Besterest Wavetable synth/VST ?

I've only recently come across wavetable synthesis and am quite intrigued by it all so would love to dive in. The thing is, I have no idea what's a good place to start software wise. So far I've come across:

 

PPG WaveGenerator (99 euros)

 

 

XFER Serum (Currently on sale at $129) - currently my choice

 

Waves Codex (Currently on sale at $99)

 

Is there better stuff out there, and are there free alternatives that almost reach these feature sets ?

I've got serum and I must say it's very top notch! It feels kind of like massive (which is a wavetable synth don't forget), except I would say the quality of the sound is notably better in addition to the fact that you can import your own wavetables additively which means you can get loads of new sounds by importing them as samples or even drawing the waveform in... and you can do it with your mouse and whatnot. It also has built in FX where you can pretty much customize the sound top-down in the synth before using outside stuff. Not to mention the ways you can mangle your sounds in the box, such as FMing one wavetable osc by another as there are two wavetables.

That said the other two look good as well! Though what would be important to look for is resolution in terms of how many different tables can be generated from a sample... Serum has 256, looks like waves codex has 64, and I have no clue about wavegenerator. Out of what I've seen, I think Serum is the best.

 

waldorf makes a vst, which is part of waldorf edition,

 

and Herman Seib makes a standalone simulation for payware, but a VST version of PPG 2.2 for free/donation if you navigate here and scroll down:

http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wavesim.htm

try vember audio surge.

  On 10/12/2014 at 3:17 PM, telefunken said:

try vember audio surge.

 

hm, didnt know Surge had that.

 

I forgot that Zebra is basically a wavetable synth. I suspect version 3 should have bigger wavetables, does anyone know offhand?

one thing that turned me off with Zebra is how tiny the controls are and how imprecise the table drawing areas seem. but overall, i think zebra has more sound design potential than say, massive.

wavetable synthesis is basically moving a loop section around within a short waveform that changes in timbre over its duration. i guess as long as the waveform is modified additively or subractively, the loop points will always occur at zero right?

 

The only thing I use in massive are two bass presets... Classic and sub bass. Almost everything else is terrible unless you're basing the whole track off of the synth. The problem is that you might as well just use a real analog if you're going to do that. I really hate it after using it for like five years, and not having money for anything else. It's *always* hard to mix the bass into the track when it's Massive, or any NI bass for that matter. Just a random opinion.

  On 10/12/2014 at 4:56 PM, vamos scorcho said:

The only thing I use in massive are two bass presets... Classic and sub bass. Almost everything else is terrible unless you're basing the whole track off of the synth. The problem is that you might as well just use a real analog if you're going to do that. I really hate it after using it for like five years, and not having money for anything else. It's *always* hard to mix the bass into the track when it's Massive, or any NI bass for that matter. Just a random opinion.

 

can you sell your license or is there some annoying rigamaroo involved?

  Quote

 

 

wavetable synthesis is basically moving a loop section around within a short waveform that changes in timbre over its duration. i guess as long as the waveform is modified additively or subractively, the loop points will always occur at zero right?

are you talking about crossfading the tables so they don't clip? In Serum, since you're importing stuff additively, it's done with a few button presses. it's right in the wavetable editor window so once you know where it is it's two mouse clicks to crossfade all 256 sections.

 

It doesn't start at 0 always, it generally just bends the last little bit of the waveforms as little as possible so they match. It's pretty easy, and there are multiple options (algorithms) for crossfading. Pretty neat stuff.

  On 10/12/2014 at 6:17 PM, skibby said:

 

  On 10/12/2014 at 4:56 PM, vamos scorcho said:

The only thing I use in massive are two bass presets... Classic and sub bass. Almost everything else is terrible unless you're basing the whole track off of the synth. The problem is that you might as well just use a real analog if you're going to do that. I really hate it after using it for like five years, and not having money for anything else. It's *always* hard to mix the bass into the track when it's Massive, or any NI bass for that matter. Just a random opinion.

 

can you sell your license or is there some annoying rigamaroo involved?

Pretty sure it would be annoying. To be perfectly honest right after I wrote that post I did some reading on it and I realized it may have some good potential for sound design. The one thing I do like is the arrangement of the synth designing, very fast. It's the kind of thing you can open up and work with immediately, unfortunately the actual sounds aren't ever very... I don't know... Not very deep. But still, it's a fun "open it up and make something unique/weird (and probably ultimately useless and impossible to fit into a mix) fast" type thing. Edited October 12, 2014 by vamos scorcho

i think wavetable synthesis is a bit dated, cause the original reason for it was to get an analogue twiddling sound out of a digital waveform before they knew how to code the dsp to do that.

 

15 years ago, before i knew how to automate a digital filter (or perhaps before the functionality existed in the software i was using), i did it with the mouse and bounced it to tape then back into my computer for example. i think the first wavetables were made from recording analogue synths and filters, and they picked a wav of twiddling the cutoff, and divided it up into loop sections or made a wav in a multiple of frames that fit the playback engine. its rompler stuff, not so synthy in my view, a bit one trick pony.

 

how a digital osc is manipulated after the initial loop is the interesting part, and that varies little between different synths, just the modulation parameters and the way the modulation matrix is graphically user interfaced.

 

i dig nice effects, but i have almost a loathing feeling about effects like delay, reverb, chorus being in a synth, unless they are stellar and unique in their own right.

Edited October 12, 2014 by skibby

The Serum demo sure is a lot of fun. May hold of getting a wavetable thingy for a while, still got lots of music toys to play with :)

  On 10/13/2014 at 1:10 AM, mcbpete said:

The Serum demo sure is a lot of fun. May hold of getting a wavetable thingy for a while, still got lots of music toys to play with :)

 

the first thing i did was unpack the exe and look thru the samples because im insane, havent tried it yet, eventually i demo every single thing that comes down the pike. but seriously, i didnt mean to drag down the spirit of the thread, any tool that gets you where you wanna go is worth supporting.

