I’ve only lightly dabbled in wavetables some years ago, was hoping to get a feel for what the ‘timbric’ range is for wavetable synthesis? (if timbric is a word)
Two questions please:
(1) I’m currently maybe overly naively thinking there are millions of wavetables, but no need to collect too many of them, they are all basically variations of the same (buzzy, fizzy, glassy, metallic or combinations of) … so like if you’ve 32 wave tables you’re all set to explore within the limits of the genre?
(2) Am I right in thinking PCM (ie Eric Persing and Roland JV series) are not wavetables, they are longer “PCMs” whatever they are? i.e. I can’t load up a Rhodes wavetable or a Double bass wavetable and turn the tonverk into a rompler?
[maybe I am really better to focus on the TV multisampler for that sort of thing]
appreciate if anyone has a few examples of the extremes wavetables can take you to, as would like to dig in and explore, but also be realistic
ps Wavetables are for tones and drones right? (i.e. they aren’t a drum/percussion thing too?)
ps2 Are wavetables basically ‘playing a grain’ in a granular sense?
It’s not a rompler (I think this word is overused or misunderstood recently). Read only memory = fixed samples. Whether or not you choose to swap out the factory samples, the fact that you can, by definition doesn’t make it a rompler.
Wavetables are collections of single cycle waveforms. If you play a fixed position in the table, you will get a clean tone, with no modulation. When you sweep the wavetable, that tone changes to other tones. If you sweep fast enough, the ear will be tricked into thinking it’s hearing a more complex tone. Just like movies are composed of quickly changing still pictures.
So whilst not going to be able to do say an acoustic double bass, you could have a wavetable with double bass bits that when swept evoke the sound? - or say a flute? (that’s what I’m most interested in) or bits of a moody lofi piano, rhodes etc
Wavetable stuff has a range, and is distinct from pulse code modulation (PCM) which is just a binary encoding method (but synonymous with samples in the 80s, romplers especially).
At the heart of it wavetables can change smoothly from very naturalistic waveshapes (sines, etc) to far more exotic waveshapes (buzzy and metallic weirdness), and do so smoothly. Depending on how the wavetable is constructed, you could do without a filter entirely (since low pass filters basically reduce complex waveshapes to sine waves), though that kind of “west coast synthesis” thing isn’t typically approached via wavetable.
When I think to wavetable synthesis in contemporary electronic music, I think to the music of Cari Lekebusch. Notably these two… (neither are brilliant compositions, so kick them to the middle to hear the synth sound).
(Lead synth line)
(Also the lead line).
As a kid I was told these were both examples of the Waldorf XT, though who can say in reality (the envs sound too snappy to my ears in 2026).
thanks - I’d always boxed it off in my mind as serum-synthy-electronic, and was looking to try get something more organic out of it, not like acoustic modelling but just evoking acoustic
(not that I don’t like synthy, but i might use another box for that, like A4 or DN)
Oh, missed this. No, wavetables tend to lean more towards single cycle waveforms – think to a sample with several single cycle waves stitched together, but with interpolation in their transitions.
So… in theory you could do this, but it’s be a single cycle of the acoustic instrument, which wouldn’t carry much of its character.
cool - still, lovely new TV feature and looking forward to digging in. I just like to set practical expectations a bit on what the map might look like.
… though I’m not sure what’s going on here, it seems like a drum kit of wavetables, I’m feeling like wavetable might be more than meets the eye with the elektron sequencer and TV envelopes, LFOs and FX busses
There’s some confusion, back in the day PCM just meant stored samples typically in ROMplers, which had a bank of different sounds, drums, oscillators, and instruments.
It meant, a sample with amplitude, loop point and other information attached to it to instruct the playback of the sound by the sound engine.
A wavetable typically refers to a large sequence of single cycle waveforms strung together which you can then scan through which creates unique sounds and sound design opportunities.
A wavetable can take any sample as a source. All recordings of audio can be broken into discrete parts (single cycle) and scanned through (moving through the discrete parts of your recording).
For realistic sounds of instruments you will work with a multisampled instrument, which were also found in romplers.
Me neither !
I loaded a 1 bar loop and applied a saw modulation. I used different notes, lfo speed.
By default, Wavefinder interprets files as 2048 samples length slices, which is a Serum standard. But internally it uses 1024 samples length, with 64 slices max.
It interpolates slices.
Longer samples can be loaded, but I don’t know the limit yet, and how slices are analysed if the file is longer than standard (64 x 2048).
I downloaded those, and dropped the folder into User/Wavetables on the SD card, but I get a “failed to load” message when I try to add them into a slot. Any suggestions??
I also have little Wavetable experience and am still getting my head around it somewhat. It seems to me that if there is a “key” to Wavetable, it’s in the modulation of the position in the table - the choice of single cycle waveform - to control the evolution of the sound.
So you could, in theory, produce a double bass sound if the loaded wavetable had all the single cycles needed for that, and you could cycle through them with precisely the correct timing. I suspect that might already have been done, or close to that.
But on Tonverk we already have multisampling capability, if realism of real instruments is what we want. When I think of wavetable synthesis in the past, on e.g. the PPG Wave, perfect realism never seemed to be the goal, and it was never going to make samplers obsolete. Wavetable is its own thing.
