Wavetables, wavetables

[mark verbos]

Don Tillman wrote:

>    From: Roman Sowa <rsowa at WizjaTV.pl>
>    Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 17:54:29 +0100
>
>    I was thinking about simple waveforms like sine, sqr and triangle
>    which wouldn't suffer from aliassing.
>
> Aliasing has to do with the harmonic content, and a square have has
> lots.  So your square wave would alias all over.
>
> But really, what's the point of going to the trouble of looking up the
> wavefrom from a table in memory if you're only going to use "simple
> waveforms"?
>
> ----------------
>
> And since the topic of wavetable oscillators was brought up, I'd like
> to know why folks think wavetable oscillators are a good thing.  Yeah,
> it's theoretically nice to have any waveform you'd like, but the human
> ear can't really hear waveforms, and any waveform with static harmonic
> content is just a waveform with static harmonic content.  The exciting
> stuff happens when the harmonics are non-integral or the waveform get
> manipulated or modulated.  For instance, a pulse wave isn't very
> interesting by itself, even though it's harmonic spectra is pretty
> complex.  But PWM is a blast.
>
> So I'm thinking if you want a wavetable VCO, it would only be worth it
> if you had some hooks to do something interesting with it.  For
> instance...
>
> Memory is cheap, perhaps a three or four dimensional table loaded with
> waveforms that morph to each other.  Or a second table that provides a
> parameter to modulate the pitch of the oscillator.
>
> Or a "sliding waveform", where starting point of the waveform can be
> modulated and the waveform is designed to do something interesting
> with that sort of change.
>
> I'm unfamiliar with wavetable VCOs in commercially available synths;
> are there any cool manipulation or modulation features?
>
>

why not have voltage control of the wave table lik eth wiard waveform
city. then you can sweep from one permutation to another. sine to square
or whatever you choose! assuming you can make your own wavetables.
--
mark verbos

"if you want something done right, build it yourself."

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