Talk:Wavetable synthesis

message: The link to the wavetable synthesis application is broken and needs to be updated or removed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevescott517 (talk • contribs) 22:45, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken Link 

message: I think declaring Wave's "jump from one wave from to another" system as inferior to modern samplers is somewhat disingenuous; for one thing, PPG's system had to work with the limitations of late 1970s/early 1980s technology, and memory was expensive then. With more sample memory and looser limits on sample length, you can build a single sample that has attack, loop and decay stages instead of jumping from one digitized single-cycle to another, and you can also use multiple DCOs to stack sounds together. 
:Sample based synthesis is really something else entirely.  There are no samples in the sense a ROMpler uses the term in wavetable synthesis.-- 87.170.196.95 (talk) 19:45, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Roland LA does use a non-looped sample for the attack and a looped sample for the sustain phase, which has no direct relation to wavetable synthesis.  -- 87.170.196.95 (talk) 19:45, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  ??? 

message: Is it pronounced as "wavetable" (as in "edible") or "wave table"? - 99.247.136.86 07:35, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The latter:  it is a table consisting of waves. -- 87.170.196.95 (talk) 19:45, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: Wavetable Synthesis as a concept is aiming to simplify the simultaneous control problem you have when trying to do fully additive synthesis and also address the gross inefficiency of computing many partials in realtime even though the waveform changes only slowly.  The solution is simply to define the control trajectory and sample the resulting waveform at (equidistant) spaces on that trajectory, which leaves only a single control parameter (the wavetable index) and a very efficient implementation for the playback mechanism.  Wavetable synthesis as defined by PPG pre-computed to single-cycle (odd symmetrical) waves and added the interpolation between waves in a table as a mechanism to further save the computation and storage of unnecessary data.  The wavetable is completed and the waves expanded to full-cycle in RAM on the PPG, so these are really details of the implementation.
So, the PPG definition of wavetable synthesis is: a table of 64 single-cycle waves addressed by a single parameter (the wavetable index).  Scanning the wavetable with an appropriate index sequence produces the desired timbral changes over time.  The index sequence does not need to be continous nor monotonic (in contrast to sampling, where the index would be strictly linearly ascending).  Later incarnations of the technique have provided smooth interpolation between wavetable entries (i.e. you can use fractional index values) and reduced artifacts (aliasing, quantization and scanning noise) inherent to the implementation details of the original implementation. -- 87.170.196.95 (talk) 19:45, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: Nov 2009: I radicaly changed this article: It was very confused between PCM sample playback and wavetable synthesis. I own 2 wavetable synths - a VFX and Access Virus Ti plus PD, FM & VA and have owned LA synths. I hope this article now represents a true deffinition of wavetable synthesis. For the poster above: The Profet VS had 2 user definable wavetables, which were in effect wave sequences. However, as they could be played in any direction they are true wavetables. There is a fine line between wave sequences and wavetables. Maybe the Korg Wavestation could be included here. Note Vector Synthesis and wave sequencing are 2 very different synthesis methods.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.180.189.8 (talk) 23:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The Prophet VS had nothing that resembles a wave sequence, this has been discussed before.  If you must think of the Prophet VS as a wavetable synthesizer (which it's creators do not), then it has a very fringe implementation of two two-entry wavetables with linear interpolation. 87.170.253.79 (talk) 16:23, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  November 2009 Edit 

message: Since nobody seems to have picked up on the cleanup requests and the discussion has come to a halt, I've done a complete re-write that hopefully includes most of the discussion as documented on this page.  There are certainly things to add and change, but I hope that at least the definition of the terms is more agreeable. 87.170.253.79 (talk) 16:23, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  February 2010 rewrite 

