't fit the cache

I mean if you have to generate 256 waveforms for the purpose of not interpolating, yes that would cause terrible cache issues.

[sfxsound3]

It only really falls apart when you start using more complex wavetables with slower modulation (think ambient/new-agey stuff).

Especially with some tables where a bunch of random waveforms have been thrown together - e.g. most of the factory tables. Demoing - but, ah, it doesn't sound so good... Oh, and those presets , nah, going to pass...

[cron]

It only really falls apart when you start using more complex wavetables with slower modulation (think ambient/new-agey stuff).

Especially with some tables where a bunch of random waveforms have been thrown together - e.g. most of the factory tables. Demoing - but, ah, it doesn't sound so good... Oh, and those presets , nah, going to pass...

Yeah, I've seen some horrific tables (third party ones in particular) that Serum doesn't cope with at all - modulating them is just pure 'zipper' noise.

I realise I probably come across as relentlessly talking it down, but it really is a great synth that's a joy to work with and I don't regret my purchase at all. It's just that it's never gonna be the only wavetable synth you need.