Improvements for wavetable OSC in MSF

[Hanz Meyzer]

Hi,

currently the wavetable OSC in MSF seems to eat a lot of more CPU than the same in Falcon (lowest) or Serum (still much lower), which seems to be pretty uncommon for Melda

Also I would love if there were kind of smoothing options for the interpolation, or you could destructively/permanently render intermediate waveforms in between existing waveforms, so also expanding the maximum of wavetable entries from 256 to 4096 or so

And what about cubic, sinc, linear interpolation, or doesn't that make sense in a time domain context? I find that one weakness in current wavetable synths seem to be slow table index modulation, you will hear steppings and what not. Maybe there is a solution for that.

Thanks.

[MeldaProduction]

Hi Hans, I'm not sure about Falcon, but Serum doesn't even interpolate between waves, which is where MSF comes in and that makes a HUGE difference, but of course at the 2x higher CPU consumption. Perhaps there are some further options for optimizations, I'll check when the time comes. Currently we are using linear interpolation between waves and cubic interpolation inside each wave (which is where we could be different too).

[Hanz Meyzer]

Oh I see, so in a mathematical way, you are already a step further. But I actually cannot hear a real difference in these 3 synths. So if a feature doesn't really improve the audible sound, it might be useless? Maybe there could be a completely different approach? Like said pre-calculation of inter-waveforms, lots of them, on preset load. Or morphing, not just crossfading? Also Serum comes with a bunch of neat comfort functionality, editor and a nice wavetable view. That said editor has such crossfade-functionality, which you could use for pre-calculation: morph-crossfade, morph-spectral, zero fund. phase, zero all phases, x-fade edges, shift horizontal to zero-crossing, etc. etc. That x-fade edges is also in VPS Avenger (here its calculated live, worth a look, too), it seems to sound more smooth then.

Then there are all those pioneer synths by Wolfgang Palm, surely also worth a look for inspiration about what is possible.

What I want to say, I would like to suggest to add much more options, more love for the wavetable section. It has a lot of potential. A 3d view of the wavetable would help a lot, too.

Thanks for consideration.

[Tagirijus]

but Serum doesn't even interpolate between waves, which is where MSF comes in and that makes a HUGE difference, but of course at the 2x higher CPU consumption.

For better understanding (I do not have Serum): does this mean that Serum acts like "Interpolate between waves" is disabled? If not: maybe there could be an option to save CPU with this interpolation disabled to let MSF act like Serum or so? Just an idea ...

By the way: ironically if I turn of the "Interpolate between waves" button, MSF seem to need more CPU. Check it yourself with this MSF preset:

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[jmg8]

Serum will suddenly jump from 1 wave to the next. This is the same behaviour as MSF with "interpolate between waves" turned off. In Serum, if you want to morph between a square and a saw smoothly, you would load both waves and then morph between them. This is achieved by creating loads of frames in between the square and saw that make the change much smoother. However, it is not perfect as it is still jumping suddenly from 1 frame to the next. Most of the time, this is fine and not really noticeable, although in some cases, you can really hear it.
MSF on the other had will smoothly morph/interpolate between EVERY wave! so to do the same thing you would only need to load the square and the saw and it will perfectly morph between the 2. In Serum, this would take up the whole table (all the frames) but in MSF you have only used 2 frames! So in MSF, you could smoothly morph between up to 256 shapes, to do that in Serum it would require 65,536 frames!
In my opinion, MSF sounds way smoother, I can easily hear the difference.

However, that being said it would be nice to hear if there are any other interpolation methods to use in MSF. Could sound different? better? not sure.
I would also agree that I would like to see more option in the wavetable OSC. Maybe one day we will get a wavetable editor?
Also, it is odd about needing more CPU when interpolate is turned off. I would expect it to use less.

[operator]

But I actually cannot hear a real difference in these 3 synths.

What I want to say, I would like to suggest to add much more options, more love for the wavetable section. It has a lot of potential. A 3d view of the wavetable would help a lot, too.

If you ask me, you are able to hear a difference (when using the same WT). It´s not much, but i prefer Melda, it sounds slightly better.

One thing I would like to see, are more offline processing functions like in Serum (morph-spectral, Fades, Bounce Transform and the Script Functionality...)

BUT, to be fair Steve Duda said, he wanted not only a WT Synth, but a fully functional WT Editor in the Synth aswell. And with a Synth that is such restriced as Serum (compared to MSF) this could be realized without being a complete overkill. And if you compare MSF`s WT Osc to an WT Editor combined with an WT-Osc it is kind of unfair.

I know some people really like the 3-D view, but I don´t see any advantage in it... quiet the contrary.. I can read (imagine) the spectra of the singel cycles of a WT better in a 2-D view. I never use the 3-D view in Serum, for me it is just eye-candy... I agree, this may be subjective.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Maybe even a blending over variable amount of waveforms, or realtime by time would make a big difference, as seen in Palm's Wavegenerator. I now checked Synthmaster One, too, seems to sound a bit smoother on slow index change than the others above?

[Tagirijus]

Serum will suddenly jump from 1 wave to the next. This is the same behaviour as MSF with "interpolate between waves" turned off. (...)

Thanks for the explanation, jmg!

[Chandlerhimself]

I'd like to see a few improvements too and I think perhaps more interpolation modes would help. Serum doesn't do real time interpolation and I've heard people complain that it doesn't sound smooth all the time. MSF sometimes has this problem too, but I've found in a lot of cases it can be fixed.

Something else that might work is adding an offline interpolation mode similar to serum. Adding tables between the current tables might make things smoother. An automatic mode would be good, but also when you right click and select something like "interpolate between right", it could add an extra table that is a mix between 2 adjacent tables. This might help a bit, but I'm not sure. Maybe some nonlinear interpolation modes would be enough.

I think a spectral synth module would get rid of all these problems because it would be able to handle phase as pitch changes. I imagine that it will be quite hard to make, so we may not get it for a while, but I think it would solve most of the problems with the wavetable OSC.

[MeldaProduction]

Offline interpolation really wouldn't do any good, as it is it in a way produces near-infinite number of waves in between so... If there's something, that sounds wrong in some way, please send it over. Wave editor - at some point, probably, but not yet, no dev time.