message: If we are reading pre-computed waveforms from a table and combining them together, how is that not just a mashed-up sample playback? How does wavetable synthesis produce different pitches? Wouldn't it pitch-shift the wavetable data, exactly like sample playback?
This article does a good job of explaining what Wavetable synthesis is not, and what it's confused with.
The problem is, it lacks a description of what Wavetable synthesis is.
Some block diagrams, pseudo-code, anything, would help.
What does the data look like, and what process is applied to it when, say, I hit the middle C key on the synth keyboard?
192.139.122.42 (talk) 23:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  WTF is wavetable synthesis? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Wavetable synthesis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20140203015224/http://noisemakessound.com/blofeld-wavetable-cooker/ to http://noisemakessound.com/blofeld-wavetable-cooker/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 06:59, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Clean-up the vaguely merged article: (1) generic class of synthesis using waveform is "Table-lookup synthesis" by Max Mathews (late-1950s) (2) one implementation of above is "Multiple wavetable synthesis" by Michael McNabb and Wolfgung Palm (late-1970s). best, --Clusternote (talk) 04:58, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clean-up the vaguely merged article 

message: The author(s) have assumed incorrectly that Wavetables and Wavetable Synthesis are synonymous.
Yes, keyboards like the DW-8000 have waves... stored in tables.  Indeed, you'd be correct to term such a data structure a wavetable.  However, the DW-8000 is _subtractive synthesis_.  It passes the digital oscillators through analog filters to create interesting, varied sounds.  There's no way to vary the sound of the oscillators over time or with your performance.
The term "Wavetable Synthesis" is or should be reserved for synthesizers where the interest and variation in the sound comes populating a wavetable with varied but related waveforms, and varying your choice among said waveforms with respect to the musician's performance and/or passage of time.
Naturally synthesizers such as the PPG and the Ensoniq's with Wavetable synthesis and filters to boot, are combining multiple synthesis mechanisms simultaneously.  You'd properly state an Ensoniq Fizmo is using Wavetable Synthesis and Subtractive Synthesis for patches using transwaves. Swiss Frank (talk) 16:31, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion 

message: Before Wolfgang Palm, Hal Chamberlin wrote about waveform table synthesis in Byte's September 1977 issue. --Rob Kam (talk) 22:57, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  First published by Hal Chamberlin 

message: Hal Chamberlin's September, 1977, Byte article (referenced above), describes a technique for using a table of sampled sounds that are played back at different rates to create different pitches. Here's a brief excerpt:
Concentrating on the waveshape, it
should be apparent that a waveform table
in memory repeatedly dumped into the DAC
will produce an equivalent sound waveform.
Each table entry becomes a sample, and the
entire table represents one cycle of the wave-
form. The frequency of the resulting tone
will be FS/N where FS is the sampling fre-
quency (rate at which table entries are sent
to the DAC) and N is the number of entries
in the table. To get other frequencies, either
the sample rate or the number of table
entries must be changed.
Here is a portion of the source code listing containing the term "wave table":
000 00 V1PT: BYTE 0 VOICE 1 WAVE POINTER, FRACTIONAL PART
0001 0000 WORD WAVITB INTEGER PART AND WAVE TABLE BASE
This article clearly shows that the term "wave table" was used to describe the approach used by E-mu and others as early as 1997, well in advance of PPG's use of the term with the introduction of the Wavecomputer 360 in 1980.
The article includes a complete description of the technology, as well as source code that uses wave table synthesize to play "The Star Spangled Banner" in four-part harmony on an 8-bit 6502 processor coupled to an 8 bit digital to analog converter (DAC). If anybody at PPG read the September 1977 issue of Byte magazine, it is likely they were informed by this article.
I appreciate that some people feel passionate about the technology embodied in PPG or Waldorf and feel that it is the one and only technology that can bear the name, but this article as currently written is incorrect and confusing.
Let's not be pedantic. Let's merge the articles and discuss all the forms of wave table synthesis on an equal footing.  174.208.65.36 (talk) 19:45, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needs to be merged / rewritten  

message: This article should focus on the technique known as wave table synthesis, and not on companies and products that may or may not have used it. Can we rewrite this page and eliminate (or significantly reduce) the discussion of commercial products? It would be great if an expert in the field could review the earliest published material that describes the technique and uses the term wave table or wavetable (e.g. the 1977 Byte article by Hal Chamberlin). This would recenter the article and eliminate a lot of supposition on who used what when, which is very difficult to verify due to commercial trade secrets and lack of surviving documentation. 174.208.164.111 (talk) 20:34, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  References to commercial products seem to be the source of confusion