Well the packed in FX are convenient and good, and there are some pretty weird FX and filters, like the reverb filter. But Serum is worth the money even without the FX, and I tend to use a few of the FX in Serum + third party stuff. I mean it's just more option, and the FX in Serum are pretty customizable, unlike massive which generally has 2-4 parameters tacked on to any FX. The guy who made Serum basically said he wanted to put everything he needed in a synth into serum and you can kind of feel that.

Edited October 13, 2014 by Brisbot

Not the best, but freeware I like this one;

http://www.kvraudio.com/product/tunefish-4-by-brain-control

  On 10/13/2014 at 12:15 PM, Djeroek said:

Not the best, but freeware I like this one;

http://www.kvraudio.com/product/tunefish-4-by-brain-control

 

yes, Tunefish 4 sounds great, and it's really easy to sculpt sounds in. Is it really a wavetable? I didn't notice if so!

 

I have sent Payne little bug reports here and there, and he was really quick to fix them. Here's his SC https://soundcloud.com/payne-music

PPG Wave (various models). Waldorf Wave. Waldorf Microwave 1. Prophet VS.

noob question:

 

what can I do with a wavetable synth that I can't do with any other type of synth (add, sub, etc.)?

I have to admit, I'm a little confused between this and additive. Is the definition of wavetable synthesis that it literally is a table of various waveforms and it allows the controlling of the progression through these waveforms so like:

 

------------------------------------
| Wave # |        Waveform         |
------------------------------------
|   1    |      Pure Sine wave     |     ^
|   2    | Slightly flattened sine |     |
|  ...   |           ...           |   Move up and down table with 
|  128   |  A sine/square hybrid   |   manual control or a lfo 
|  ...   |           ...           |     |
|  256   |     A Square wave       |     v
------------------------------------

  On 10/14/2014 at 7:08 PM, Rbrmyofr said:

PPG Wave (various models). Waldorf Wave. Waldorf Microwave 1. Prophet VS.

 

you make me curious. why not microwave 2? it's like a digital semi-modular, so many modulation possibilities!! i have the xt version, which is like a real knob twiddler's dream too, i love it! of course it's not everybody's cup of tea, but then again, that goes for wavetable synthesis as awhole...

  On 10/14/2014 at 7:32 PM, mcbpete said:

I have to admit, I'm a little confused between this and additive. Is the definition of wavetable synthesis that it literally is a table of various waveforms and it allows the controlling of the progression through these waveforms so like:

 

------------------------------------
| Wave # |        Waveform         |
------------------------------------
|   1    |      Pure Sine wave     |     ^
|   2    | Slightly flattened sine |     |
|  ...   |           ...           |   Move up and down table with 
|  128   |  A sine/square hybrid   |   manual control or a lfo 
|  ...   |           ...           |     |
|  256   |     A Square wave       |     v
------------------------------------

 

welp, this was pretty simple. thanks.

 

so is Zebra2 an option?

Actually yeah looks like Zebra2 allows you to do that. As I say, that's my interpretation about what is considered a wavetable synth but I could be completely wrong !

  On 10/14/2014 at 7:32 PM, mcbpete said:

I have to admit, I'm a little confused between this and additive. Is the definition of wavetable synthesis that it literally is a table of various waveforms and it allows the controlling of the progression through these waveforms so like:

 

------------------------------------
| Wave # |        Waveform         |
------------------------------------
|   1    |      Pure Sine wave     |     ^
|   2    | Slightly flattened sine |     |
|  ...   |           ...           |   Move up and down table with 
|  128   |  A sine/square hybrid   |   manual control or a lfo 
|  ...   |           ...           |     |
|  256   |     A Square wave       |     v
------------------------------------

 

that seems like a pretty good illustration actually! the beauty of it is that wavetables can be radically different, you can even create your own, and with some synths, like my beloved µwave 2 there are quite a lot of modulation sources / destinations you can freely combine, you can even mix / process mod. sources via logical operators etc., scale them, you got a freely assignable 8-stage envelope, fm, 2 filters, blablabla. like i said, it's like semi-modular in a way.

 

that was my first synth actually and way beyond me at the time. i still use it. it's perfect for cold digital pads and the like. if you want analogue warmth, give it a wide berth though.

 

 

nope, you are very right!

Edited October 14, 2014 by rst

  On 10/14/2014 at 7:42 PM, rst said:

 

  On 10/14/2014 at 7:08 PM, Rbrmyofr said:

PPG Wave (various models). Waldorf Wave. Waldorf Microwave 1. Prophet VS.

 

you make me curious. why not microwave 2? it's like a digital semi-modular, so many modulation possibilities!! i have the xt version, which is like a real knob twiddler's dream too, i love it! of course it's not everybody's cup of tea, but then again, that goes for wavetable synthesis as awhole...

 

The original Microwave (and the Wave, which is massive) had analogue filters and envelopes. The filters made a big difference in my opinion, the 2, XT and the Q were 100% digital. I'm sure they sound great, I've heard some good demos, but I prefer the original Microwave sound although it's a bastard to programme. I just got mine a few months ago and am still learning how it all works, definitely a lot more complicated than your average subtractive synth!

This thread made me want to get into that Serum vst, but holy shit that thing is a resource hog. I couldn't play three notes without my computer basically freezing up. I tried it out in Renoise and Reaper with the same results. Anyone running it in either of those daws with success? Massive is another resource hog and it ran fine when I used it. I really want to use it though. Really nice design.